13 ms·

Firefox 15 plugs the add-on leaks

177 points by AndrewDucker 14y ago

Sgoettschkes 14y ago
Wuhu, finally! Let's see if FF does not take 1GB after a few days.
- AndrewDucker 14y ago
  You'll have to wait a couple of days - Firefox 15 is hitting Beta either today or tomorrow, I believe.
  - gsai 14y ago
    http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-15.0b1&os=win&lang=en-US http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=...
    - zader 14y ago
      OSX version: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-15.0b1&os=osx&lang=en-US http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=...
mun2mun 14y ago
I am really happy that Firefox 15 stops most of the leaks caused by firebug. Competition is good.
conradfr 14y ago
As a webdev who use Firebug (and Adblock) a lot, I'm so glad about this. FINALLY ! However they are three years too late about that, from a market share perspective.
- jhatax 14y ago
  Firefox lost market share because Chrome was a leaner, faster, and better browser. I have started to hear more stories about folks switching back to Firefox because a lot of their issues with the browser have been fixed. And based on independent review sites like Tom's Hardware, there is no longer an appreciable gap in the performance of Firefox and Chrome. As regards market share, Firefox's market share would be in the low single-digit percentages if all was lost. This is indeed not the case. With the profiling and telemetry tools and infrastructure, the Firefox team has built a foundation that will ensure future releases do not regress memory usage and overall browser snappiness. Market share is a fickle metric for success because it is amenable to change. The strides made in the last few months by the Firefox team have paved the way for adoption growth in the future. Let us have a constructive conversation around what they need to do next to ensure more switchers among the HN community.
  - antidoh 14y ago
    "I have started to hear more stories about folks switching back to Firefox because a lot of their issues with the browser have been fixed" There was a time, some number of releases ago (a year ago?) when FF's memory problems became too much for me, and I used Chrome(ium). I never liked it, personal preference. Finally some time within that last year FF became acceptable again, then more than acceptable, and I came back. I have not noticed my browser for months now, which is all I ask of any program: I don't want to see or notice the program, only what I'm working on with it. Don't make me notice you, it's distracting. Although I use Firefox, Firefox is not actually my browser. Firefox plus the particular addons I install is my browser. To me they are very different things.
    - alttab 14y ago
      As a dev I moved to chrome for all the reasons everyone else did. Now I'm seeing chrome renderer chewing all my ram across multiple processes, and actually have had it crash a number of times. Google, don't think I won't switch again, because I will.
zader 14y ago
For anyone who wants to download the Nightly build for Firefox 15: Windows version http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-15.0b1&os=win&lang=en-US http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=... Mac version http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-15.0b1&os=osx&lang=en-US http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=...
- wulczer 14y ago
  Linux version http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-15.0b1&os=linux&lang=en-US http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=...
- nilved 14y ago
  That's the beta version. Release is on 14, beta on 15, aurora on 16 and nightly on 17. Firefox nightlies are here: http://nightly.mozilla.org/ http://nightly.mozilla.org/
twodayslate 14y ago
I used to be an avid Firefox user. I switched to Chrome because it was faster and had all the same extensions I used on Firefox. Why should I switch back? Chrome is still faster no?
- ZeroGravitas 14y ago
  Why do you think it's still faster?
- gjm11 14y ago
  Nowadays Firefox typically uses less memory than Chrome (though of course this depends on exactly what you measure and how). It's highly debatable which is faster -- this depends even more on how you measure -- but Chrome certainly isn't miles ahead. Chrome may have all the extensions you currently use, but Firefox still has a lot more; perhaps the next one you'd find useful will be Firefox-only. None of which means that you actually should switch back: Chrome is a great web browser. But it isn't obvious that you shouldn't.
  - tjoff 14y ago
