Firefox 4 and 5 memory leak

Mozilla also judged guilty of "change for the sake of change"

Sandi Rigney - Updated Monday, June 27, 2011

UPDATE: Firefox 5 also suffers from the same memory leak found in Firefox 4, just to a lesser degree. During inactivity, memory consumption climbs steadily, unchecked. The same behavior in FF 4 continues in FF 5 but in smaller memory chunks. I would not leave FF 5 running overnight, as I like to do with version 3.6. I have gone back to using FF 3.6.18.

UPDATE: More than a month after our initial reporting of this issue, there is still no indication Mozilla believes there is a problem.

We do know the problem is within Firefox 4 itself. According to user complaints, the memory leak does not necessarily happen with any particular add-on or extension, or group of add-ons, and it is not specific to any one website, or type of website, social or otherwise.

Be it pictures, video, or other, the problem happens with any website that reaches a certain "high-content" threshold.

Some of the speculation focuses on how Firefox caches, or fails to cache, a content rich page. Instead of sending the content to cache-file, the data instead stays in memory. And, as Firefox sees very little to nothing is actually being cached, it keeps trying to cache the same content over and over. All the while, the computer's main system memory is completely gobbled up.

Firefox 4 Memory Leak -- How does a large, sophisticated, software maker go backward in the evolution of its product. How can the newest, latest, greatest version end up doing LESS in the way of meaningful, useful, features. How does the software turn out to be entirely untenable, completely unusable, due to a horrendous memory leak. How could Mozilla Firefox 4 be released for use as a stable, general public, product while its makers certainly must have known about the memory leak and its severity. What is happening to our software industry.

The above is a random YouTube video search result.

As we've seen with Vista and 7, the current mentality is change just for the sake of change. The sticker on the outside of the can says "New and Improved!" but the soup inside is of lesser quality and quantity. Is our mainstream software evolving into little more than a poor, pathetic, marketing sham.

If you've been experiencing low memory issues/alerts, Firefox 4 is very likely the reason. intrTek has deemed the release unusable, and recommends going back to version 3.6.18 until the problem is fixed. Version 4 offers nothing that is worth enduring a memory leak so severe. Further, any reported memory leak in version 3.6.x pales greatly in comparison to 4.x, which is why this is so disturbing.

The 4.x leak will inexplicably gain memory while idle, doing nothing, not being used. Via Task Manager, one can watch it gobble-up well over a gigabyte of memory within just one or two hours. Again, this happens while the user is doing absolutely nothing with the browser. If you use a large, perhaps system managed, pagefile, you will notice your computer becoming slower and slower. The hard drive will churn endlessly as you try to get something done. If you prefer a small pagefile, or none at all, your computer will become unstable and eventually crash. Software memory leaks have always been a problem for programmers but, for a public non-beta release, this must rank among the worst ever.

Concurrently, if you're still using Windows XP, I envy you. You're missing out on nothing. Never thought I would be saying this but Microsoft hit a high mark with XP SP3. From the fuzzy "between the eyes headache" ClearType fonts to the many useless annoyances like User Account Control, Windows has been on a nightmarish backslide ever since. Enjoy the peaceful, uneventful, down-to-business usefulness of Windows XP for as long as you can.

I should mention at this time, contrary to what I often read and is widely believed, Windows XP 32-bit DOES indeed make full use of up to 4 gigabytes of main system memory. It simply reports, shows in the system properties window, that amount differently than on a 64-bit system. A 32-bit Windows system reports the amount that is less/minus what the hardware and operating system has commandeered for its purposes. A 64-bit Windows system is reporting the entire 4-gig amount without subtracting what has been reserved for hardware and device drivers. In both systems, roughly the same amount of memory is available for use by software, games, etc. The 64-bit version of XP or Win7 would become necessary when wanting to use more than 4 gigabytes of RAM.

The future of Mozilla Firefox would be significantly compromised right now, if any other software maker could develop a comparable web browser. Such is not the case, and that reality has facilitated the release of a seriously lacking (Firefox 4) product. Microsoft is without a formidable operating system competitor, and has behaved accordingly with Vista and 7. Both software companies are doing whatever is most self-serving. Getting it right is far less important than getting it out first.

Please direct all feedback to... inbox@intrtek.com

Published via the iTek Media service.

Firefox 5 memory leak, redux...