Firefox 6

In reference to www.maximumpc.com/article/news/firefox_6_available_manual_download:

Mozilla fans who are happy marching to the rhythm of Firefox�s new franticly beating drums will be pleased to know that not only is Firefox 6 still on track for release this Tuesday, but here at Maximum PC we have the links to hook you up a whole two days early.

The process involves downloading the installer directly from Mozilla�s repositories, but we have verified that it is indeed the final working code, and is identical to the version that will be pushed out through the auto updater in a couple of days.

For desktop users Firefox 6 is definitely a bit light on new features, but is still a worthwhile upgrade if it�s still your browser of choice.

Shovelling out 'major' releases like this is just plain daft. I'm still using 3.6.x because the extensions that I use haven't been updated yet to recognise the changed major release numbers. The Firefox team have lost sight of their user base. I also wonder about their QA testing. Pushing major releases is usually a sign of a software project in trouble.

the firefox team lost sight after version 3.

I like the nightlies, they are good with memory now.

I'm still using 3.6.18 as 4 didn't seem to like my Windows XP OS or some websites either.

In reply to a post by micksharpe:

Shovelling out 'major' releases like this is just plain daft. I'm still using 3.6.x because the extensions that I use haven't been updated yet to recognise the changed major release numbers. The Firefox team have lost sight of their user base. I also wonder about their QA testing. Pushing major releases is usually a sign of a software project in trouble.

good news on the bartab extension, on 2.1b2 (the dodgy version but is needed to run on ff4 and 5), if manually fill in whitelisted sites in about:config, the other bugs dissapear. So with that addon fixed I am now 90% happily using ff5 which is way faster than 3.6.

However these fast updates of the major version are silly, I also dont like that when an update is available it doesnt tell you what version it is, it now just says a new version is available. FF5 said that on my test rig and when I clicked update it put on FF6 beta. Of course I know why it did that as that install is using the beta channel, but the fact is it didnt tell me what version I would be upgrading to beforehand, they have adopted a silent update system.

My main problem is this. Before I upgrade to a major version I have todo lots of testing and make sure it updates ok (usually anything form a week up to many months), however FF5 is now EOL so if there is a security issue I have to live with it or update to a new major version I havent tested.

Edited by Chrysalis (Sun 14-Aug-11 23:27:20)

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-o...

In reply to a post by Apprentice:

I'm still using 3.6.18 as 4 didn't seem to like my Windows XP OS or some websites either.

Sadly I have knocked Firefox on the head, got fed up of the delay on start up, the crashes and other problems.

In reply to a post by 12eason:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-o...

The Add-on Compatibility Reporter worked when it felt like it and not with all add ons.

I'm on nightly and it works with all my addons.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by Apprentice:

I'm still using 3.6.18 as 4 didn't seem to like my Windows XP OS or some websites either.

Sadly I have knocked Firefox on the head, got fed up of the delay on start up, the crashes and other problems.

bartab fixes the delay, fixes the stalls (by forcing idle tabs to unload).
crashes I found using the plugin container options help, I have flash load in the container which also stops flash videos from stuttering as well.
I think a lot of firefox problems stem from the fact they still having everything share 1 process, by default the entire firefox gui, garbage colelction, tabs, browsing etc. all runs under 1 process. Both chrome and IE stopped doing this ages ago.

I can understand why people have given FF the boot as a lot of its issues are long standing that get ignored by the dev's.

In reply to a post by 12eason:

I'm on nightly and it works with all my addons.

what I find interesting is the FF users who run beta, nightlies like the new release system as they used to updating regurly anyway.

The users who use stable and generally avoid updating until absolutely necessary dont like the fast updates. I think it will bomb as those who use nightlies are a very small minority. However I guess many will just blindly update the app when prompted, the question is will they tolerate the changes/problems that occur from such updates. As they wont be expecting certian things like a gui that changes from ff3 to ff4 and addons that stop working.