    If you use a lot of tabs and don't close your browser for long periods of time Chrome is vastly superior to Firefox (and all other browsers) in terms of memory use and stability. Even if you don't use any add-ons at all. I've always taken issue with Firefox, it has the broadest support and community centered around add-ons - but if you actually use any add-on the browser becomes completely useless. I've been bitten so many times in the past that I barely trust any add-ons on any browser, eventhough I've only had issues with Firefox. Hopefully it will be better now.
    - rat87 14y ago
      > If you use a lot of tabs and don't close your browser for long periods of time Chrome is vastly superior to Firefox (and all other browsers) in terms of memory use and stability. But not in terms of ui, tabs shrink till they hold no text in chrome instead of scrolling like in firefox.
suprgeek 14y ago
I am very happy that the Firefox team has finally managed to lick this issue. When at every occasion I used to raise this issue, the typical Mozilla Evangelist would answer: "It is because of the add-ons". My counter to this was that the whole Raison d'être for Firefox is its add-ons community. You cannot claim that there are great benefits to this approach while simultaneously ignoring the problems caused by it. Better late than never. It is critical to have a popular browser alternative to Either IE or Chrome. One is closed source and the other is produced by a company whose entire revenue model is built around showing you the most targeted ads possible in the maximum number of ways possible.
- bru 14y ago
  >One is closed source Actually, so is Chrome.
  - pilif 14y ago
    The differences between Chrome and Chromium are minimal - aside of Chrome bunding some mostly unwanted plugins: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/ChromiumBrowserVsGoogleChrome http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/ChromiumBrowserVsGoog...
    - azakai 14y ago
      That list appears to be incomplete. For example, there is a windows-specific closed source software renderer for WebGL that is in Chrome and not Chromium.
    - freehunter 14y ago
      Good lord those comments gave me a headache. How do people manage to find that page if they can't manage to figure out what Chrome or Chromium are in the first place?
  - throwaway54-762 14y ago
    You're free to run Chromium instead of Chrome. I do.
rexreed 14y ago
The about:memory feature is useful to get a glimpse into what extensions and tabs are chewing up the most memory, although I haven't had much luck in FF 14 using the GC/CC to correct that. I hope that FF 15 gives the user a bit more intuitive view and control over the memory consumption on tabs and addons/extensions.
- crestfallen 14y ago
  Sure, for technical users that might be a nice value add. In fairness though, a regular person shouldn't have to care--Firefox should just work, stay responsive, etc.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    In fairness though, a regular person shouldn't have to care--Firefox should just work, stay responsive, etc. In fact, that isn't fair. Software has never been like that, and it's irresponsible to represent to non-technical users that it's possible.
  - jruderman 14y ago
    about:memory is primarily intended as a debugging tool, so we can diagnose and fix memory problems. It has been a fantastic success in this regard. It also gives add-on authors and web application developers a chance to do the same. If some (advanced/heavy) users are also able to use about:memory to diagnose and work around problems they encounter, that's a nice side effect. As long as some of those users remember to file bug reports, that is :)
- nnethercote 14y ago
  FF15 gives a lot more details about memory consumption, because "compartments" (the way the JS heap is segregated) are a lot more fine-grained. In particular, compartments created by add-ons can now be identified. But note that this only covers some add-on memory consumption; the remainder is not reported separately, and doing so is difficult. about:memory is quite intimidating, I'm hoping to implement soon a vastly simpler version that will give a simple per-tab breakdown and be understandable by normal users.
pmarsh 14y ago
One of the issues I've seen people complain about is having to close Firefox after a few days. I understand you shouldn't HAVE to close a program, but how are people using their browsers that this becomes such an huge problem?
- dsr_ 14y ago
  I don't reboot my desktop for months at a time. Current uptime is 25 days... 25 days ago I moved offices. X stays up. Firefox and Chrome and most of the other applications I use regularly stay up. Why should this be exceptional? What's faster than an SSD for loading an application? Switching to the already open window.
  - smithzvk 14y ago
