I love Firefox. Love its flexibility, love the extensions that add new power. And I'll admit I love the "Stickin' it to The Man" feeling you get from using it. So why do I find myself using Internet Explorer 7 more and more?
Because once Firefox has been open for an hour or so, my system slows to a crawl and Windows Task Manager shows that Firefox is bogarting 90 percent or more of my processing power. The problem happens pretty consistently on three different Windows machines I use.
When I ask programmers at Mozilla about these problems, they usually point the finger at extensions, saying that one of my add-ons may have a memory leak or a couple of them may have a conflict. And now, they're at least trying to do something about it. On Monday, they'll launch a new add-ons site, that they say will help them keep a tighter rein on extensions. For instance, only a couple hundred of the best tested extensions will be readily available. The rest of the 2400 or so add-ons will be in a sandbox. You can get to them, but only if you opt in and read a warning that the software could cause problems.
The site will also allow users to write more detailed reviews. Mozilla editors will look over the reviews of add-ons in the sandbox and test the software itself before putting extensions into the public area of the site.
I hope the new initiative helps, but I can already see potential loopholes. For one thing, developers can, and do, distribute extensions from their own sites, which will sidestep Mozilla's vetting process.
Ultimately, the best answer may be a step our browser guru Erik Larkin has suggested: a tool that will allow users to pinpoint exactly how many resources an individual extension is using. That'll let you identify the bad actors at a glance, disable those extensions and get back to Stickin' it to The Man.
There is a utility that I consider a life-saver. It helps Windows XP recover from 90% of crashes, and automatically fixes memory leaks from FireFox and Thunderbird, so that you don't have to worry about poorly written extensions.
I guess the company doesn't market it well, because most PC users don't know about it.
It's called Anti-Crash and is available at dachshundsoftware.com
note: I have no relationship with the company, I just love their product.
Running FireFox 2 and have run FireFox 1.X series and have never observed this behaviour. Then again I don't run much in the way of extensions or themes.
I leave FireFox running in the background all the time without issue while I play WOW.
-nf
I used to have the same problem in Firefox 1.5, when the computer would freeze up for 5 minutes at a time sometimes.
However, Mozillazine has a page at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Problematic_extensions that proved very useful in weeding out the leaking extensions. For example, since advanced session saving wasn't integrated into the browser back then, I used SessionSaver, which I later replaced with Session Manager because of memory leaks. Not all the supposedly problematic extensions were actually problematic for me, but there were definitely a good number.
Sometimes I've weeded out the extensions manually by disabling half of the extensions, restarting Firefox, then disabling or enabling a quarter, restarting, etc.
Is there anyone who does investigative reporting? Anybody who actually does any testing of "reported news?" I was an early adopter of FF and currently am using ver. 2.x. They have always been plagued with a memory leak problem and have always blamed it on extensions EVEN when it wasn't JUST extensions. Now, another report. FF hogging CPU Cycles. It's also slower than IE7. It's also a memory pig.
You want to support FF? Then don't help perpetuating a whitewash. Do some independent testing.
I love it when people are silly enough to think they are "Stickin it to the man" while using Mozilla's Forefox. Don't people realize that AOL owns this product. I, myself, consider AOL "the man" as well.
AOL does not own or have anything to do with Mozilla. AOL owns Netscape. http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/ So please stop spreading FUD.
In the mid/late 90s, AOL bought Netscape. At that time, the code was also released to the open source community. This became Mozilla Suite from which split off Firefox and Thunderbird. There has been no connection to AOL since that split. You, qElijahq, are years out of date with your information.