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 15-Aug-11 11:51:26)

You consider 2 or 3 updates a year to be too much? What about windows update, do you cancel that all the time? Your computer must be riddled with back doors.

windows update is patching up security holes, the equivelent for windows would be upgrading to windows 8 now, then windows 9 again at christmas.

I do consider 3 major updates a year to one app too much yes. Firefox are copying google.

http://www.osnews.com/comments/24890

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 15-Aug-11 15:26:18)

All very well these incremented version numbers but do they actually improve anything?

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

bartab fixes the delay, fixes the stalls (by forcing idle tabs to unload).
crashes I found using the plugin container options help, I have flash load in the container which also stops flash videos from stuttering as well.
I think a lot of firefox problems stem from the fact they still having everything share 1 process, by default the entire firefox gui, garbage colelction, tabs, browsing etc. all runs under 1 process. Both chrome and IE stopped doing this ages ago.

I can understand why people have given FF the boot as a lot of its issues are long standing that get ignored by the dev's.

Should not have to use a add on for poor coding.

In reply to a post by 12eason:

You consider 2 or 3 updates a year to be too much? What about windows update, do you cancel that all the time? Your computer must be riddled with back doors.

windows is a bit different, far more complex than a browser and as been said above, if we updated Windows like Mozilla want us to update Firefox, we would be up to windows 9 or more by now.


what improvements do these Firefox updates really bring that could not be put into say 4.6 instead of going to version 5, 6, 7 or how how they are going to go before the end of this year

Maybe they want to catch up with IE version numbers, in which case they have a long way to go.

what improvements do these Firefox updates really bring that could not be put into say 4.6 instead of going to version 5

What difference does it make whether they call it v4.6 or v5.0?

In reply to a post by Sark:

what improvements do these Firefox updates really bring that could not be put into say 4.6 instead of going to version 5

What difference does it make whether they call it v4.6 or v5.0?

if you think thats all it is then ask them why they changed the numbering.

The answer is that it is more than just changing how they numbering it, on minor updates only about 10% of features were put in and only ones that were known to not break addons etc. Mozzila have openly said they changed it as they want new major features and fixes to be rolled out more quickly.

Personally I dont have a major problem with fast rollouts, to me the big issue is the extremely fast EOL, I cant think of many major applications that go EOL in just 8 weeks. In fact firefox is the only one I can think off.

FreeBSD support 2-3 branches at once to counter regular updates to their OS. So eg. FreeBSD 7 is still supported for security patches even tho FreeBSD 8 is the latest stable version and when 9.0 is released 7.4 will still be supported.

It's just a numbers race, really. Firefox seem to be the worst offender, which is quite surprising to me.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

bartab fixes the delay, fixes the stalls (by forcing idle tabs to unload).
crashes I found using the plugin container options help, I have flash load in the container which also stops flash videos from stuttering as well.
I think a lot of firefox problems stem from the fact they still having everything share 1 process, by default the entire firefox gui, garbage colelction, tabs, browsing etc. all runs under 1 process. Both chrome and IE stopped doing this ages ago.

I can understand why people have given FF the boot as a lot of its issues are long standing that get ignored by the dev's.

Should not have to use a add on for poor coding.

agreed and it is actually still buggy the addon, not fixed as I thought with the workaround although browser is useable it is a bit of a joke the situation. Firefox to me without bartab the way I use the browser is unuseable as it would consume many gigs of ram and be stuttering on everything.

The difference here is that FreeBSD is real software, not a toy. People want performance, stability, and reliability from FreeBSD. They don't care what the button to change the font colour looks like.

you may see firefox as a toy but i dont.

browsers are used a lot these days, especially with the emergence of web apps as well.

clearly opinion is split but surprisingly I am even seeing web developers now shouting out against the policy, the 2 main reasons given are.

1 - firefox will have fragmented userbase split across many versions which display web pages differently as updated every 8 weeks. So harder to support firefox than say IE.
2 - a consistent browser behaviour is more important that strict complaince to standards, ie. better to have a browser that wont be changing how it reads code every 2 months even tho it may not be as compliant.