    While this is basically true (and even more so for me, typically 3+ months before a security update finally nags me into rebooting 1 month after it was installed) Firefox saves your open tabs, so restarting takes no time and it is basically like it didn't even happen.
    - corin_ 14y ago
      You're right (although re-starting firefox isn't quite an instant thing), but like dsr_, I don't turn my computer off - so why would I ever restart a program unless I need to? Killing firefox and restoring the session might not take a long time, but it's always going to take longer than not having to restart it.
- option_greek 14y ago
  I hibernate my windows PC indefinitely (about 2 months so far). Till firefox 11 or so I had to close it every 3 days or so with 4-5 hours of heavy browsing each day. With latest versions I go for about 8 days without close. More importantly, firefox used to slow down noticeably in between browsing before but now it remains snappy till it starts hitting the disk for paged memory. With this memory leak fixing, I hope to go longer without closing firefox.
- 14y ago
alainbryden 14y ago
> Leaky add-ons usually cause zombie compartments by holding references to DOM structures within a web page even after the page has been closed or navigated away from. This prevents Firefox from garbage-collecting the page’s compartment. If an add-on relies on persistent references to closed pages by design (such as a form data history plugin), is there a way to adapt it to this new feature to not let Firefox sever it's references under the assumption that it's a memory leak?
- khuey 14y ago
  No.
  - alttab 14y ago
    Care to clarify?
    - mcpherrinm 14y ago
      References are severed. There's no way to stop it. You'd have to copy out the data you want.
      - nnethercote 14y ago
        And in practice cutting these references hasn't caused any problems, while fixing another massive problem.
- Evbn 14y ago
  It should make a private copy of the data it needs.
- gliese1337 14y ago
  Copy them. I can think of no good reason that one would ever legitimately want or need to keep references to a page that is no longer loaded. It's like returning a pointer to a local variable from a C function; you should expect it to be invalid once it's scope is gone! Copying is likely to use less total memory anyway, because it will rarely result in having to allocate new compartments for the plugins, but it will allow an entire compartment for a page to be collected, that is otherwise kept around for the sake comparatively small objects. This actually seems to me to have a lot of implications for the design of garbage collectors generally. In theory, correct garbage collectors are never supposed to collect objects that may still be used, which in practice usually means "that are reachable". But, we've already got such a thing as "weak references" to fudge that a little. This seems like kind of the opposite idea- having a sort of "superstrong" owner reference such that once it goes away, you know that the object will never be used again (or shouldn't be, anyway, with future uses constituting bugs), and can be collected despite what other references might exist. It also seems like one of those obvious-after-the-fact genius ideas to have garbage collection running independently per compartment. Do Web Workers, e.g., get their own separate garbage collection, too? Any kind of shared-nothing concurrency model ought to be able to do the same thing to improve GC pauses; are there language implementations (I'm thinking probably Erlang here) that actually do that?
adambenayoun 14y ago
Finally! I've been using firebug for quite a long time and I can't even remember at what version things went off the rail. But ever since Firefox would consume 70% of my CPU and 2GB RAM which is complete nonsense. Because of these memory leaks, I migrated to Chrome for browsing the web and constantly having an open tab for Gmail (because that was the only browser that wouldn't go banana on RAM), but still use FF for doing front-end development
mindcrime 14y ago
This is awesome news. The single biggest reason that I initially moved to Chrome, from Firefox, was the memory consumption situation. But lately, Firefox has gotten a lot better, and I've basically switched back to FF now as my primary browser. Hopefully this will make the situation even better. And that's good for everybody. Competition is a Good Thing and it would be a shame if Chrome become so dominant as to completely displace Firefox. A healthy ecosystem with a great Firefox and a great Chrome, along with IE, Opera, Safari, etc., should benefit everyone in the long run.
- webwanderings 14y ago
  Chrome and Firefox been using memory at equal proportion. I use exactly two add-ons and comparing FF/Chrome to IE to check on memory consumption, I see IE doing much better.
