Tired of Firefox memory leaks? Try Flock!

Live forum: http://forum.freeipodguide.com/viewtopic.php?t=72248

UniPrize Media

17-12-2007 20:42:08

I have been plagued by Firefox memory leaks for some time now, forcing me to restart Firefox every hour or so. For some reason, memory usage for sites that contain Flash keeps building up & up no matter if I close the tabs that contain the Flash content. I tried switching to Opera but just couldn't get used to the feel of it (I was too attached to Firefox). Anyways, I came across Flock[=http//www.flock.com/]Flock while reading Tech Crunch today and I am very happy with it. It is like a twin brother of Firefox. It looks the same and functions the same without the memory leak. I haven't experienced any memory leaks so far. It is also very social site friendly so if you are into social sites, this is the browser for you. After downloading and installing it, you will be able to download all your data from Firefox with a single click. So if you have leaking issues, give it a try.

doylnea

17-12-2007 21:05:42

Can I install all of my Firefox extensions with Flock?

UniPrize Media

17-12-2007 21:15:59

[quote15b0d12585="doylnea"]Can I install all of my Firefox extensions with Flock?[/quote15b0d12585]

No, that is one of the downsides to it but I am sure there will be more extensions for it once it starts to get popular. I only have a couple of extensions I regular use with Firefox so it wasn't that big of a deal.

Edit Actually, most Firefox extensions are suppose to work on Flock. It has to be manually done. You simply copy the extension files from your Firefox profile-extension folder to the Flock profile-extension folder. [/color15b0d12585]

UniPrize Media

17-12-2007 22:34:12

Update Yes, most likely your Firefox extensions will work on Flock. I just successfully implemented all my extensions.

unknown uchiha

19-12-2007 01:40:47

I love Flock, I discovered it back when I think a Digg user submitted an article called "Top __ browsers you've never heard of". However, I use Shiira more often (it's insanely visually appealing).

ILoveToys

19-12-2007 15:12:59

never been a flock fan....It didn't support folders on the bookmarks toolbar. Have they added support for that again yet?

Jams44

19-12-2007 15:46:29

i started using it when they teamed up with facebook. Its far more visually appealing than firefox regardless of firefox's themes. It is firefox to the T so it wasnt that hard of a transition.

manOFice

19-12-2007 16:35:00

gosh, i used to use flock a long time ago, i hate the FF memory leaks, thx i'll look at flock again

dmorris68

19-12-2007 16:44:00

FWIW, I'm not having any issues with FF memory leaks, and I leave it up pretty much all day, with multiple tabs and flash content. I would point a finger at a poorly written plugin, which are usually to blame for a lot of the issues FF gets blamed for.

J4320

19-12-2007 16:49:02

I'm not having any memory leak issues either and I have a lot of plugins. It would take a lot to make me abandon the mighty Firefox.

EatChex89

19-12-2007 17:40:07

[quote2fb8b44841="J4320"]I'm not having any memory leak issues either and I have a lot of plugins. It would take a lot to make me abandon the mighty Firefox.[/quote2fb8b44841]

for same!

samz465

19-12-2007 17:42:33

I just downloaded Flock.
I actually find it quite appealing, but it's still would take some getting used to. In the mean time, I think I'll stick with firefox.

UniPrize Media

19-12-2007 19:42:37

[quote0424277f09="dmorris68"]I would point a finger at a poorly written plugin, which are usually to blame for a lot of the issues FF gets blamed for.[/quote0424277f09]

Glad you mentioned that bc. I experienced minor memory leak problems after I put my Firefox extensions on Flock. After some trial and error, I figured out it was caused by one of my extensions that I use frequently. Flock still handled the memory leaks better(it didn't bog down as fast as Firefox) but still was annoying. Firefox and flock both are back to optimal function now and I use them both.

samz465

19-12-2007 20:28:36

Which plugins do you use?
I use Fasterfox, Tab Mix Plus, IE Tab, and VideoDownloader.
I also have the Noia 2.0 Theme up, but I'm not sure if it makes a difference.
Do you use any of those plugins?
I'd like to figure out what may be causing this memory leak.

UniPrize Media

19-12-2007 20:51:25

[quote0b254acf5a="samz465"]Which plugins do you use?
I use Fasterfox, Tab Mix Plus, IE Tab, and VideoDownloader.
I also have the Noia 2.0 Theme up, but I'm not sure if it makes a difference.
Do you use any of those plugins?
I'd like to figure out what may be causing this memory leak.[/quote0b254acf5a]

No, I don't use any of those plug-ins. Do this first, download the latest Flash plug-in from here[=http//www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash]here. Then remove all of your ad-ons. After you do that enable your plug-ins one by one, testing each for about 1/2 hour of surfing on multiple tabs. Look at how much memory is taken up after about 1/2 hour. Easy way to monitor your memory usage is to use widgets that show the current memory hog (yahoo widgets has one). Then close all tabs except one, preferably a site with little data on it (like google.com). If you memory usage drops down to around 70 MB then none of the plug-ins active are causing the problem.

