Opening task manager and looking at ‘Memory (Private Working Set), firefox.exe is using 1,4xx,xxx k, and plugin-container.exe is using 1,xxx,xxx k. If it matters, the current instance of FF has about 95 tabs open. Nothing else seems to run poorly (among major programmes, I have Outlook, three Excel windows, six Word documents, Dreamweaver with several pages open, and Acrobat 9 pro open with four PDFs with heavy comments in them).
Given the browser’s memory load, I’d like to see if it’s having an impact on performance. Is there a good site that puts a browser through its paces—one that will bog down if the browser’s current settings can’t handle it? And hopefully help figure out why/what element broke it?
Alternatively, does this question make any sense?
Thanks,
Do you somehow imagine that that might not matter? :dubious:
Not much, as you do not actually say what, if anything, the problem is. I am guessing that either your computer as a whole, or Firefox specifically, is running slow. I think those 95 tabs probably have something to do with it, especially if some of them contain active content. (And the load on plugin container suggests several do.) Surely you don’t need need so many tabs open at once. Get a grip and close some.
No, no problem (slowdown, crash, etc.) now that I can tell. Among other things, I’m looking to open enough tabs to that site (both in addition to the set I’ve open now and restaring FF to open a set of just that site) to start seeing a performance difference. Or alternately, open a tab that is supposed to tax the browser and see what it does–whether the browser can open it without a problem or if a slow-down becomes apparent then.
It sounds like you’re not currently experiencing any performance problems, so I’d just let sleeping dogs lie-- assuming you’re using a modern version of Windows*, the memory management is very, very good and you’re not likely to improve it by second-guessing its decisions.
If you’re looking to compare, say, Firefox with Chrome or something my response would be to compare based on the features each browser has, not simply trying to cram it with enough open tabs so it’ll barf and die. (I mean, what does that even prove?)
and tell us what OS we’re talking about. Windows XP is a lot different than Linux is a lot different than OS X is a lot different than Windows Vista/7 when it comes to effectively managing memory in a scenario like this. I’m assuming 7, just because it’s most popular, but for all I know you’re on a Mac.
No, sorry kitty. Yeah, just curiosity. I know in the past FF has bogged down to the point were it was all but unusable, but closing/reopening it or culling tabs brought it back to life. I’m kind of wondering what/where that point is now.
That was mainly memory leaks. (Where a programmer reserves memory space for some action, but then forgets to release that space back when the action is done.) Those build up over time, chewing up memory, and eventually bog down a program. Closing & reopening it starts over with a clean memory space.
Fixing those memory leaks was one of the big things done in recent releases of Firefox, and they seem to have done a pretty good job of it. I used to have to close & re-open Firefox because of this, but I haven’t had to do that at all with the last few versions.
Of course, this is a continuing problem.
As programmers write new code, adding new features to Firefox, they will leave some memory leaks in their code. Eventually, these will accumulate to the point that this starts to be a problem again, and then the Firefox developers will have a push to find & fix them, and a new release will improve this. Then it starts over again. [But I understand that Firefox now has developer tools that track this better, so that they can detect new code that introduces memory leaks, and work on fixing them before that new code becomes part of a Firefox release.]