[FoxHound]

Its a norm for anyone who has ever used Firefox to be enraged by the slow load up times and lethargic GUI response. My question is why does this happen. Even in high-end PC Firefox seems to take its time. Can anyone offer up a solution because this problem has became rampant as Firefox became more bloated. Even in safe mode when no extension are used Firefox still hogs memory.

[Analada]

FoxHound, on Nov 25 2007, 10:26 AM, said:

Its a norm for anyone who has ever used Firefox to be enraged by the slow load up times and lethargic GUI response. My question is why does this happen. Even in high-end PC Firefox seems to take its time. Can anyone offer up a solution because this problem has became rampant as Firefox became more bloated. Even in safe mode when no extension are used Firefox still hogs memory.

Best place to ask questions of this kind is the Firefox support group -- BTW this has been asked many many times.

Fire-up your newsreader (or install Thunderbird freeware) and head for:

mozilla.support.firefox newsgroup.

on server address: 216.196.97.169

[erpdude8]

FoxHound,

consider deleting your existing Firefox profile entirely and run Firefox to create a new one. Find the \Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ folder, delete it and launch Firefox to create a new user profile.

also, un-install some unnecessary Firefox extensions and restart Firefox. some FF extensions can cause FF to hog a lot of RAM. try the tips here.

see if those tips help. if not, you may as well ditch Firefox and install SeaMonkey, Opera or Kmeleon.

This post has been edited by erpdude8: 25 November 2007 - 06:11 PM

[FoxHound]

Hmm Seamonkey....isn't that Mozilla Suite?

[underdone]

FoxHound, on Nov 25 2007, 05:13 PM, said:

Hmm Seamonkey....isn't that Mozilla Suite?

SeaMonkey is closely related to Firefox as they are based on alot of the same source code. Seamonkey website.

I have to say that I regularly have issues with Firefox taking up insane amounts of memory. Almost every morning when I get up Firefox will be taking close to 2.5GB of memory (I'm not exagerrating here). This is without any extensions installed so I know that Firefox itself is to blame here. If it wasn't for some very useful extensions in firefox I would have moved to something else a long time ago. Even IE7 has, in my case, proven itself to take far less memory and crash less.

This post has been edited by underdone: 25 November 2007 - 06:39 PM

[erpdude8]

FoxHound, on Nov 25 2007, 07:13 PM, said:

Hmm Seamonkey....isn't that Mozilla Suite?

yup. note that you did NOT mention the version of Firefox you had those memory hogging problems in your first post in this thread. do you even know what version of FF you have on your machine?

At least I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.9 on an XP SP2 computer and I do NOT have any memory hog problems and I have 512mb of RAM installed with a Pentium 3 (1.2ghz) cpu.

Take a look at the tips here on resolving your memory problems:
http://cybernetnews.com/2006/03/26/this-ma...ox-memory-leak/

Quote

I have to say that I regularly have issues with Firefox taking up insane amounts of memory. Almost every morning when I get up Firefox will be taking close to 2.5GB of memory (I'm not exagerrating here). This is without any extensions installed so I know that Firefox itself is to blame here. If it wasn't for some very useful extensions in firefox I would have moved to something else a long time ago. Even IE7 has, in my case, proven itself to take far less memory and crash less.

and you too, underdone. you also have not specified what version of Firefox you are using.

gee, FoxHound and underdone, have you installed the latest version of Firefox available? most of the memory hogging problems seemed to be fixed in Firefox 2.0.x and the upcoming Firefox 3.

you folks should stop b^tching about your FF memory problems and start taking action in solving your problems.

This post has been edited by erpdude8: 27 November 2007 - 04:01 PM

[FoxHound]

I really don't appreciate your tone as all I asked for was an insight to this problem. FYI it really wasn't necessary to tell you the version since this problem has been around since I first used Firefox(1.5). If you must know I use FF 2.0.0.10. Firefox practically updates itself without me knowing anyways. I didn't even know it was 2.0.0.10 until it finished the download(Sneaky Firefox )

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you folks should stop b^tching about your FF memory problems and start taking action in solving your problems.

Hmm....maybe thats why I asked this...

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Can anyone offer up a solution because this problem has became rampant as Firefox became more bloated.

All I was trying to do was brainstorm a solution to this problem, especially to people who don't have a lot of resources to throw around. I guess discussing anything against Firefox is a taboo in MSFN.

[underdone]

Quote

Quote

I have to say that I regularly have issues with Firefox taking up insane amounts of memory. Almost every morning when I get up Firefox will be taking close to 2.5GB of memory (I'm not exagerrating here). This is without any extensions installed so I know that Firefox itself is to blame here. If it wasn't for some very useful extensions in firefox I would have moved to something else a long time ago. Even IE7 has, in my case, proven itself to take far less memory and crash less.

and you too, underdone. you also have not specified what version of Firefox you are using.

gee, FoxHound and underdone, have you installed the latest version of Firefox available? most of the memory hogging problems seemed to be fixed in Firefox 2.0.x and the upcoming Firefox 3.

you folks should stop b^tching about your FF memory problems and start taking action in solving your problems.

Well then, let me specifiy which versions of firefox I am using. At the time I was using 2.0.0.10, and right now I am using 2.0.0.11. These problems happen with or without extensions, plugins, and skins installed. These issues happen to me on Linux, XP and Vista even when i'm using the default Firefox configuration which makes me reasonably sure that Firefox is at fault here, and not me.