kevinSuttle 14y ago
I think the fault is not just the add-on devs. If anything, the add-on SDK should prevent this by default. I'm not sure when Firefox got so memory-hungry and leaky, but it's the single reason I keep jumping around to Chromium and Opera. Really, really hoping that this time is for real. It's not the first time a blog post like this has been posted by Mozilla.
- nnethercote 14y ago
  Hi, I'm the lead of Mozilla's MemShrink project (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink) and the author of the linked post. Can you tell me what you mean by prior blog posts "like this"? I remember http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/2011/08/09/firefox-7-is-lean-and-fast-2/ http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/2011/08/09/firefox-7-is-..., because I wrote it, but it was accurate -- FF7 did have some very large improvements. This "Mozilla claims memory consumption improvements in every release" zombie lie is something I hear a lot, but it's just not true.
  - kevinSuttle 14y ago
    You're right. I was unfairly accrediting those posts to Mozilla. They were in the blogosphere at large.
jfb 14y ago
That's a cool blog post, and kudos to the Mozilla people, but I have to wonder about the mindset of the user whose stuck with Firefox even as his setup was unusable to the point of needing to install a restart button add-on. I mean, I know from being habituated to a given routine, but that seems particularly self defeating behaviour, especially considering that decent alternatives to Firefox exist?
- dman 14y ago
  I have a bunch of custom addons that I have written for my workflows - moving to other browsers is not an option because they arent as easily extensible as firefox.
  - jfb 14y ago
    That makes sense. Speaking as someone who bought MachTen just to host Emacs on a Macintosh in the bad old days, I am sympathetic. I just am much more of a consumer of browsers than someone who relies on them to hack with.
    - dman 14y ago
      Just looked MachTen up - http://www.tenon.com/products/mt1.jpg http://www.tenon.com/products/mt1.jpg made me nostalgically remember afterstep which was the first window manager I used in linux.
- srean 14y ago
  > stuck with Firefox even as his setup was unusable to the point of needing to install a restart button add-on. That seems hyperbole to me. As I have commented on HN several times before FF was the only full featured browser that worked for my browsing habit. I browse from a old laptop that only has 512MB of RAM. On this m/c I would keep some 300 or more tabs open for months on end, without shutting FF down or rebooting the laptop. What I did have to do was reset the default cache sizes and some caching policy sizes, disable flash, and have an add-on that unloads the content of an idle tab. So strictly speaking I didn't have all of 300 tabs loaded in memory (but that was a good enough approximation for me). I agree FF can hog a lot of memory, but I think it was and is eminently usable if one is willing to tweak the about:config settings a bit and install a few helpful plugins like flashblock etc.
mixmastamyk 14y ago
I'm on Aurora right now (15a2), and after YEARS of bitching am cautiously optimistic this is really it! Just a few weeks ago I was closing FF once a twice a day as it approached almost a GB of RAM. Now it's holding steady at under 230mb! I have few extensions, but use firebug. I knew it was part of the problem but it's unfortunately essential for me. With this fixed perhaps they can now work on tab isolation, another of their last major issues, (instead of rearranging the interface again).
- lelandbatey 14y ago
  Wow, that's actually very nice in terms of RAM usage. Right now in chrome, with only 6 tabs open I am using (according to about:memory)800MB of RAM[1]. I may very well switch back to Firefox if I can get performance like that. [1]http://puu.sh/JXL9 http://puu.sh/JXL9
  - mixmastamyk 14y ago
    Is any of that shared memory? A bit offtopic, but do you typically keep your browser at that width? I imagine I'd be spending much of my day swinging my eyes and head from side to side.
    - lelandbatey 14y ago
      I really don't know. Also, yes, I do often keep read at this width. Web pages usually do not span the entirety of it, so the eye movement is kept to a minimum. However, I spend most of my day in a view closer to [1]this one. You'll notice that the monitor is just large enough that 2 standard width web pages fit on it perfectly. [1]http://puu.sh/JZDy http://puu.sh/JZDy
  - cpeterso 14y ago
    Is it normal for a gmail tab to use 250+ MB?
    - lelandbatey 14y ago
shasty 14y ago
Waiting for FF 37
cpunks 14y ago
Does this mean Firefox will stop blaming add-ons for its own memory leaks?

