Mozilla Firefox has been listening to recent memory complains, and as a side effect tested the browser's scalability to the extreme with memshrink's improvements.
The results are shocking: For 150 tabs open using the test script, Firefox nightly takes 6 min 14 on the test system, uses 2GB and stays responsive. For the same test, Chrome takes 28 min 55 and is unusable during loading. An optimized version of the script has been made for Chrome as an attempt to work-around Chrome's limitations and got an improved loading time of 27 min 58, while using 5GB of memory.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2007-09-22
I'm kind of sad that Firefox 4 got released like that, but they just had to release it. The FF4 release was just taking to much time.
I don't think there were that many user-visible changes in FF5. Which made people question the reason for the release. I think they maybe could have waited, maybe called it 4.1 release or something.
Also they want Firefox Mobile to work, obviously those devices have a lot less memory to work with. That could really help on the desktop too.
I do think it is the wrong test though.
Having a test where he would open 150 tabs, wait 10 minutes, close many, open some more wait 10 minutes and so on would be much better.
I'm on the daily builds (thus FF8) and I think having FF open all day long works better now. Also the about:memory page now shows a lot more detail.
Anyway I'm glad they are working on it now. I think the problem was, they couldn't reproduce the problems very well.
They also have a reduce-UI-latency project, can't remember the name, which I think is maybe even more important.
Atleast they are now gathering realworld numbers from real users:
http://blog.mozilla.com/tglek/2011/05/13/firefox-telemetry/
Hopefully that gets them the information they need.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2008-08-19
what I'm hearing is that FF4/5 don't *leak* memory as much as their predecessors - if you open and close tabs, memory use goes up and down as you'd expect. But they do seem to be using a lot more of it than FF3 - it might not be leaking but it's still a problem on machines that don't have much to spare (like my little netbook). Sounds like that's what they're addressing at the moment...
The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.The day has finally come: Google has started shipping Google Glass to the lucky few early adopters. Now that it's shipping, Google has also unveiled a lot more about the API and the specifications of the device itself. While the company had already given out substantial details at earlier occasions, there are still a few surprises here.
Member since:
2008-12-09
Firefox 4 and beyond has changed their memory management from 3.5/3.6 and it started to use a lot of memory again, hence the big push they're doing now.
This push is also more important than when they analyzed memory issues and fixed them in FF 3.5/3.6 so they're going as deep as they can with it.
It seems it does pay off with more than just "memory savings" and I'm glad.