It’s well known that the Firefox has had memory-releasing issues ever since version 2 of the browser, and with 4 it doesn’t appear that the problems have been resolved.
I want to make clear that Fx isn’t a bad browser, but it does eat up tons of memory that requires restarting it frequently whereas you don’t have to do that with IE9 or Chrome.
Mozilla has tried to pin the blame on add-ons for the slow performance of Firefox, but seriously, Mozilla, we’re not buying it. The browser is a memory-munching monster and we all know it.
A pretty damning example of how bad Fx is when it comes to memory use is that I came across a Reddit thread that stated, “If you go to [this] web site, the browser will explode in memory use and/or crash your computer.” I have 8GB of RAM in my system so I tried it out.
See for yourself what happened:
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http://www.mapcrunch.com/gallery, loads fine on an iPad 2. On a MacBook Pro, uses a little over 500MB with Safari and about 120 MB with Chrome. Uses over 1.0 GB with Firefox on the Mac.
Your Right FireFox Memory Leak Problem Is Horrible.
With FF3.6 I Would Routinely Use Up To 1.5GB With About 10 To 12 Tabs.
FF4 Isn’t Much Better, Now It’s Just Below 1GB For About 15 Tabs
While With Google Chrome, I’m Looking At About 200MB With 50 Tabs Open