JOSHBOX

19-12-2007 22:08:43

Or you could just get a 16Gb of RAM and a 64 bit OS shrug

samz465

20-12-2007 14:45:32

[quoteebfd801650="JOSHBOX"]Or you could just get a 16Gb of RAM and a 64 bit OS shrug[/quoteebfd801650]
Will you be paying for it?

Daggoth

20-12-2007 15:23:04

Can someone explain what the memory leak is all about?

samz465

20-12-2007 15:37:56

Basically, you open up the task manager in windows, and you see how much memory a process is taking up.

Sometimes, if you look at Firefox, it will say it's using 75,000 k or so. So you go close some tabs and windows.
However, if you go back and look, it still may be using 75,000 k when in reality it should be much less.
Not sure why this happens, but I've seen it happen to me.

Here is a Wikipedia article that gives more in depth information about it.
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_leak

gafdpc

20-12-2007 15:46:08

[quotea4f04d3afc="samz465"]Basically, you open up the task manager in windows, and you see how much memory a process is taking up.

Sometimes, if you look at Firefox, it will say it's using 75,000 k or so. So you go close some tabs and windows.
However, if you go back and look, it still may be using 75,000 k when in reality it should be much less.
Not sure why this happens, but I've seen it happen to me.

Here is a Wikipedia article that gives more in depth information about it.
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_leak[/quotea4f04d3afc]

That is not necessarily a memory leak. Task Manager displays a processes so called 'working set'. This is increased as memory is needed, but will not necessarily decrease when memory is freed. The OS will reduce the size of a processes working set when another process needs the memory. While it may decrease when memory is freed, it is not guaranteed to do so.

Thats my understanding of it at least.

dmorris68

20-12-2007 17:36:22

Ah, you very well may not have a memory leak, if you're basing your suspicion on Task Manager. People who don't understand how Win32 OSes manage memory often misread the numbers in Task Manager.

Task Manager will show you several different memory numbers, it just depends on what columns you have enabled. For example, "Working Set", "Peak Working Set", and "Virtual Size" are the most common, but there are several others still that measure page faults, shared bytes, private bytes, etc.

As gafdpc points out, looking at a number without knowing what it means can mislead you. For example, people will often look at Virtual Size and assume that's how much memory is being used. It is not. Nearly all Win32 applications request from the OS far more memory than they ever actually use. The OS doesn't actually set aside all of that memory (unless perhaps you have tons of RAM), but provides it as the application attempts to use it. If necessary, a page fault will occur which causes lesser used RAM to be swapped to disk and that RAM is assigned. Working Set is a group of memory pages that the application thinks it needs, and due to how the OS memory manager works, it will often creep up until such time as the OS decides that something else needs the RAM. At which time you'll see Working Set decrease as RAM pages are taken away and given to something else. However it does not mean the application is actively [i4c0708a329]using[/i4c0708a329] all of that RAM at any given time. If you leave an application open (that doesn't have a bad memory leak), you will see Working Set and Peak Working Set climb for awhile, but then later you'll see them shrink, then climb again, etc. The OS is pretty smart about such things, and is constantly trimming and tweaking process memory. For example, when an application loses focus, it will give up a large chunk of its RAM. When minimized, it will lose even more. If no other process really needs more RAM at the moment, the OS will let a process just accumulate RAM pages until it IS needed.

So if you have a reasonable amount of RAM in your system, performance is seldom impacted unless you run a huge memory hungry app that suddenly causes everybody else to be paged to disk. Or an app with a true memory leak ties up huge amounts of memory.

If you have 2GB of RAM, for example, and see an application showing a working set of 70MB, or 170MB, it's a drop in the bucket and will in no way affect your system performance UNLESS you have 20 such apps running at once. IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! This is what I was trying to explain to people a few months back who were arguing against Azureus for being a "memory hog." Most didn't understand what they were saying, they were just repeating what others say (who didn't know what they were saying). They didn't stop to think that their overall system performance isn't affected.

My primary Windows machines often go days between reboots, and most of that time they have at least one Firefox instance open. Sometimes several, and most have multiple tabs open. I also run a few Linux boxes that are never rebooted, they're up 24/7, and some have uptimes of over 6 months or more since the last reboot (which was a power failure that outlasted the UPS). I will often go for months leaving BOTH Azureus AND Firefox running on these PC's. System performance has never become an issue, which pretty much proves that neither suffer any major memory leaks or "hog" effects.

Here's an article[=http//shsc.info/WindowsMemoryManagement]Here's an article that attempt to explain how Windows Memory Management works, and it specifically mentions Firefox as well as the wrong assumptions people make about application RAM usage.

samz465

20-12-2007 19:04:42

Hmm, the column I am looking at says "Memory Usage".
I just assumed thats how much memory it's using.
Is that the column I should be reading?

gafdpc

20-12-2007 20:30:32

Pretty sure that column displays the size of your working set