crn.com— Anyone who uses Firefox on Windows knows the browser has an almost insatiable appetite for memory, and it's not unheard of for PCs to allocate a half GB or more of memory just to the browser alone.
Nov 11, 2007View in Crawl 4
I'm not suggesting that other people turn off those things, just that I like to do so. If I go to a website and find that I need Flash to actually do what I want on there, I'll probably allow Flash. On the other hand, if I don't need it, then why load it?
So pretty much this all comes down to extensions? I'll agree, Opera's lame attempt at extensions (widgets) sucks. I personally don't use any extensions, so it wasn't hard for me to make the switch. I do, however, like my browser fast and usable, and extremely customizable. Something Firefox couldn't offer me.
The funny part is that Firefox was originally hyped as the 'antecdote to IE browser bloat' - now its one of the slowest and most bloated resource hogs on many computers.I still use it though, but just because of indispensable extensions - the new Opera blows me away with its speed.
Just some thoughts...Isn't garbage collection and dealing with memory fragmentation the job of an operating system?Since the problem, according to the comments also happens on a sane system (MacOS X, a BSD variant), I must conclude that the problem is with how firefox is allocating and freeing memory.I don't know what rocket science the firefox developers are using in calling malloc() and mfree(), but it seems like somewhere in the development, the developers lost track of what they were doing with memory.Note, I haven't looked at the source code, and since Firefox is opensource, this is nobody's fault but mine.-DogNo7
Unless Opera think of doing something better than widgets and that integrate better in the browser interface, maybe I'll switch.If you can find something that integrate well the Google Bookmarks like Gmarks in Mozilla Firefox, or a similar extension to Google Browser Sync, maybe I'll think about switching, but until then I'm sticking with the other that gives me the less trouble in usability, which is Firefox.
fergyNov 12, 2007
There is an interesting article about memory fragmentation with Firefox: <a class="user" href="http://www.digg.com/software/firefox_memory_fragmentation">http://www.digg.com/software/firefox_memory_fragme ...</a>From what I understand Firefox stores a lot of small files in 4KB block in memory and because you often have 140byte files in a 4KB block you waste a lot of memory.
durinthalNov 13, 2007
I'm not suggesting that other people turn off those things, just that I like to do so. If I go to a website and find that I need Flash to actually do what I want on there, I'll probably allow Flash. On the other hand, if I don't need it, then why load it?
thegreatantiNov 13, 2007
Oh noes, another Opera whiner. Get a grip dude.
higherlogicNov 13, 2007
So pretty much this all comes down to extensions? I'll agree, Opera's lame attempt at extensions (widgets) sucks. I personally don't use any extensions, so it wasn't hard for me to make the switch. I do, however, like my browser fast and usable, and extremely customizable. Something Firefox couldn't offer me.
brundlefly76Nov 13, 2007
The funny part is that Firefox was originally hyped as the 'antecdote to IE browser bloat' - now its one of the slowest and most bloated resource hogs on many computers.I still use it though, but just because of indispensable extensions - the new Opera blows me away with its speed.
dogno7Nov 13, 2007
Just some thoughts...Isn't garbage collection and dealing with memory fragmentation the job of an operating system?Since the problem, according to the comments also happens on a sane system (MacOS X, a BSD variant), I must conclude that the problem is with how firefox is allocating and freeing memory.I don't know what rocket science the firefox developers are using in calling malloc() and mfree(), but it seems like somewhere in the development, the developers lost track of what they were doing with memory.Note, I haven't looked at the source code, and since Firefox is opensource, this is nobody's fault but mine.-DogNo7
planckscnstNov 14, 2007
The question should be, "Why should he need to close and open it every once in a while?"
Closed AccountNov 19, 2007
Unless Opera think of doing something better than widgets and that integrate better in the browser interface, maybe I'll switch.If you can find something that integrate well the Google Bookmarks like Gmarks in Mozilla Firefox, or a similar extension to Google Browser Sync, maybe I'll think about switching, but until then I'm sticking with the other that gives me the less trouble in usability, which is Firefox.