177 points by AndrewDucker 14y ago

Sgoettschkes 14y ago

Wuhu, finally! Let's see if FF does not take 1GB after a few days.

AndrewDucker 14y ago
You'll have to wait a couple of days - Firefox 15 is hitting Beta either today or tomorrow, I believe.
- gsai 14y ago
  http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-15.0b1&os=win&lang=en-US http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=...
  - zader 14y ago
    OSX version: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-15.0b1&os=osx&lang=en-US http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=...

mun2mun 14y ago

I am really happy that Firefox 15 stops most of the leaks caused by firebug. Competition is good.

conradfr 14y ago

As a webdev who use Firebug (and Adblock) a lot, I'm so glad about this. FINALLY ! However they are three years too late about that, from a market share perspective.

jhatax 14y ago
Firefox lost market share because Chrome was a leaner, faster, and better browser. I have started to hear more stories about folks switching back to Firefox because a lot of their issues with the browser have been fixed. And based on independent review sites like Tom's Hardware, there is no longer an appreciable gap in the performance of Firefox and Chrome. As regards market share, Firefox's market share would be in the low single-digit percentages if all was lost. This is indeed not the case. With the profiling and telemetry tools and infrastructure, the Firefox team has built a foundation that will ensure future releases do not regress memory usage and overall browser snappiness. Market share is a fickle metric for success because it is amenable to change. The strides made in the last few months by the Firefox team have paved the way for adoption growth in the future. Let us have a constructive conversation around what they need to do next to ensure more switchers among the HN community.
- antidoh 14y ago
  "I have started to hear more stories about folks switching back to Firefox because a lot of their issues with the browser have been fixed" There was a time, some number of releases ago (a year ago?) when FF's memory problems became too much for me, and I used Chrome(ium). I never liked it, personal preference. Finally some time within that last year FF became acceptable again, then more than acceptable, and I came back. I have not noticed my browser for months now, which is all I ask of any program: I don't want to see or notice the program, only what I'm working on with it. Don't make me notice you, it's distracting. Although I use Firefox, Firefox is not actually my browser. Firefox plus the particular addons I install is my browser. To me they are very different things.
  - alttab 14y ago
    As a dev I moved to chrome for all the reasons everyone else did. Now I'm seeing chrome renderer chewing all my ram across multiple processes, and actually have had it crash a number of times. Google, don't think I won't switch again, because I will.

zader 14y ago

For anyone who wants to download the Nightly build for Firefox 15: Windows version http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-15.0b1&os=win&lang=en-US http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=... Mac version http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-15.0b1&os=osx&lang=en-US http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=...

wulczer 14y ago
Linux version http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-15.0b1&os=linux&lang=en-US http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=...
nilved 14y ago
That's the beta version. Release is on 14, beta on 15, aurora on 16 and nightly on 17. Firefox nightlies are here: http://nightly.mozilla.org/ http://nightly.mozilla.org/

twodayslate 14y ago

I used to be an avid Firefox user. I switched to Chrome because it was faster and had all the same extensions I used on Firefox. Why should I switch back? Chrome is still faster no?

ZeroGravitas 14y ago
Why do you think it's still faster?
gjm11 14y ago
Nowadays Firefox typically uses less memory than Chrome (though of course this depends on exactly what you measure and how). It's highly debatable which is faster -- this depends even more on how you measure -- but Chrome certainly isn't miles ahead. Chrome may have all the extensions you currently use, but Firefox still has a lot more; perhaps the next one you'd find useful will be Firefox-only. None of which means that you actually should switch back: Chrome is a great web browser. But it isn't obvious that you shouldn't.
- tjoff 14y ago
  If you use a lot of tabs and don't close your browser for long periods of time Chrome is vastly superior to Firefox (and all other browsers) in terms of memory use and stability. Even if you don't use any add-ons at all. I've always taken issue with Firefox, it has the broadest support and community centered around add-ons - but if you actually use any add-on the browser becomes completely useless. I've been bitten so many times in the past that I barely trust any add-ons on any browser, eventhough I've only had issues with Firefox. Hopefully it will be better now.
  - rat87 14y ago
    > If you use a lot of tabs and don't close your browser for long periods of time Chrome is vastly superior to Firefox (and all other browsers) in terms of memory use and stability. But not in terms of ui, tabs shrink till they hold no text in chrome instead of scrolling like in firefox.

