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Fix firefox memory increase problem - not a question, but a suggestion
In one of your tips to how to fix the problem of firefox 57 using too much memory, you admit that "Firefox's memory usage may increase if it's left open for long periods of time. A workaround for this is to periodically restart Firefox.". I've been a computer programmer for over 20 years, using fortran, assembly, and C, so I know something about this. You don't need a workaround for this, you need a fix, which may require a new paradigm about the design of how firefox uses memory.
I created a script, using autohotkey, that restarts firefox to reduce the memory usage, and it works pretty well. And I notice that someone decided that firefox does not need to be restarted to install add-ons, so therefore there is no need for a restart function in firefox. Well, if you are recommending restarting firefox for purposes of decreasing memory usage, it would help and not hurt to add the restart functionality to firefox, just like you used to be able to do in earlier versions.
Of course, what you really need is either a redesign of how firefox uses and allocates memory, or at least for now, you could add a function to firefox in which it checks periodically, say once an hour, to see how much memory it is using and if the memory usage has gone up significantly, like 10 percent or more, since the last time it was checked. If the memory usage has gone up that much, then reallocate the memory usage to reduce it or tell windows through a memory reducing function to do so. I have a memory program for windows 7 that does just that. It shows me how much memory is presently being used, and if I think it is too much, I just tell the program, by clicking the appropriate button, to clean the memory, and it uses one or more windows api functions to do just that, and it can help quite a bit. Restarting firefox itself cleans the memory even more, which is where you discover that firefox really was using more memory than necessary, because after it is restarted, the memory usage goes down significantly, like 15-20 percent. And when it restarts, the same tabs are still there.
All of this means firefox is using memory that it should not be using, which is what many other programs do too, so firefox is not really alone in this, but I presume that your team is more open to suggestions than most software teams, so let's get some minds going here to change the way firefox uses it's memory, and have the program reduce the memory usage periodically by having windows clean the memory for you at some time interval. You could even make the time interval a user choice with several time intervals to choose from. If you actually do this, word must might get out that firefox as a browser takes care of the user by periodically reducing it's memory usage, thereby saving the user time, effort, and computer resources. That would be great PR for this browser, and I bet no other browser is presently doing this.
One reason I came back to firefox after using chrome for a bit is that chrome is a memory hog, which it should not be. No one likes a memory hog in a browser. So let's make history, firefox developers, and have a browser that is helpful to the user when it comes to memory usage. It's still a great browser, with a lot of great features. Keep up the good work, folks.
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You should post this over at https://reddit.com/r/firefox :)
Or over here: https://discourse.mozilla.org/c/firefox-development
rbhall52 said
Restarting firefox itself cleans the memory even more, which is where you discover that firefox really was using more memory than necessary, because after it is restarted, the memory usage goes down significantly, like 15-20 percent. And when it restarts, the same tabs are still there.
When you restore your previous session, by default, only the active tab in each window is fully loaded. The other tabs are marked "pending" and only loaded on demand. I think you see where I'm going with this...
Add-on developers are experimenting with methods of suspending or unloading inactive tabs to preserve memory. This has its hazards, of course, but the idea of preventing web content from growing in the background (or just wasting memory) will continue to be a hot topic, and having better hooks in Firefox may help.
Mkll said
You should post this over at https://reddit.com/r/firefox :)
Thanks, Mkll. I just did as you suggested, creating an account and posting the same comments there.
jscher2000 said
Or over here: https://discourse.mozilla.org/c/firefox-development rbhall52 saidRestarting firefox itself cleans the memory even more, which is where you discover that firefox really was using more memory than necessary, because after it is restarted, the memory usage goes down significantly, like 15-20 percent. And when it restarts, the same tabs are still there.When you restore your previous session, by default, only the active tab in each window is fully loaded. The other tabs are marked "pending" and only loaded on demand. I think you see where I'm going with this...
Add-on developers are experimenting with methods of suspending or unloading inactive tabs to preserve memory. This has its hazards, of course, but the idea of preventing web content from growing in the background (or just wasting memory) will continue to be a hot topic, and having better hooks in Firefox may help.
But if I just ask the memory watching program to clean the memory,. and it does so and that alone saves about 10 percent of the present memory being used, then there was memory that could and was cleaned and reallocated. So, it's not just the various tabs that are using up memory, as you point out. There is apparently some memory that needs to be periodically cleaned and reallocated. I admit I don't know which tab may be adding to the memory usage, but it doesn't seem to matter, because the memory usage goes up no matter what I do in firefox.
Not for me mine stays the same and doesn't increase for FF usage even if I leave it run all day. So could be a bad FF install and only fix is to complete uninstall all FF and delete folders and then reinstall FF based on your O/S version aka x86 to x86FF and x64 to x64FF-this way you can insure there is no conflicts and the right browser fits the right O/S.