[Grey Wolf]

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009749.html

Turns out you can stop that massive memory consumption, at least to some extent.

[NGTM-1R]

And you people laughed when I said Firefox was too slow.

[Taristin]

What about how when I exit the program, it will remain running in the processes list and sometimes be using as much sa 150,000+ K ?

[Grey Wolf]

This explains why the number is large. The process still remaining is your computer failing at life.

[Scuddie]

Why, oh why, is Firefox STILL considered the best browser out there by so many?  Its flaws and limitations are painfully obvious, yet everyone refers to them as 'features'.  Christ, it reminds me of Macees.  Waving the flag of an obviously inferior product because it's 'alternative'.  The blatant blind love of their garbage browser oversights the fact that their browser is garbage.

God, I hate Apple.

[aldo_14]

Why, oh why, is Firefox STILL considered the best browser out there by so many?  Its flaws and limitations are painfully obvious, yet everyone refers to them as 'features'. 

Because all the time it was pay for Opera (hence why I can't even remember that browsers features), or between a woefully undersecure and under-featured IE browser vs a somewhat chuggy but more secure, more user friendly and more standards compliant (MS create their own web + script 'standards' to try to beat competition by using non standard features) Firefox.

[Prophet]

Because all the time it was pay for Opera...

You didn't want to pay for it... Unless you wanted to get rid of the small ad that was in the toolbar. Personally, it didn't bother me the slightest. It didn't even take up much space.
Besides. Opera is free now.

[aldo_14]

Because all the time it was pay for Opera...

You didn't want to pay for it... Unless you wanted to get rid of the small ad that was in the toolbar. Personally, it didn't bother me the slightest. It didn't even take up much space.
Besides. Opera is free now.

That ad drove me mental, actually.  I hate ads.

I know it's free now, of course, but I have no reason to want to change from Firefox.  Especially given the number of handy extensions I've got installed.

[Grug]

Which extensions would those be?
I use the music control thingy in the status bar. Foxy Tunes1.1 which I think I never really use, so I might as well uninstall lol.
Dictionary Search 0.7, though this is sometimes buggy.
And FireFTP 0.88.3.

I've heard theirs a handy adblock extension too, but havn't found it.

[Shade]

You definitely need that if you use Firefox. Get it Here, and then get the adblock filter set from Here, and you're set.

[aldo_14]

Which extensions would those be?
I use the music control thingy in the status bar. Foxy Tunes1.1 which I think I never really use, so I might as well uninstall lol.
Dictionary Search 0.7, though this is sometimes buggy.
And FireFTP 0.88.3.

I've heard theirs a handy adblock extension too, but havn't found it.

Mousegestures means you can control the browser just by right clicking & dragging; like drag left to go forward, drag right to back, down then right to close a tab, etc.  Means you never have to use the top buttons, and it's incredibly intuitive. I also use CustomizeGoogle, which basically fills in the (google.com rather than top right bar) search box with suggestions of topics ('yknow, start typing 'free' and it pops up with 'freespace' 'free custard' etc and a note of the number of results you'd get).  Also BugMeNot, which auto-fills the 'entry' forms (with a list of dummy account names & passwords) for newspapers and soforth that require registration to read articles, and ZoomFox, which allows you to zoom in on images.  Plus I added the Encyclopedia Mythica, Wikipedia, Google Maps, and a few others to the search bar.

[Grug]

Kudos guys.
I just expanded my surfing experience.

That adblocker works surprisingly well. I'm doing a quick search for the "Encyclopedia Mythica, Wikipedia, Google Maps" as well.

Cheers! ^.^

[Shade]

Adblock is actually THE reason I currently prefer firefox over all other browsers. It's just so nice to have a clean surfing experience instead of being pestered everywhere. Just remember to turn it off once in a while and click the HLP ads so we don't have to start paying for this place

[Grug]

How do you add the Encyclopedia Mythica, Wikipedia, Google Maps to the search bar?

[Cyker]

I think that thing about a memoryleak in Firefox is bogus - From what I understand, it's due to the way Firefox allocate's memory for all its tabs - It can't de-allocate it properly when the page expires, but the memory is correctly re-used when something needs to fill it.

It doesn't re-allocate more memory, wasting the existing stale memory pages.

I think the people that brought up this 'flaw' don't actually know what a memory leak is...