suprgeek 14y ago

I am very happy that the Firefox team has finally managed to lick this issue. When at every occasion I used to raise this issue, the typical Mozilla Evangelist would answer: "It is because of the add-ons". My counter to this was that the whole Raison d'être for Firefox is its add-ons community. You cannot claim that there are great benefits to this approach while simultaneously ignoring the problems caused by it. Better late than never. It is critical to have a popular browser alternative to Either IE or Chrome. One is closed source and the other is produced by a company whose entire revenue model is built around showing you the most targeted ads possible in the maximum number of ways possible.

bru 14y ago
>One is closed source Actually, so is Chrome.
- pilif 14y ago
  The differences between Chrome and Chromium are minimal - aside of Chrome bunding some mostly unwanted plugins: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/ChromiumBrowserVsGoogleChrome http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/ChromiumBrowserVsGoog...
  - azakai 14y ago
    That list appears to be incomplete. For example, there is a windows-specific closed source software renderer for WebGL that is in Chrome and not Chromium.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    Good lord those comments gave me a headache. How do people manage to find that page if they can't manage to figure out what Chrome or Chromium are in the first place?
- throwaway54-762 14y ago
  You're free to run Chromium instead of Chrome. I do.

rexreed 14y ago

The about:memory feature is useful to get a glimpse into what extensions and tabs are chewing up the most memory, although I haven't had much luck in FF 14 using the GC/CC to correct that. I hope that FF 15 gives the user a bit more intuitive view and control over the memory consumption on tabs and addons/extensions.

crestfallen 14y ago
Sure, for technical users that might be a nice value add. In fairness though, a regular person shouldn't have to care--Firefox should just work, stay responsive, etc.
- rhizome 14y ago
  In fairness though, a regular person shouldn't have to care--Firefox should just work, stay responsive, etc. In fact, that isn't fair. Software has never been like that, and it's irresponsible to represent to non-technical users that it's possible.
- jruderman 14y ago
  about:memory is primarily intended as a debugging tool, so we can diagnose and fix memory problems. It has been a fantastic success in this regard. It also gives add-on authors and web application developers a chance to do the same. If some (advanced/heavy) users are also able to use about:memory to diagnose and work around problems they encounter, that's a nice side effect. As long as some of those users remember to file bug reports, that is :)
nnethercote 14y ago
FF15 gives a lot more details about memory consumption, because "compartments" (the way the JS heap is segregated) are a lot more fine-grained. In particular, compartments created by add-ons can now be identified. But note that this only covers some add-on memory consumption; the remainder is not reported separately, and doing so is difficult. about:memory is quite intimidating, I'm hoping to implement soon a vastly simpler version that will give a simple per-tab breakdown and be understandable by normal users.

pmarsh 14y ago

One of the issues I've seen people complain about is having to close Firefox after a few days. I understand you shouldn't HAVE to close a program, but how are people using their browsers that this becomes such an huge problem?

