FF 3.5.3: Memory leaks, pop up blocker fail, what's going on?

This one is interesting...

Having recently updated to FF 3.5.3, I've noticed that the pop up blocker is not working. Seems like every time I open up a news website, one of their cheap advertisements pop up (I'm looking right at you CNN).

Next thing you know, I notice that FF is taking up around 200MB of RAM and only a few pages are open. Even now, I have one page...ONE PAGE...and it is taking up more RAM than it does at startup when I have the same page up and running.

Seriously, what is going on here? Is Mozilla just not getting it? I do NOT really want to move browsers because this software works for me, but 3.5 is pushing my limits.

 

Pop up blockers is working fine for me.
But, what's wrong with 200Mb of ram? Mine use 170Mb and I'm fine with it. Your computer should have more memory than what you mostly use. It's not like you're running it on a 512Mb system. What's the big deal?

 

Pop up blocking is working for me as well.

I've noticed that 3.5.3 uses slightly more RAM than before, but I'm so used to old versions of Firefox being a memory hog (like, 1-1.5 GB RAM usage in 3.0) that I didn't think much about it.

 

I had to reinstall ABP aswell, it disabled itself even though it shows up as enabled.

The 200mb RAM usage sounds normal for firefox. Were there any java/flash scripts in that page you were viewing?

 

200MB is fairly high for a few tabs as I have ~75MB of memory in use by Firefox with 5 tabs open across different websites. However, FF will steadily consume more memory if it is left running for long periods of time; the developers call it normal and I call it crappy and unreliable software. Firefox always has and, it seems, always will suffer from memory leaks however small they are.

Firefox just so happens to have a very thorough support FAQ that includes troubleshooting for high memory usage and even includes some developer tools for identifying leaks:

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/High+memory+usage

I couldn't find anything for the pop up blocker, but chances are something was botched during the update. I would recommend completely uninstalling Firefox from Windows and reinstalling it again.

 

I have to admit that Firefox has lost it somehow. I didn't even know that a browser could use that much memory! 200 MB is ridiculous. But the browser works and that's enough for me.

 

I have seen pop-up losing a fews now and then, but it works overall very well. As far as ram "hog", as long as it does not affect the whole system performance, what's the big deal? Is that what peoples complain about Vista also and still?

cheers ...

 

I come across popups on CNN and Time also. I have no idea what is up. Might just have to roll back.......

 

While I agree that 200MB isn't too much for a browser, Firefox regularly consumes much more; I have watched Firefox reach over 500MB of RAM consumption while doing absolutely nothing (in the FAQ I linked, there have been reports of >3GB).

That aside, I wouldn't be so bothered unless I knew that this has been a problem for many years. Either Firefox developers are sloppy, or there is something inherently wrong with the program.

 

Firefox is working for me, but I agree with the observations in general. Firefox is slowly going the wrong way on a hill: down.

I hope they right the ship. 3.5.1, 3.5.2, and 3.5.3 have been a stability disaster area.

 

Full speed downhill!!!

http://www.osnews.com/story/22223/F...ittered_All_These_Widgets_All_Over_the_Place_

 

Works fine for me.

 

I'd like to agree, but I feel that Firefox started at the bottom of the hill with version 1.0 and never really climbed up.

*Has never been entirely satisfied with Firefox*

 

Whenever I've had major problems in the past with Firefox, I usually backed up my book marks, uninstalled FF, and reinstalled it. A

All problems gone.

 

Yea Firefox has been less impressive of late. Mine was crashing a lot. I switched back to Chrome, I decided I didn't need my addons.

At least when my Chrome crashes it opens back up in a split second. So fast...o and Chrome has themes now I had no idea, sweet.

 

no issues here. and any browser uses quite some ram, as nowadays webpages just require much ram to be rendered out. that's what you get for image-heavy dynamic javascripted flashfilled webpages. it's not the browsers fault (except, that they support that).

no crashes, no leaks, nothing here. it's still impressive as on day one. chrome is just a terrible google aggregator that doesn't deliver anything that wasn't there before, so it's nothing for me.

 

I wonder what Firefox developers will do to keep their browser competitive now that Google is slated to release their framework for add-ons.

 

they create an adblock addon for google chrome and show how google blocks addons they don't like.

 

Seems to be a bit of effort to get a browser working does'nt it?

 

I agree, as this is exactly the flaw that some people use when arguing in favour of a given piece of software. Their argument usually goes along the lines that "that it's easy to fix."