<drooling fanboi mode>
Of course, Opera's memory management is still millions of times better - Why, here I am with 6 windows open with about 89 tabs spread across all six, each still with full history, graphics and some with flash animations, and Linux is reporting its memory use, including shared libraries, to be about 200MB.
And it has been running for 3 months since I last reloaded it.
And this is Opera v9.0 alpha 2


Firefox is good 'tho - While it is a bit bulky and slow, the extension system is smegging *awesome* - It's the one thing I wish Opera had...
Luckily, 90% of the extensions I've seen are things Opera already has built in

[Shade]

For wikipedia, click on the icon in the search box, select 'Add engines' at the bottom of the list, and then click on wikipedia from that page to install that search plugin.

The other two don't seem to be available as plugins, but you do have a different option: You can add them as a quick search. A quicksearch is essentially a keyword you can use in the address bar which is linked to a search on a specific site. Anything following the keyword is then treated as the search term.

I'll walk you through how to set it up for Google Maps, and the same method should work for everything else:

1) Go to the main page at maps.google.com
2) Right click on the google search box (not the one in firefox)
3) Select 'Add a keyword for this search'
4) Pick a name for the search (we'll use 'Google Maps') and a keyword (we'll use 'map')
5) Place the bookmark you just created in the quick searches folder, or if you put it elsewhere use the bookmark manager to move it there
6) Open the properties of the new bookmark and delete everything following the query, in this case everything following 'maps?q=%s'
7) Type 'map searchterm' into your address bar, and it'll search as if you went to the page and typed 'searchterm' there.

[Edit] Actually, I can't get this to work for encyclopedia mythica. But google maps definitely works.

[Edit again] Cracked it. FF apparently won't set up a quicksearch on it's own for pantheon.org because it uses a cgi script for the submit, or something, but you can still do it manually and have it work.

1) Make a new bookmark, anything will do, and put it in the quick search folder from before
2) Go into it's properties and paste 'Encyclopedia Mythica' into the name box, 'http://pantheon.org/cgi-bin/search.pl?nocpp=1&Realm=mythica&fa=0&Terms=%s' into the location box, and 'myth' into the keyword box
3) Click ok

You can now seach encyclopedia mythica from anywhere using the 'myth' keyword in your address bar.

[And again...] Figured I'd post some of the quicksearches I have set up:

GameFAQs
Name: GameFAQs
Location: http://www.gamefaqs.com/search/index.html?game=%s
Keyword: faq

IMDB
Name: IMDB
Location: http://www.imdb.com/Find?for=%s&select=All
Keyword: imdb

Wikipedia
Name: Wikipedia
Location: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s
Keyword: wiki

Dictionary.com
Name: Dictionary
Location: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=%s
Keyword: dict

[Bleh] And of course after all that, it turns out there *is* a search plugin for pantheon.org. In the most unlikely of places no less, namely on pantheon.org... get it Here. Still, the keyword search is generally more handy anyway, so not a complete waste.

[Descenterace]

Why, oh why, is Firefox STILL considered the best browser out there by so many?

Because it's a browser, and not a bull**** combo browser/email/newsreader/IRC client. It JUST A ****ING BROWSER and nothing else, and such focus on doing one thing well seems to be rare these days.

Its flaws and limitations are painfully obvious, yet everyone refers to them as 'features'.

In this particular case, it's not a bug. It's intentional. It's not merely failing to free memory (which would be a memory leak); instead, it's doing something useful with that memory. Whether or not you want this feature is another matter entirely.
Before displaying a complete ignorance of the definition of a memory leak, you might want to learn how to program.

Christ, it reminds me of Macees.  Waving the flag of an obviously inferior product because it's 'alternative'.  The blatant blind love of their garbage browser oversights the fact that their browser is garbage.

Funny, that. I've never had much of a problem with Firefox. If it runs slowly on your computer, chances are it's because your configuration is ****ed up. It works perfectly on both my Windows and Linux installs. Admittedly, I have yet to make it work properly at work, but Windows' Mobile Synchronisation is known to **** too many things up (another reason why anything involving networks should use some flavour of UNIX). Firefox's insistance on running only one instance at a time is extremely annoying, though, and 100% pointless. A lot of Windows apps don't like being run on several systems at once, but at least they don't outright refuse to run.
If a page doesn't display correctly on Firefox, that's the fault of the IE-loving idiot who made it (and whoever thought it was a good idea to make the spec for HTML lax). Thus far I have seen ONE page that didn't display as well under FF as it did under Opera, and that's because the problem entries in the stylesheet weren't well-defined under CSS2 anyway.