dsr_ 14y ago
I don't reboot my desktop for months at a time. Current uptime is 25 days... 25 days ago I moved offices. X stays up. Firefox and Chrome and most of the other applications I use regularly stay up. Why should this be exceptional? What's faster than an SSD for loading an application? Switching to the already open window.
- smithzvk 14y ago
  While this is basically true (and even more so for me, typically 3+ months before a security update finally nags me into rebooting 1 month after it was installed) Firefox saves your open tabs, so restarting takes no time and it is basically like it didn't even happen.
  - corin_ 14y ago
    You're right (although re-starting firefox isn't quite an instant thing), but like dsr_, I don't turn my computer off - so why would I ever restart a program unless I need to? Killing firefox and restoring the session might not take a long time, but it's always going to take longer than not having to restart it.
option_greek 14y ago
I hibernate my windows PC indefinitely (about 2 months so far). Till firefox 11 or so I had to close it every 3 days or so with 4-5 hours of heavy browsing each day. With latest versions I go for about 8 days without close. More importantly, firefox used to slow down noticeably in between browsing before but now it remains snappy till it starts hitting the disk for paged memory. With this memory leak fixing, I hope to go longer without closing firefox.
14y ago

alainbryden 14y ago

> Leaky add-ons usually cause zombie compartments by holding references to DOM structures within a web page even after the page has been closed or navigated away from. This prevents Firefox from garbage-collecting the page’s compartment. If an add-on relies on persistent references to closed pages by design (such as a form data history plugin), is there a way to adapt it to this new feature to not let Firefox sever it's references under the assumption that it's a memory leak?

khuey 14y ago
No.
- alttab 14y ago
  Care to clarify?
  - mcpherrinm 14y ago
    References are severed. There's no way to stop it. You'd have to copy out the data you want.
    - nnethercote 14y ago
      And in practice cutting these references hasn't caused any problems, while fixing another massive problem.
Evbn 14y ago
It should make a private copy of the data it needs.
gliese1337 14y ago
Copy them. I can think of no good reason that one would ever legitimately want or need to keep references to a page that is no longer loaded. It's like returning a pointer to a local variable from a C function; you should expect it to be invalid once it's scope is gone! Copying is likely to use less total memory anyway, because it will rarely result in having to allocate new compartments for the plugins, but it will allow an entire compartment for a page to be collected, that is otherwise kept around for the sake comparatively small objects. This actually seems to me to have a lot of implications for the design of garbage collectors generally. In theory, correct garbage collectors are never supposed to collect objects that may still be used, which in practice usually means "that are reachable". But, we've already got such a thing as "weak references" to fudge that a little. This seems like kind of the opposite idea- having a sort of "superstrong" owner reference such that once it goes away, you know that the object will never be used again (or shouldn't be, anyway, with future uses constituting bugs), and can be collected despite what other references might exist. It also seems like one of those obvious-after-the-fact genius ideas to have garbage collection running independently per compartment. Do Web Workers, e.g., get their own separate garbage collection, too? Any kind of shared-nothing concurrency model ought to be able to do the same thing to improve GC pauses; are there language implementations (I'm thinking probably Erlang here) that actually do that?

adambenayoun 14y ago

Finally! I've been using firebug for quite a long time and I can't even remember at what version things went off the rail. But ever since Firefox would consume 70% of my CPU and 2GB RAM which is complete nonsense. Because of these memory leaks, I migrated to Chrome for browsing the web and constantly having an open tab for Gmail (because that was the only browser that wouldn't go banana on RAM), but still use FF for doing front-end development

mindcrime 14y ago

This is awesome news. The single biggest reason that I initially moved to Chrome, from Firefox, was the memory consumption situation. But lately, Firefox has gotten a lot better, and I've basically switched back to FF now as my primary browser. Hopefully this will make the situation even better. And that's good for everybody. Competition is a Good Thing and it would be a shame if Chrome become so dominant as to completely displace Firefox. A healthy ecosystem with a great Firefox and a great Chrome, along with IE, Opera, Safari, etc., should benefit everyone in the long run.

webwanderings 14y ago
Chrome and Firefox been using memory at equal proportion. I use exactly two add-ons and comparing FF/Chrome to IE to check on memory consumption, I see IE doing much better.

kevinSuttle 14y ago

I think the fault is not just the add-on devs. If anything, the add-on SDK should prevent this by default. I'm not sure when Firefox got so memory-hungry and leaky, but it's the single reason I keep jumping around to Chromium and Opera. Really, really hoping that this time is for real. It's not the first time a blog post like this has been posted by Mozilla.