Edited by Chrysalis (Tue 16-Aug-11 11:20:30)

just spent 10 mins wondering why tesco order wouldnt submit, in firefox5. Tried in ff 3.6 and worked first time hmmmm.

yes I am not on 6, as it took me 2 months to test 5, havent had time to test 6 yet.

I use a number of sites where the popup for the credit card extra check only works in Internet Explorer

Edited by deleted (Tue 16-Aug-11 19:24:14)

In reply to a post by micksharpe:

Maybe they want to catch up with IE version numbers, in which case they have a long way to go.

i think they are more worried about Chrome than IE.

In reply to a post by Sark:

what improvements do these Firefox updates really bring that could not be put into say 4.6 instead of going to version 5

What difference does it make whether they call it v4.6 or v5.0?

every time they do what they call a main update, they stop even more add ons working. when they just done 3.5 to 3.6 the add ons was not affected.

Just been "fed" FF 7 beta.

A couple of little used add-ons not functioning.

FF have been feeding me FF6 as an update all week. Grr.

nail in the coffin moment.

I added my stored ff3.6 session to ff6 and restarted.

memory usage a whopping 900meg, this is with only 1 tab in each window loaded (rest not loaded due to bartab) so 22 windows, 22 tabs loaded, plus 5 more tabs which set to always load, 27 tabs using 900meg. Within 5 mins of been loaded its using a gig of ram. so 100meg has leaked.

incidently bartab broke even more in ff6 than it does in ff5. The latest news also is that firefox are planning to hide the version number in the about window, I assume this is in response to people not liking the rapid release schedule so firefox want to pretend they not doing major version bumps every 6 weeks and pass them off as stability and security updates.

Is fair to say ff4,ff5,ff6 all feel like betas and ff6 actually feels like an alpha release, so to me its enforced beta testing of new features.

My memory usage now whilst still typing is 1.16gig of ram on ff6 firefox.exe so its chewed up nearly 200meg ram in the time it has taken me to type, and its stuttering like crazy, letters appearing after I type. I am now putting down the imrpoved performance that I was using it with hardly any tabs loaded.

with the same tabs/windows ff3.6 uses 315meg on startup and usually creeps up to maybe just under 400meg after weeks of uptime.

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 22-Aug-11 10:30:10)

Has FF6 fixed the iGoogle problem that FF4 had?

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/802571

I've reverted to IE9 because neither iGoogle nor Freecorder Toolbar work properly in FF4. IE9 was a pleasant surprise.

Still on FF 5.0.1 here. Maybe it's the laptop, but there's a plugin which activates on some streaming and starts heating up the CPU. Is that normal? Like I say with the lappy it's maybe more noticable, as after 20 mins of 20-30% CPU usage there's decent heat.

it loads here, but my guess its to do with the new privacy option in ff5/6. My google was flunky until I disabled that (couldnt save settings etc.). FF3.6 is actually 276meg ram with this session, so was lower than my other post. Now I am just using ff6 for a few sites and FF3.6 for the main session. I may even give chrome a try now as I think firefox have completely lost it. 3.6 will eventually go EOL.

I wont even try to report my findings with ff6 as I will just get shot down by fanboys and the dev's. "I cant hear you" with hands to their ears.

probably flash plugin, now FF has a thing called plugin container which seperates things like flash from the main app, the original idea was if flash crashed then firefox wouldnt crash with it, but I use it now to escape stuttering as it stops firefox laggyness making flash stutter. In ff3.6 its not used by default, maybe it is in ff5. But it doesnt cause extra cpu usage. If the same streaming has lower cpu in another browser than I dont know what to comment on that.

Yup, it's the Adobe Flash plugin container.exe

Causes 10-20% (I overstated before) CPU usage. Must be the lappy not liking continuous CPU usage, heat-wise. No matter.

odd, there is a way to disable it, google for it. I dont know off hand sorry.