[twig123]

To make FF start faster, Right-click on the FF icon > Properties
Add a " /prefetch:3" without quotes to the end of the Target field

Example Target line:
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" /prefetch:3

Makes it start much faster
BTW IE7 has memory stability issues as well...

[FoxHound]

how does it speed it up?

[Andromeda43]

FoxHound, on Dec 14 2007, 12:18 AM, said:

how does it speed it up?

Yeah, I'd like the answer to that question myself.

If you open your Windows Task Manager (ctrl+Alt+Del) and look at the FF usage, you'll see a combination of FF's own code + any web pages you might have loaded. With this forum loaded, my FF usage is around 50 megs. With 2 gigs of ram installed, 50 megs ain't no big deal. Having FF sitting on a SATA2 HD, don't hurt either.

My FF loads just fine with the standard "www.Google.com" as my home page. If you have some massive and complicated home page, like MSNBC.com, your load time will definitely increase. So, keep your home page simple, or don't use one at all.

Just like Netscape, Firefox has to load every byte of its code, from your HD, when you click the FF Icon.
It also, ( I think ) loads all your favorites, saved passwords, history, etc.
Windows I.E. doesn't have to do this, since much of the code it uses is already loaded by Windows.
So when comparing the two, you're comparing apples to oranges (so to speak).

All in all, I'm quite happy with FF and the way it runs on my PC.
I'm really sorry that some folks seem to have problems with it.
As a "Freebie" it's one heck of a nice program.

Y'all have a great day now, and Merry Christmas Everyone!
Andromeda43

[underdone]

twig123, on Dec 13 2007, 10:10 AM, said:

To make FF start faster, Right-click on the FF icon > Properties
Add a " /prefetch:3" without quotes to the end of the Target field

Example Target line:
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" /prefetch:3

Makes it start much faster
BTW IE7 has memory stability issues as well...

I absolutely agree with you that IE7 has memory and stability issues. However, I have not been affected by these issues personally.

My main theory around why I see these issues with FF so much more than other people seem to is because I rarely if ever close all of my FF windows. Normally the only time I restart FF is on patch tuesday and whenver FF or an extension has an update available. *Most* people close FF completely on a regular basis. Again, this is just a theory.

Also, it's worth noting that the /prefetch:3 command would not be very useful in vista, unless of course you have superfetch disabled.

This post has been edited by underdone: 20 December 2007 - 09:21 AM

[Ninho]

It is all too true that Firefox's rendering of HTTP is very slow, maybe five to ten times slower than IE's. It's only because our PCs are so fast that we usually do not notice it. When I was forced to use a 486 DX2 for some time, a few months ago, I couldn't but notice it : Firefox was functional in theory, yet in practice unusable.

My guess is a large part of FF is programmed in interpreted, or semi-interpreted, languages, and not optimised at that. Someone who looked at the code base might confirm (or not). Anyway I'm not bashing FF or Moz, I love Firefox, but the truth is it is not optimised or even designed with speed in mind.

Cheers


--
Ninho

[Analada]

Couple of tips which /should/ help improve performance:

http://macosxcocktail.blogs.com/cocktail/2...ve_firefox.html

pipelining

http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive...st-performance/

dns cache

HTH.

[BenoitRen]

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It is all too true that Firefox's rendering of HTTP is very slow, maybe five to ten times slower than IE's.

This has been proved wrong countless times.

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My guess is a large part of FF is programmed in interpreted, or semi-interpreted, languages, and not optimised at that.

This is true for the interface. However, the rendering back-end is entirely in C++.

[bristols]

@ Analada

While the pipelining and cache tips are appreciated, there are other isues to consider in terms of the speed by which web pages are rendered.

I use Firefox (the latest 2.0x release, and the last 1.5x version) in the course of coding web pages, to test that everything is looking and working as it should in arguably the de facto browser for web development. I have noticed that, for example, Firefox 2x's speed and responsiveness when rendering web pages that include absolutely-positioned elements are noticeably slower than when loading the same pages without those elements. This difference in speed is particularly noticeable on systems with sub-1Ghz CPUs. Combine floated elements with absolutely-positioned elements, and slow systems can really start to grind.

It is a page-/document-rendering issue, and not a network-/connection-speed issue.

This is just my experience, but there seems to be a sizeable number of people who on occasion experience sluggishness in Firefox.

This post has been edited by bristols: 19 December 2007 - 06:31 PM

[twig123]

underdone, on Dec 14 2007, 11:56 AM, said:

Also, it's worth noting that the /prefetch:3 command would not be very useful in vista, unless of course you have superfetch disable.

Sorry, I jumped the gun and assumed that it was XP instead of the bloatware Vista...

[MikeyHunt]

Hello. Try this add-on for Firefox

https://addons.mozil...efox/addon/1269

FasterFox. ----> solves some memory hog issues, adds prefetching , pipelining ...etc

nifty little add-on

[BenoitRen]

That extension doesn't really add anything. It just changes some of Firefox' preferences.

[Skywarrior74]

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Why does Firefox hog memory?

Just the nature of the beast. I found this nice lil trash can on my desktop and proceeded to place the fox there, d/l'd Opera and problem was solved