nnethercote 14y ago
Hi, I'm the lead of Mozilla's MemShrink project (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink) and the author of the linked post. Can you tell me what you mean by prior blog posts "like this"? I remember http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/2011/08/09/firefox-7-is-lean-and-fast-2/ http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/2011/08/09/firefox-7-is-..., because I wrote it, but it was accurate -- FF7 did have some very large improvements. This "Mozilla claims memory consumption improvements in every release" zombie lie is something I hear a lot, but it's just not true.
- kevinSuttle 14y ago
  You're right. I was unfairly accrediting those posts to Mozilla. They were in the blogosphere at large.

jfb 14y ago

That's a cool blog post, and kudos to the Mozilla people, but I have to wonder about the mindset of the user whose stuck with Firefox even as his setup was unusable to the point of needing to install a restart button add-on. I mean, I know from being habituated to a given routine, but that seems particularly self defeating behaviour, especially considering that decent alternatives to Firefox exist?

dman 14y ago
I have a bunch of custom addons that I have written for my workflows - moving to other browsers is not an option because they arent as easily extensible as firefox.
- jfb 14y ago
  That makes sense. Speaking as someone who bought MachTen just to host Emacs on a Macintosh in the bad old days, I am sympathetic. I just am much more of a consumer of browsers than someone who relies on them to hack with.
  - dman 14y ago
    Just looked MachTen up - http://www.tenon.com/products/mt1.jpg http://www.tenon.com/products/mt1.jpg made me nostalgically remember afterstep which was the first window manager I used in linux.
srean 14y ago
> stuck with Firefox even as his setup was unusable to the point of needing to install a restart button add-on. That seems hyperbole to me. As I have commented on HN several times before FF was the only full featured browser that worked for my browsing habit. I browse from a old laptop that only has 512MB of RAM. On this m/c I would keep some 300 or more tabs open for months on end, without shutting FF down or rebooting the laptop. What I did have to do was reset the default cache sizes and some caching policy sizes, disable flash, and have an add-on that unloads the content of an idle tab. So strictly speaking I didn't have all of 300 tabs loaded in memory (but that was a good enough approximation for me). I agree FF can hog a lot of memory, but I think it was and is eminently usable if one is willing to tweak the about:config settings a bit and install a few helpful plugins like flashblock etc.

mixmastamyk 14y ago

I'm on Aurora right now (15a2), and after YEARS of bitching am cautiously optimistic this is really it! Just a few weeks ago I was closing FF once a twice a day as it approached almost a GB of RAM. Now it's holding steady at under 230mb! I have few extensions, but use firebug. I knew it was part of the problem but it's unfortunately essential for me. With this fixed perhaps they can now work on tab isolation, another of their last major issues, (instead of rearranging the interface again).

lelandbatey 14y ago
Wow, that's actually very nice in terms of RAM usage. Right now in chrome, with only 6 tabs open I am using (according to about:memory)800MB of RAM[1]. I may very well switch back to Firefox if I can get performance like that. [1]http://puu.sh/JXL9 http://puu.sh/JXL9
- mixmastamyk 14y ago
  Is any of that shared memory? A bit offtopic, but do you typically keep your browser at that width? I imagine I'd be spending much of my day swinging my eyes and head from side to side.
  - lelandbatey 14y ago
    I really don't know. Also, yes, I do often keep read at this width. Web pages usually do not span the entirety of it, so the eye movement is kept to a minimum. However, I spend most of my day in a view closer to [1]this one. You'll notice that the monitor is just large enough that 2 standard width web pages fit on it perfectly. [1]http://puu.sh/JZDy http://puu.sh/JZDy
- cpeterso 14y ago
  Is it normal for a gmail tab to use 250+ MB?
  - lelandbatey 14y ago

shasty 14y ago

Waiting for FF 37

cpunks 14y ago

Does this mean Firefox will stop blaming add-ons for its own memory leaks?