I think you will find tho the cpu usage will simply transfer to firefox.exe. Modern flash can be quite cpu intensive on low spec machines, and even sometimes on high spec machines.

The video streams in question will not work if disabled. It's a plug-in you see. Like I said, it's no big deal, but I wondered if it was a specific FF plugin issue, rather than any old browser issue. Just tried it in IE 7.0.6 and IE invokes no plug-in, and uses 2-8% CPU for the same vid.

Hmm.

IE will invoke the flash plugin/addon. No browsers have built in support for flash.

To disable the plugin container edit this in about:config. dom.ipc.plugins.enabled set to false. Restart firefox if needed.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

nail in the coffin moment.

I added my stored ff3.6 session to ff6 and restarted.

memory usage a whopping 900meg, this is with only 1 tab in each window loaded (rest not loaded due to bartab) so 22 windows, 22 tabs loaded, plus 5 more tabs which set to always load, 27 tabs using 900meg. Within 5 mins of been loaded its using a gig of ram. so 100meg has leaked.

incidently bartab broke even more in ff6 than it does in ff5. The latest news also is that firefox are planning to hide the version number in the about window, I assume this is in response to people not liking the rapid release schedule so firefox want to pretend they not doing major version bumps every 6 weeks and pass them off as stability and security updates.

Is fair to say ff4,ff5,ff6 all feel like betas and ff6 actually feels like an alpha release, so to me its enforced beta testing of new features.

My memory usage now whilst still typing is 1.16gig of ram on ff6 firefox.exe so its chewed up nearly 200meg ram in the time it has taken me to type, and its stuttering like crazy, letters appearing after I type. I am now putting down the imrpoved performance that I was using it with hardly any tabs loaded.

with the same tabs/windows ff3.6 uses 315meg on startup and usually creeps up to maybe just under 400meg after weeks of uptime.

disgraceful, you would think that they would have got that sorted out by now.

As for the version numbers and updates, I have heard that Mozilla is going to change the updating of Firefox in that it will update and you got no choice about it. At the moment you can choose to update or not, but that is stopping, it will be like Chrome.

Hate that idea, my computer, I will choose if I want stuff updated or not.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I have heard that Mozilla is going to change the updating of Firefox in that it will update and you got no choice about it. At the moment you can choose to update or not, but that is stopping, it will be like Chrome.

Hate that idea, my computer, I will choose if I want stuff updated or not.

That's why I haven't Chrome, and still on FF 3.6 !
MY computer, my choice.
Regards,
Martin

I'm on Debian testing (Linux, not Windows so apologies for barging in). Debian testing have a fairly conservative policy but within the last month we have been upgraded to Iceweasel 5.0 (Firefox 5.0 to you). It appears stable and I can now access sites such as Santander which I couldn't before.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I have heard that Mozilla is going to change the updating of Firefox in that it will update and you got no choice about it. At the moment you can choose to update or not, but that is stopping, it will be like Chrome.

Hate that idea, my computer, I will choose if I want stuff updated or not.

That's why I haven't Chrome, and still on FF 3.6 !
MY computer, my choice.
Regards,
Martin

I use Iron. There is a way to stop chrome updating, Google tries and hide it mind you and don't announce it.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I have heard that Mozilla is going to change the updating of Firefox in that it will update and you got no choice about it. At the moment you can choose to update or not, but that is stopping, it will be like Chrome.

Hate that idea, my computer, I will choose if I want stuff updated or not.

That's why I haven't Chrome, and still on FF 3.6 !
MY computer, my choice.
Regards,
Martin

yeah, on the versioing hiding, from what I can see about 95% at least of FF users oppose it. dev's completely ignoring them.

A motto for Mozilla geeks: If it's not broke, don't fix it! I'm fed up with this endless tinkering and being forced into latest versions. FF6 has an annoying semi-transparent background and buttons switched around for the hell of it.

This chopping about has become so tedious that I may go back to IE9. Especially as one Government department won't download to Firefox, it insists on IE9 anyway.

There were no UI changes between 5 and 6.

