www.maximumpc.com/article/news/mozillas_memshrink_program_brings_big_memory_savings_firefox_7
Spending time with Firefox is a lot like spending time with your lovable young nieces; usually, everything goes swell and you walk away feeling good, a content smile plastered across your face. But sometimes, they do something so overwhelmingly stupid that you can't help but shake your head and wonder about their future. You may not be able to convince your niece that shoving crap inside electrical sockets is a dumb idea, but Mozilla's tackling its horrifyingly bad memory issues head-on with the MemShrink initiative - and one developer's already reporting outstanding results. "Firefox 7 uses less memory than Firefox 6 (and 5 and 4): often 20% to 30% less, and sometimes as much as 50% less," Mozilla developer Nicholas Nethercote wrote on his blog. "In particular, Firefox 7's memory usage will stay steady if you leave it running overnight, and it will free up more memory when you close many tabs."
Blastodon August 12, 2011 at 8:12am I didn't realize memshrink was only 2 months old. I was under the impression that mozilla already fixed this issue in FF5. I mainly use chrome but I still use FF for youtube downloading. I notice it still starts slowly but havent seen any noticeable memory leaking. My mom refuses to upgrade until her computer dies completely and I tried switching her to chrome but she likes FF because you know how those old folks are about change. I've noticed using a memory monitoring program that when FF has been up for a bit with tabs open her measely 768mb of ram is practically all used up at times.
Brett Schealler August 10, 2011 at 10:14am As nice as this sounds, FF 7 is still two whole releases away. thats like announcing Halo 4, but realeasing it over a year later...
bloodgain August 10, 2011 at 10:27am You forget that Firefox is now on a "rapid release" schedule, which is indeed a push for faster revisions, but also falsely inflates their version numbers. FF6 should be released next week if they are on schedule (16th). That should put FF7 on schedule for around September 27th (6 weeks later -- the first true "rapid" revision, as they needed 2 versions to get rid of some legacy development practices).
I Jedi August 10, 2011 at 10:53am My issue with the rapid release updates is that while it may make Mozzila look like its keeping busy, and counter-acting Chrome's rapid release date, I think it's a blunder. I had a client the other week complain to me that when she updated Firefox to a new version, after just updating a few weeks before that, that her add-ons would no longer work. I had to explain the whole process of why her add-ons probably didn't work any longer, what we could do about it, before finally a day later the add-ons she had finally caught up to the same version as Firefox at that time. Needless to say, I told her that rather than installing the next version of Firefox, the day it comes out, to allow for about a week after a release before updating to the next version of Firefox. In that way, add-on developers had more time to figure out if there were any flaws/compatibility issues between their add-ons and Firefox. I honestly just find it a headache with these rapid releases... Rather than just one big release every six or so months, we're now subject to small updates for the sake of competition.
aarcane August 10, 2011 at 10:47am I agree, why do they suddenly feel it's okay to release "revisions" as "versions". I haven't seen anything to warrant a new version since FF4..
PCLinuxguy August 10, 2011 at 11:23am Could say the same about google chrome with it's 'releases' of revisions they keep pushing out the door. The main thing that makes me wonder WTF is that what is being so drastically changed with each one that add ons constantly need to be rewritten somehow in order to work with the new version.
thetechchild August 10, 2011 at 12:53pm That's the difference between Chrome and Firefox. Firefox was on a more conventional release cycle before, so for some reason add-ons are "broken" with every new release (which count as a new version now, I suppose). Chrome, while it's doing pretty much the same thing with regards to their release cycle, was built from the ground up to accommodate the fast-paced releases. It doesn't really matter one way or the other about the number of the version, so much as what they're putting into it and how practical it is (in this case, in terms of add-on compatibility).
aarcane August 10, 2011 at 10:48am Sorry, didn't mean to DP you. Log in to MaximumPC directly or log in using Facebook Username: * Password: * Login Forgot your username or password?
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