There has been a lot of talk about how to optimize Firefox to run the most efficiently. CNet’s most recent article goes through some helpful tips but doesn’t jump into many details. Here I am going to explain which extensions have memory leaks or will slow down Firefox’s performance.
First, before I dive into the main topic there are a few things that you should change in your Firefox settings if you really want to optimize this. Just follow this tutorial that I put together.
Okay, now let’s talk about the extensions. This is the point that you may want to turn your head because I am about to bring some truth to some of the most popular extensions.
- IE Tab 1.0.7! Yes, it is true that one of the most convenient extensions has a memory leak. I can’t say that I am super shocked by this because how efficient can it be to run Internet Explorer in Firefox?
- Session Saver 0.2.1.031 has a known memory leak.
- ForecastFox 0.8.5 also has a memory leak…and that very disappointing since most Firefox users have this sitting in their toolbar (so what is the weather like by you
). - Filterset.G Updater AND FlashGot used in conjunction will produce a memory leak.
- FasterFox doesn’t have a memory leak specifically, but it will not help your Firefox performance. It does help your browsing performance but if you decide to keep this extension at least make sure you don’t have prefetching enabled.
- Tabbrowser Extensions doesn’t have memory leaks either but will definitely slow Firefox down and it has many conflicts with other extension. It can even stop Firefox from being able to startup! A better alternative is Tab Mix or Tab Mix Plus which offer the same set of features. If you don’t need all the features of Tab Mix Plus then just use Tab Mix to lower the memory usage a little.
- Please check for updates to ensure you are using the most recent version of the following extensions: Adblock 0.5.3.042, AdBlock Plus 0.6.1.1, NoScript 1.1.3.9, Search Keys 0.7.3, Thumbs 0.6.2 — each of these extensions HAD known memory leaks but they have now been fixed.
That is about it for the most popular Firefox extensions that have been tested. Another important thing to do is upgrade to Firefox 1.5.0.1 if you haven’t already. This build has fixed two memory leaks that were very common: leak when selecting and leak from global scope polluter. The latest trunk also has a long list of memory leak fixes so keep your eyes peeled for a new release of Firefox.
UPDATE: It appears that in the Digg posting of this article that the author of ForecastFox made a comment:
We know Forecastfox 0.8.5 has some memory leaks. We are planning on doing a full leak analysis for 1.0. In the mean time, I’ve been actively working on resolving some of the leaks, and I think I’ve made some good progress for our 0.9 release.
Also, while the current build of IE Tab is up to 1.0.8 there is no mention that they fixed the memory leaks in this updated build.
UPDATE 2: Tracy wrote in and said that a good alternative to ForecastFox is Weather Watcher. I didn’t even think of mentioning that but this is the software that I run on my computer. It is not an extension for Firefox but takes very little RAM and is FREE!
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Those are just about all of the extentions that I use, and that I must have. Thanks for ruining my day ( :
We know that Forecastfox 0.8.5 has some memory leaks. I’ve been working on addressing this for upcoming releases. You can give one of our alpha releases of 0.9 a try and see if it is still leaking.
http://thekleins.freeservers.c.....ox-0.9.xpi
So what would be a good alternative to forecastfox if it has memory leak. Thanks
Also a IETab has a new version 1.0.8. Does that one also have a memory leak. Forecast which version ForecastFox 0.8.5 or ForecastFox 0.8.5.3(the current one)
recently i wanted to test that complaints of firefox eating a lot of memory
ff with one tab >128MB
opera with 6 tabs > 40MB
I have a gig so thats not a problem for me but i still prefer opera far more.
As a precaution, I deleted all the add-ons from Firefox after I noticed a number of delays and errors that left me mystified as to the cause. Thanks for pointing out that indeed the IE Tab extension was buggy!
Great stuff. Thanks!
i just did a test with FF and Opera. six tabs open on the same web sites in each browser, including gmail and digg. FF memory usage - 88MB, Opera - 44MB.
Definitely interesting. I hope Firefox will eventually get their memory usage down. Thanks for the info.
-Ryan
An alternative to Forecastfox is to set up a link like this one in your Bookmarks Toolbar:
http://weather.msn.com/local.a.....c:CAXX0385
haha, doesnt really bother me, i have 4gigs of installed ram … w00t!