Fair enough, I'm still on 3.6 and staying there, having seen the FF6 plaster on my wife's new machine. She can't get 3.6 so it looks like IE again ...

There were no UI changes between 5 and 6.

Corrected that for you

By the way, currently have 4 tabs open (3 this site and 1 wikipedia) and FF is using 370MB of RAM according to task manager. Not very impressive.

Edited by Pipexer (Fri 26-Aug-11 18:11:34)

I hated the change so use the Firefox 3 theme for Firefox 4 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firef...

That's just history. Close it and reopen it and it'll go to 150 again. I guarantee chrome etc will do the same if used for long enough.

In reply to a post by 12eason:

That's just history. Close it and reopen it and it'll go to 150 again. I guarantee chrome etc will do the same if used for long enough.

I know, but I think it's unacceptable it creeps up to that level. It would help if they could address some of the performance quirks. It wouldn't hurt them to build-in database compaction for starters. At the moment I run speedyfox once every 2 weeks or so and it vastly helps. (as it happens, someone here pointed me in the direction of that utility)

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

Fair enough, I'm still on 3.6 and staying there, having seen the FF6 plaster on my wife's new machine. She can't get 3.6 so it looks like IE again ...

Why can't she get 3.6?

7 does address it slightly, it dumps background tabs to a cache, but it slows down tab switching on image heavy pages.

Didn't have any bother going back to 3.6.18 (now 3.6.20), I'm using Windows XP

........... Link


Edit > only upgraded as far as FF4

Edited by Apprentice (Fri 26-Aug-11 19:26:41)

Doing anything else with that memory?

In reply to a post by Sark:

Doing anything else with that memory?

Sometimes, yes I am, and it causes firefox to buckle because it starts swapping things to and from disk and becomes exceptionally unresponsive (especially when running virtual machines), this is not neccessary when I have 2 wikipedia tabs open or something really minor. I'm not a programmer but I'd have thought it could be made more efficient.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

There were no UI changes between 5 and 6.

Corrected that for you

By the way, currently have 4 tabs open (3 this site and 1 wikipedia) and FF is using 370MB of RAM according to task manager. Not very impressive.

whats funny is its clear the dev's are aware of the huge ram leak issue on ff4, as they did a plaster fix on 5 and 6.

On ff4, the ram usage just keeps going up whilst its idle, it keeps going up until you do something like close the active tab or load a new page in that tab, at which point the ram will go back down again (not necessarily all of it but most of it).
On ff5, the same happens but they added some kind of process to it that at intervals flushes the data out of ram so it will keep going up then after say 30 seconds it goes back down again and thn will start going up again and then another 30 seconds or so later it recovers again, so its up down up down, so intead of fixing the actual leak they added a mechanism to flush it at set intervals.
ff6 the same as ff5 except it seems to leak a a higher rate.
the about:memory page shows the leak is in the javascript heap allocation.

It would seem the stuttering issues are not fixed at all in ff4,5,6 I just thought they were as I was until very recently only loading a dozen or so tabs in the browser at once. Plus to make matters worse changes were made in 4 upwards that have broken bartab and even to the point the dev of bartab cant update it to work fully on 4,5,6. I feel the core causes of firefox's stittering are.

1 - storing data in sqlite format, this is significantly slower than plain text storage or using the registry. Data gets flushed to these files at regular intervals hence the stutters.
2 - frequent garbage collection, this is frequent I assume due to lots of memory leaks, IE also has memory leaks but it doesnt seem to bog down the browser like it does on FF.
3 - garbage collection, browser gui, web site data all sharing a single process, so this means all tied down to one cpu core for performance and using loads of ram in one process. So eg. if you have IE9 open with 10 tabs, you will probably have 4 or 5 iexplore.exe processes splitting the cpu/ram load between them and if a tab crashes only the tabs sharing that single process crash with it, not the entire app. firefox will have the entire lot in one firefox.exe process, except if the plugin-conteiner is enabled (mentioned few posts back) then things like flash will go in an extra process which stops flash stuttering due to GC.
4 - no sandbox, in 2011 this is just silly to not have a built in sandbox function, even IE has had it for many years now since vista launch. chrome had from start.

there is a few other things but on these basics firefox is seeing next to no progression from ff3.6 to ff6. On the ram load/leaks, stuttering its actually regressed.

