Firefox = lots of system memory

[Mountain Fog Studio]

I am running Firefox 2.0, and it is taking up a lot of system memory just with one tab open . I am create web sites, so I use add-ons such as the Web Developer Toolbar, and Firebug and several others. Is this why it takes up my system resources, I had 4 tabs open and it took up over 167,000 Ks of memory.

[Mountain Fog Studio]

How can I fix this?

[glc]

I'm not trying to be a wise guy, but get more ram. Firefox is a big ram hog with extensions installed. Opera is even worse. I have 3 tabs open in Opera and it's eating 254k right now. Firefox with ZERO addons is eating 65k with only 1 tab open. You pay for the browsing speed, believe me.

[martson]

Perhaps try running Firefox in Firefox Safe Mode for a while (disables extensions and themes) and see how it runs. Maybe something here might help.

[faulkner132]

Since IE7 came out, does anyone know how well it handles memory while having 3-4 tabs open?

Of course it would depend on which pages are open, but it would be an interesting comparison on the browsers.

[freakitchen]

Interesting thought, Jason. I just opened up 4 tabs in Firefox, and the same 4 tabs in Internet Explorer 7. The former is using 94MB of memory, the latter under half that - 42MB.

This obviously has to do with Firefox extensions. I currently have about 5 installed.

FK

[faulkner132]

Hmm... if that is the case, I may switch back to IE7 on my work machine...

Thanks for the info FK!

[martson]

Firefox memory usage is around 50 MB for me at present with 6 tabs open. 17 extensions are installed.

Regarding the comparison between IE 7 and Firefox 2.0, isn't part of IE already loaded into memory anyway because it's so much a part of the operating system? Perhaps the memory figure displayed for IE in Task Manager is only the extra being used when the browser interface is running. If that is the case, IE memory usage might always appear to be less than Firefox.

[faulkner132]

Originally Posted by martson Firefox memory usage is around 50 MB for me at present with 6 tabs open. 17 extensions are installed. Regarding the comparison between IE 7 and Firefox 2.0, isn't part of IE already loaded into memory anyway because it's so much a part of the operating system? Perhaps the memory figure displayed for IE in Task Manager is only the extra being used when the browser interface is running. If that is the case, IE memory usage might always appear to be less than Firefox.

Good thought, but from a software design standpoint, it would be absolutely crazy to have your OS and browser executing in the same memory process.

If this were the case, some errant javascript code could potentially write to the same memory address as what is being used by your OS. This would probably be very unlikely and obscure, but if the software was implemented this way, it is a possibility.

In other words, I don't think memory Windows is using is shared with the IE process.

[Mountain Fog Studio]

I have firefox running with 5 tabs and less then 10 extensions running, it is taking up 169,040k of memory. I also have Opera running, with the same 5 web sites running, with maybe one extension, it is taking up 42,084k. I have IE 7.0 with the same 5 web sites and no extensions and it is taking up 67,284k.

I have a Dell Inspiron 5160, P4 2.8Ghz, 1.25 Gigs of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce Fx Go 5200 64mb RAM, 40 Gig HD. I think I have enough RAM, its more the problem with using photoshop, and blender with firefox running in the background.

[glc]

It's probably the particular extensions you are running.

[ssahl]

must be, because I have 3 windows open and one with 6 tabs all with a web page on it and firefox is only using 60k
however I have winamp running and it's using over 400k
lol
i wonder if it's my custem made skin

[ssahl]

i dont mean to steal your thread, but i shut off winamp and loaded it back up, started at 10k and just keeps going up, up, up, and up, the longer it plays the more memory it uses

[Mountain Fog Studio]

Its fine. Firefox gives me trouble in with Windows XP. Its starts out at 40k but it just goes up and up. But everything else, including iTunes, Blender, Thunderbird, and Dell Media Center Software stuff are all under 100k.