There are two versions of Weather Watcher. One comes with WhenU SaveNow (ad crapola). Download the “full setup”, not the “bundle setup”.
A link to this was posted in the mozilla.support.firefox newsgroup:
http://groups.google.com/group.....851cd3fdce
I commented there (forgetting to crosspost it and set a followup-to — drat!), but, more briefly, yeah, SessionSaver is icky. I use Session Manager. And, Adblock Plus is up to 0.6.1.2, though the “potential memory leaks” was/were fixed in 0.6.1.1.
I dropped ForecastFox when they went switched to AccuWeather.com data. Now I use the 1-ClickWeather extension, which is very similar and uses weather.com data.
Ive got a gig of ram, im not too concerned with memory leaks.
Well, look at it from this perspective…
Firefox extensions have some memory leaks…
Big deal…
IE is a HUGE memory leak!
“So what would be a good alternative to forecastfox if it has memory leak. Thanks”
Uh.. teletext?
EditCSS also leaks memory if you leave the panel open. It’ll just chew up memory until it’s all gone. I have 1GB RAM and it ate it up like a bag of Cheetos
Make sure to close the EditCSS panel when not in use and you’ll be fine.
Could someone tell again why I need this crappy FF browser which needs even crappier extensions to function like a normal browser???
For weather in FF, what about 1-ClickWeather? I installed it after noticing one day that my memory usage just kept climbing, and if I left FF open overnight, I could forget trying to use the computer in the morning. It’s reasonably configurable and uses the weather.com feed.
That sounds like it might be a good alternative, but keep in mind that only the most popular Firefox extensions have been tested for memory leaks. I am sure that many of the extensions have leaks but they have not been tested due to a lack of popularity. If you don’t want to get technical when testing, a good way to test is by trial and error (try an extension and if it hogs your memory, get rid of it). I am also hoping that this article, and others like this, will get some of the developers to fix these leaks.
I know that memory leaks are not the easiest things to hunt down and fix, but it is what makes a program usable (especially for extended periods of time). I give a lot of credit to the Mozilla developers for the time they spend to ensure that they release quality products. I am consistently watching the Mozilla forums and I have noticed that there are many leaks that are being fixed in the future builds. Thanks Mozilla!
-Ryan
I got 82 extensions installed with over 16 tabs open and firefox is about 14MB of ram.
I got a GB of RAM and about half of the extensions you mentioned I have installed.
That is nearly impossible UNLESS you are using this tweak.
Firefox 2.0 was consuming an absolutely staggering 760MB of virtual memory last night (don’t remember how much physical mem, but a lot too), with maybe 5 or 6 tabs open. This isn’t about memory leaks, it’s about memory usage. The memory may be released afterwards, but it shouldn’t be using those insane amounts in the first place. Sure, I have 1GB of RAM and lots of hard disk, but I didn’t pay for those resources to be squandered by badly written applications. I actually like to have more than one app open at once. Enough of this indulgence of Firefox and Mozilla, which is never extended to Microsoft: FIX THE PROBLEMS. NOW.
It is truly a problem if you have absolutely no extensions installed, otherwise I would not say that Firefox is to blame. If you think it is that poorly written why are you using it?
Oh! very disappointing, I have to quit using firefox / seamonkey because they use so much more memory (adverage at least 4 times) than IE did and never releases.
Is Mozilla so broken inside already? just dying like good old Netscape as we saw it.
So we lost the browser battle to Bill AGAIN ???
Opera is not USABLE I had been trying it since some earily release to the current one, it is not UP TO STANDARD cannot even display gmail for me!
And I never get wma’s to sound outside of windows
Well, I have a gig of ram too but Firefox 1.5.0.12 is currently hogging 455M of that. Yeah, I have 2 windows open with 15 tabs in one and 30 in the other but that still blows. I hated going to FF 1.5 from 1.0 series and I’m still running 1.5 because I didn’t like the 2.0 series. Its becoming increaingly obvious that open source is not a solution to needless bloatware. Too many fingers in the pie gives us too much worthless crome and an incessant need to rearrange the furniture. Every new version is an entirely new (and dumber) design for the Properties dialog (oh wait - no, its the options dialog this time).
When I’m using Firefox with a few dozen tabs open it is normally above 500MB of memory as well. This isn’t an unknown occurance, and hasn’t even been fixed in Firefox 2. You’re right that they need to focus on performance more.