If we compare the progress of IE7 to IE9, microsoft seem to have worked on their main issues. They massively improved compliance to standards, IE9 is very good on it. They improved speed, IE9 is my fastest browser easily, way faster than FF6. They improved security, sandboxing, built in ad protection, built in activex protections, and they added built in crash protection. They also will support IE9 until about 2016/2017 rather than a 6 week EOL from firefox.

Edited by Chrysalis (Sat 27-Aug-11 08:41:50)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

On ff4, the ram usage just keeps going up whilst its idle, it keeps going up until you do something like close the active tab or load a new page in that tab, at which point the ram will go back down again (not necessarily all of it but most of it).

I don't get that. It would be a blocking bug too, but it's not on bugzilla. I'd imagine it's caused by a plugin or addon. The fact that it is in the javascript heap would point to that too.

The developers are still working on this problem, but don't seem to be having much success yet. There's obviously some fundamental flaw there. With all the tools available nowadays to profile memory usage in a program I can't think why they can't track this one.

The improvement has nothing to do with a leak. They are just general improvements to the memory management as I've already mentioned. The author of that blog thinks there's a leak, but he's wrong. You'll notice his 'test' is pathetically trivial.

Here is the bug that prompted memshrink: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=656120

eta: and a direct quote:

Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (Mozilla Corporation) 2011-06-15 17:34:47 PDT

We really need this. Without this, it's very difficult for people to distinguish real leaks from late GC (especially if they don't know to click obsessively on the GC buttons in about:memory). Not to mention that it's probably a global performance win anyway to keep the heap down.

Edited by deleted (Sat 27-Aug-11 09:14:20)

Hmm.

Firefox's memory usage may increase if it's left open for long periods of time. A workaround for this is to periodically restart Firefox.

I'm sure that you have some circumlocution to describe what anyone else would call a memory leak.

Getting desperate now AEP. Try reading the actual article you link to, where it says to disable the addons that are causing the memory build up. Firefox itself has no memory leaks.

Edited by deleted (Sat 27-Aug-11 09:47:56)

Firefox itself has no memory leaks.

Sometimes you sound just like one of those Apple fans.

Define efficient. Reducing peak memory usage, generally speaking, is not something worth spending money on nowadays given that the memory capacity of most PCs far exceeds the requirements of the applications that run on it. If you're hitting paging problems with your PC then you need to install more memory. Having Mozilla waste thousands of man hours shaving x% off peak memory is not going to solve your problem.

Okay, it has no blocking memory leak bugs of the scale that would cause significant increases in footprint. Obviously it may have some undiscovered leak somewhere in the code.

Unfortunately, you have defined the approach of many programmers nowadays; if there are performance problems just throw more hardware at it. No wonder we are stuck with so many bloated programs. And no wonder so many programs and websites, designed and tested on highly specified workstations, perform so poorly in the real world.

Sensible use of resources is not something that should demand extra programming effort. With the right approach it should be built in from the start.

It's not a technical trade off it's a commercial one: silicon costs less than people. Ultra high performance or ultra compact code is very expensive to produce and maintain. You can't expect 1980s efficiency from software with 21st century sophistication unless you're willing to pay a lot more for it.

It is most certainly not undiscovered. Several people experience memory leaks with Firefox that are not blamed on addins.

Try to understand that all software and hardware has its faults. We have eonough of people blindly ignoring this fact as it is.

Code doesn't have to be ultra high performance or ultra compact to be efficient. And it costs no more to write good code than bad; in fact it's probably a bit cheaper.

In reply to a post by AEP:

It is most certainly not undiscovered. Several people experience memory leaks with Firefox that are not blamed on addins.