God, I hate Apple.

An argument for another time, place and, since I have yet to buy a Mac, target.

[phreak]

This thread title screams that dilbert comic we use when releasing new official SCP builds.  Now if only I can find it.

[Scuddie]

Why, oh why, is Firefox STILL considered the best browser out there by so many?

Because it's a browser, and not a bull**** combo browser/email/newsreader/IRC client. It JUST A ****ING BROWSER and nothing else, and such focus on doing one thing well seems to be rare these days.
Just because a project has primary aim at one particular application does not make it exclusive to said application; Firefox is no exception.  There are so many 'features' for firefox that I wouldn't consider it a bare browser by any means as you have.  Plus, even if it was strictly a browser, that does not mean other products cannot do a better job browsing.  To think this would be absurd.

Its flaws and limitations are painfully obvious, yet everyone refers to them as 'features'.

In this particular case, it's not a bug. It's intentional. It's not merely failing to free memory (which would be a memory leak); instead, it's doing something useful with that memory. Whether or not you want this feature is another matter entirely.  Before displaying a complete ignorance of the definition of a memory leak, you might want to learn how to program.
I wouldn't suggest you go there.  You are talking to a rabid zealot who is responsible for ramblings up to no end...  On another note, I never said memory leak.  I know what a memory leak is, and this is not it.  However, it is failing to release the allocation demanded by the program.  This problem has been there since 1.07 atleast, maybe earlier.  The only thing 1.5 is doing differently is using the unreleased allocation for a quick cache, which is absolutely trivial.  It's nothing more than an excuse.  Whether or not the feature is enabled, Firefox has a problem releasing allcation...  And I think it is a poor business practice not to admit that.

Christ, it reminds me of Macees.  Waving the flag of an obviously inferior product because it's 'alternative'.  The blatant blind love of their garbage browser oversights the fact that their browser is garbage.

Funny, that. I've never had much of a problem with Firefox. If it runs slowly on your computer, chances are it's because your configuration is ****ed up. It works perfectly on both my Windows and Linux installs. Admittedly, I have yet to make it work properly at work, but Windows' Mobile Synchronisation is known to **** too many things up (another reason why anything involving networks should use some flavour of UNIX). Firefox's insistance on running only one instance at a time is extremely annoying, though, and 100% pointless. A lot of Windows apps don't like being run on several systems at once, but at least they don't outright refuse to run.  If a page doesn't display correctly on Firefox, that's the fault of the IE-loving idiot who made it (and whoever thought it was a good idea to make the spec for HTML lax). Thus far I have seen ONE page that didn't display as well under FF as it did under Opera, and that's because the problem entries in the stylesheet weren't well-defined under CSS2 anyway.
Why are you bringing Windows Networking into the argument?  That has no place in this conversation.  Also, when you say Firefox wont run more than one instance, did you mean to say Opera?  AFAIK, the more instances Firefox runs, the more it can taunt me about its decision to always open new instances per window...  Kills the purpose of tabbed browsing.  Opera Doesnt allow multiple instances per user because of the fact that sessions are cached, so it can restore if the program or system crashes.  It can't read from parallel sessions and regard it as one.  Program design functionality, or program design flaw?  I see it as the former, but opinions may vary I suppose.  Also, Firefox does not run slowly on my PC, but it does make everything else run slowly, for previously mentioned reasons.  This is coming from a fresh install.  If it's really broken from a clean install, it is not the responsibility of the end user to fix, but the developer.  That's one thing some people choose to ignore.  And are you calling HTML 4 lax?  It's a wonderful standard, and I would trust that before I trust CSS any day.

God, I hate Apple.

An argument for another time, place and, since I have yet to buy a Mac, target.
Okay

[aldo_14]

The link at the top of the page does admit there are memory leaks, so he's not actually denying them; just pointing out one way to reduce memory consumption.  To take a snippet of a quote from said link

A lot of people complain about the Firefox "memory leak(s)". All versions of Firefox no doubt leak memory - it is a common problem with software this complicated. We look to fix the issues where we can. David Baron and others have done a huge amount of excellent work in this area.

What I think many people are talking about however with Firefox 1.5 is not really a memory leak at all. It is in fact a feature.

i.e. there are memory leaks in Firefox, but there are also some deliberate caching operations that may be responsible for some /the bulk of used memory.  Whether or not this is good programming/design in itself is of course for debate, but the title of this thread is pretty misleading; bear in mind there is planned memory use, which may be high, but would not be a leak.