While this is better than a difficult fix, it doesn't discount the fact that any kind of breakage shouldn't happen. While some may counter that this expectation is unrealistic, they don't seem to understand that this arena of software development is fiercely competitive and demands very rigorous testing given the huge deployment of the software. The ongoing issue of memory leaks in Firefox, for instance, has been going on for years and is still continuing today. This is evidence of either sloppy programming or a flawed program.

 

FB would not work for me sometime, I would have to uninstall and reinstall.

 

or just wait a day. it's notoriously unstable.. another thing we get for going "into the cloud"

 

Most problems with Firefox can be solved by doing a CLEAN INSTALL of the browser, that means uinstalling FF, deleting all folders, files, and registry entries related to it and reinstall the latest version.

I bet that most of the people having problems with FF have either:

A) Upgraded from a major release to the next WITHOUT a clean install.
B) Have too many tool bars installed. (Google, Ask!, Yahoo etc).
C) Plug-in Issues.
D) Incompatible and conflicting add-ons.

That why it's best to to clean install FF whenever there is a major release such as 3.0 > 3.5etc. Also keep FF simple, don't install unnecessary toolbars, plug-ins or add-ons that you will never use.

For those who are interested in learning more about Firefox including how to install/uninstall FF and set it up and how to tweak it to get the most out if it should go here:

http://www.tweakguides.com/Firefox_1.html

 

I can understand the benefits of a clean install where a 'new' OS (like from XP to Vista or Vista to Win 7) is concerned, but to do clean installs of browsers whenever they come out with a new version (which in the scheme of things is quite often) is a lot isn't it?

Edit: Perhaps I should clarify: I have been using (used to use a lot more earlier) Opera since their late 8.x versions. I have never done a clean install of Opera and most recently, I upgraded to their Version 10. But, I have found Opera to be, while really good, still a bit awkward sometimes. There do remain some compatibility, that is to say, rendering issues. I don't use the email feature so that is wasted on me. In the past I have also had issues with Opera and Gmail, which have become lesser and lesser in recent times. Nevertheless, I hear the same thing on the Opera forums, where to make some adjustments, one has to jump through a few (maybe not a lot) hoops, which in the context of browsers - especially in this day and age - is a bit too much IMO. So, I picked my browsers based on what I want out of them - I need IE8 (given that I am on a Windows machine) and I don't find it all that bad - though I wish they would rationalize the menus and tool bars. This works well because I need to use MS Skydrive. I also use Chrome - in fact, recently, I have been using Chrome quite extensively. I need it for Gmail - it is FAST! Plus, I also dabble around with Google Docs and Chrome works well there. My ideal situation would be IE8 which works like Chrome and no, I did not use the Chrome IE8 plugin, which I believe is not a very good way to handle things. I do have Opera on my system, but I don't find myself using it too often as I mentioned above. The final point is that I find no compelling need to do fresh install of browsers or indeed of any softwares (unless there is a very very compelling need); upgrades should work fine.

 

I'm talking about the major releases, which happen every 9-12months or so for FF. I do enjoy have a 99.8% stable browser.

If you think about it, you probably spend more time on your browser than anything else besides working within the operating system itself.

 

Oh...Ok...sorry, perhaps I misunderstood. Yes, I spend most of my time on a browser and on MS Word. But in my experience (albeit limited, I'll admit), it are the mid-way upgrade releases that messed up my Firefox installations. I soon got tired with that and thus let it go. But hey, if Firefox works for you, then great!

Cheers!

 

It seems as Firefox will get a huge transformation in the 3.7 update. I don't have any problems at all with Firefox as of today but I hate the pop-ups. Can't wait for the update.

 

I've the same problem, currently FF 3.53 is taking about 200mb of ram, and I'm not using heavy pages.

The other day while working, I noticed FF was really laggy, opened the taskman - apparently it was using about 600mb of ram. And it didnt reduce at all, not even after I've closed all the tabs...

Its getting freaky - not had sort of thing this with FF before.

 

Pop ups? I have not gotten pop ups in FF in ages! It's never failed me, also use AdBlockPlus to get rid of those nasty ads.

 

Just to chip in:

I've got 3.5.3 installed "from scratch" (recent reformat) - and few add-ons.

On CNN it slowly leaks memory - its started off at 50.000 odd KB and after a couple of minutes arrived at 66.300 odd KB - its still increasing.

This is accompanied by CPU activity - I need to test this on another site...

 

Or Kaspersky Internet Security - works in all browsers.
(and works in chat clients too)