Try to understand that all software and hardware has its faults. We have eonough of people blindly ignoring this fact as it is.

Find a blocking memory leak on bugzilla. Several people mistake normal memory build up for leaks, because they have no clue what they are talking about.

I suspect we have different ideas about what constitutes "sensible use of resources" and what the requirements are for "good code". There's a lot of idealism amongst those who are not dealing with software development in a commercial context or have no experience of working on sophisticated products. I've no idea if that is you or not. But complaining because Firefox is using 300 MB when you want it to use 150 MB is in that ballpark.

I certainly wouldn't wish to comment on the difficulties or otherwise of writing good code if I didn't have experience of doing so in a commercial environment. I've written such code for PCs and for mainframes using a variety of programming environments, and I like to think it was reasonably efficient.

In my experience it's a lot easier to write good code from the outset than to write indifferent code and then try to improve it.

In reply to a post by AEP:

In my experience it's a lot easier to write good code from the outset than to write indifferent code and then try to improve it.

Clearly. But that is hardly the point.

Mainframes with hole punch readers no doubt.

No. Punch cards and paper tape were before my time.

I suspect that you have no experience beyond PCs and are unfamiliar with other hardware. And I'm sure that you have no experience of programming in a commercial setting.

Commercial no, open source yes. Firefox is open source.

You'll have to excuse me if I decline advice from someone who can't tell the difference between assembler code and C code.

As I suspected, no idea of what is involved in writing software in a commercial environment.

Er, you were the one who claimed to have written the entire OS in Assembly. I was the one who pointed out that most of it was C.

In reply to a post by 12eason:

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

On ff4, the ram usage just keeps going up whilst its idle, it keeps going up until you do something like close the active tab or load a new page in that tab, at which point the ram will go back down again (not necessarily all of it but most of it).

I don't get that. It would be a blocking bug too, but it's not on bugzilla. I'd imagine it's caused by a plugin or addon. The fact that it is in the javascript heap would point to that too.

there is at least 10 reports on bugzilla regarding memory leaks in ff4, my guess is there is actually at least triple that but 10 is what I found with a quick search. 2 of them are mine.

also on ff4 if its left idle for too long it eventually crashes with the memory usage, mine last crashed when idle for 14 days and 7.6gig of ram usage.

In reply to a post by 12eason:

The improvement has nothing to do with a leak. They are just general improvements to the memory management as I've already mentioned. The author of that blog thinks there's a leak, but he's wrong. You'll notice his 'test' is pathetically trivial.

are you saying I am wrong also?

ifi memory usage keeps going up with no data been loaded into the program, then what is it if its not a leak?

In reply to a post by Sark:

Define efficient. Reducing peak memory usage, generally speaking, is not something worth spending money on nowadays given that the memory capacity of most PCs far exceeds the requirements of the applications that run on it. If you're hitting paging problems with your PC then you need to install more memory. Having Mozilla waste thousands of man hours shaving x% off peak memory is not going to solve your problem.

dont you consider it a problem when an app can fully utilise 8 gig of ram via leaks?

also to get ff4 to use 8 gig of ram is fairly trivial, with no addons, and only about 10 pages/tabs loaded.

dont you consider it a problem when an app can fully utilise 8 gig of ram via leaks?

Yes, of course that is a serious problem. It isn't what I replied to, though.

It's a feature.

Cookies lost twice in the space of a week with firefox - Not doing anything funky to cause it. Can only think this is the result of FF6.

Luckily, if I go into profile, it has created a sqlite.backup so just rename that back to sqlite.

Sorry this tech stuff is way beyond me. But for those who simply want to use the darn thing, I've found the transparency feature is not FF at all, but a W7 'benefit'. It can be removed by right-clicking on desktop, select Personalisation, Window Color, uncheck Transparency.

Those with vision problems will find things easier to read. But the buttons are still switched about and a big chunk across the top of the screen is still wasted. I wish Mozilla had left a good programme well alone.