Is It Firefox Or Is It Flash?

"You shouldn’t complain about something if it’s free."

I don’t agree with that statement when it comes to web browsers, because is required software in order to use the web. Note that I said web and not internet. Traditional email requires no browser nor does instant messaging. Also bear in mind that it was messaging that existed first before the web. But I digress.

Yesterday I was treated to my latest/greatest Firefox acting really s-l-o-w-l-y, so I checked the Windows 7 Task Manager and Firefox is spiking at 300,000 K of memory usage. Was I surprised? Not in the slightest. I’ve been dealing with this since Firefox 2.

Most people know I consider Flash to be simply evil due to the fact it will crash any OS. Windows, Mac, Linux, doesn’t matter. Flash will hose it. Flash is so evil at times it will even give OS X a kernel panic – and I’m not kidding.

I mention Flash because Firefox will spike in system resource usage the moment you load just about any Flash video. And if you decide to load up a few YouTube, DailyMotion, Viddler, Vimeo or other video sharing site pages in separate tabs, watch out because the browser will spike so badly it will slow Firefox to a crawl – and sometimes take your OS with it.

I also want to make clear this is not a "Windows thing". It will occur on any OS. Dave, the owner of PCMech, has a beasty Mac Pro – the most powerful Mac made. Four cores, 9GB of RAM and Mac OS X Leopard. Nothing could slow that system down, right? Wrong. Firefox and Flash will.

The answer the question of whether it’s Firefox or Flash causing this problem, the answer is both.

Flash is an unruly thing that eats up system resource for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Firefox’s problem is that everything it does is contained in a single instance when running. When you run FF, in Windows you will only see one instance of firefox.exe there – and that’s a not a good thing.

Does this mean Windows Internet Explorer and Google Chrome are better at handling memory usage?

Yes.

Both IE8 and Chrome use separate processes for tabs – a big reason why both run so well. If you have a tab that is chewing up a ton of resource, the solution is simple – close the tab. Once closed, the process is stopped and the memory it used released. And you can do this without closing the entire browser.

Chrome has the advantage over IE8 in tab speed. You’ll notice that each time you open a new tab in IE8 that the browser "thinks" about it before actually doing it. This is because the way IE8 launches another iexplore.exe is a bit on the slow side. Chrome on the other hand has instant gratification when you open a tab. When you want a new tab, ta-da, it’s there – instantly, and in a separate process.

I prefer Firefox. Truly, I do. I don’t like Chrome or IE8. But if Mozilla doesn’t get on the ball and introduce a browser that uses separate processes for tabs, I may be forced to switch.

The answer to this may be Firefox 4 – and believe me it can’t come soon enough. Check out how many people are begging for it to be a real thing.

Is Firefox and Flash a bear for you?

Voice your opinion by posting a comment.

Like what you read?

If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:

Paul
Hey Rich, I just ran a little test. I was using FF when I read this story. Had not looked at any flash vids and was using about 113 meg of ram with one FF exe showing in task manager.
So I closed it out, opened up Chrome, came back to the same page. I now have Chrome exe 6 times and if I add up the ram used it’s over 154meg. This doesn’t seem better to me.
Tonight when my “limit” isn’t in effect I’ll try looking at some flash and see how Crome handles that.
http://store.mind-body-spirit-central.com/ marc
There’s no getting around the fact that Firefox uses a lot of memory.
I witnessed a friend’s XP machine with 1GB memory send up system low on memory warnings with maybe six tabs open in Firefox, and no other open programs. The culprit? Facebook. As soon as she closed the Facebook tab, memory usage went way down and the warnings ceased.
Interesting.
http://www.disk.com Jason
I agree with FF slowness. I switched from Firefox to Chrome because loading feeds into Google Reader were as slow as (or slower) than molasses. At first Chrome was not ideal, but has turned out to be awesome with the addition of the extensions, especially the IE Tab.
David M
I just opened 12 windows in Firefox in 12 different websites, My Firefox memory usage as shown in Task Manager/ Processes is at 173 Megs. My physical memory usage is at 50%. I have a total memory capacity of 2 Gigs.
I just fired up Word, Excel and iTunes which bumped up my memory usage to 59%…then it dropped to 52%
My computer still works fine. It’s still as fast as usual.
There does not seem to be any problems here. Am I just lucky I am not experiencing any problems?
alice
Even now i am using firefox for all my works i am opening more than 10 windows at a time each with more than 5tabs even though its faster and easy to work with . i go for firefox
David Kennedy
Great look at FF and some of its drawbacks. So tired of the FF snobs pretending it has no flaws. And with pretty much anything, there are pros and cons to each browser. This is a pretty big con for FF that largely gets overlooked, somehow.
Tyler
I’ve been playing with the idea of switching to chrome for some time now. It manages memory better and plays flash content more smoothly in my opinion than Firefox ever has. In general using Chrome is in general a smoother experience than using either Firefox or IE.
David M
Somebody still needs to explain the big deal if Firefox is using 1.5 gigs out of 4 gigs of memory.
Jase
Just figured I should perhaps chime in with this forum link.
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=106396
Paul
Rich, To answer your question, I don’t think it’s just FF or flash, I think it’s U-Tube. I had watched a large flash clip (almost 40meg) and my Ram usage only went up about 3 meg. Then I watched 10 small flash clips from U-Tube and it jumped almost 200meg. A few minutes later on another site I looked at another clip and as soon as I clicked on it my ram load dropped over 120meg. That makes me think the big problem is with U-tube’s flash.