Mozilla releases Firefox 7.0, improves memory usage

Shawn Knight

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,291   +192
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Mozilla has released the final build of Firefox 7.0 for Windows, Mac and Linux today. The latest stable release is said to correct an issue that has plagued the browser over the past several iterations, resulting in a faster and more responsive web experience.

Firefox has been plagued with memory leak issues for years and the team at Mozilla finally addressed this in Firefox 7. MemShrink is an initiative that began in June to eradicate the browser's memory inconsistencies.

One aspect of MemShrink is better Javascript garbage collection. It's said to work more frequently now and should free up more memory when multiple tabs are open. This also means you can leave the browser running in the background and it will automatically free up unused memory, something that many previous versions were not capable of.

Users should expect Firefox 7 to be more stable than previous releases. This has to do with fewer OOMs, whether due to address space exhaustion or otherwise. This will result in fewer crashes due to mishandling of OOM or aborts.

Mozilla developer Nicholas Nethercote claims that Firefox 7 uses less memory than the past three versions, between 20 and 50 percent less in some instances.

Other minor changes include dropping https:// from the awesome bar and shading the sub-domain section of a URL a lighter grey. Firefox Sync now processes password and bookmark changes faster as well.

You can download a copy of Firefox 7 by clicking here. More adventurous users can try Firefox Aurora v8 or Firefox v9 (Nightly) although these are only recommended for experienced users or developers.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/45638-mozilla-releases-firefox-70-improves-memory-usage.html

 
Finally a version of Firefox that won't hog all my ram.older version have used up 1gb of my ram with only 3 tabs open
 
Firefox is now the second fastest browser, behind Opera. Chrome being the slowest of the 4 mainstream browsers. See speed tests:

http://lifehacker.com/5844150/browser-speed-tests-firefox-7-chrome-14-internet-explorer-9-and-more
 
Finally a quick fox. Firefox 6 version had a lot of problems with add-ons. Now 7 is great.
 
Fixing the RAM issue years ago would have been nice. Now its fixed when you can get 16GB of RAM for $90.
 
Finally a version of Firefox that makes bold unsubstantiated claims about using less memory.
 
It's as bloated as ever on my Win XP laptop... had been hoping for some dramatic or even noticeable reduction in memory usage, but if anything, it takes up more memory than before.
 
See the speed results on Lifehacker. If you're not getting the same results, try a clean install and reconsider some of your extensions as one or two of them may be the culprit. Firefox 7 is blazing fast for me with Adblock Plus of course. Definitely putting Chrome to shame.
 
Guest said:
Who cares about memory usage? 16GB is less than $100...
Click to expand...
Not all systems support 16GB or have systems with readily upgradable memory. Memory upgrades from a number of OEMs is tantamount to highway robbery. Likewise most people aren't running new systems, a number with "only" 4GB or even less. On the other side of the coin having a stupid huge amount of tabs open and or certain add ons will eat memory like nobodies business.

So having a smaller footprint is better for everyone, and lets the FF dev team say "okay we did something to help, it's your turn add-on devs to optimize your code/memory usage."

Or so we hope.
 
The 'buy more RAM because it's cheap' argument is bs.
If it's so cheap, then these people wont mind paying me for my RAM upgrade. No?
Then be silent.
 
Not sure what you Guests got going on, I'm running 5 tabs various sites Win7 FF7 is only using 125megs, on a POS Dell work laptop. If it's using 1 gig you might have some other issues going on with your system.
 
3 tabs open, a few addons installed (noscript, adblock, flashblock come to mind). 340MB usage. Depends on the sites and addons you have...
 
FF always been a massive memory user, particually with lots of add ons or tabs, downloaded the new update, performence better, and not getting the stupid adobe flash plugin crash anymore.
 
Guest said:
Who cares about memory usage? 16GB is less than $100...
Click to expand...

I know, I said almost the exact same thing hours before you.

@madboyv1 - I get your point. In my post though I was saying that FF has had runaway RAM problems for years and years, and when they finally fix it, huge RAM usage really isn't the problem it used to be. Using a gig of RAM now is much less devastating than it was 4 or 5 years ago.
 
Beware of Thunderbird 7. Upon upgrade from 6 it wiped all my appointments and tasks. Nice work Mozilla.
 
In 1996 I ran Windows 95 with 96MB of RAM. In 1998 I ran Windows 98 with 128MB of RAM which was later upgraded in 2000 to 256MB. In 2002 I ran Windows XP with 386MB of ram which was upgraded in 2003 to 768MB of RAM, then again in 2005 to 1.5GB, then in 2007 to 4GB. I stuck with 4GB when I moved to Windows 7 in 2009. In late 2010 I upgraded to 8GB of RAM.

Lets look at this:
1996 - 96MB
1998 - 256MB
2002 - 386MB
2003 - 768MB
2005 - 1536MB
2007 - 4096MB
2010 - 8192MB

I don't know what you guys are talking about. Do you not see a pattern here? We're not lowering our memory usage, we're using more and more. Get used to it. You're using a FREE software, at least spend a few dollars and upgrade your hardware. RAM is dirt cheap. People getting mad at a company offering FREE software because it's using too much memory, cheapskates.
 
Firefox 6 Windows XP (at work) here, 1 tab open (this one) using around 220MB of RAM at the moment. 3 add ons installed - noscript, adblock and status-4-evar.

//edit: Firefox 7 Windows XP now, 1 tab open (this one) now using 110MB... same add ons installed.

This is obviously compelling scientific evidence that 7 uses less memory than 6...

No it's not. Firefox builds up a page cache so that you can hit the back button and go back to where you were before... this means that the observation that my firefox is using 200MB and someone else's is using 1GB is irrelevant and pointless - the memory footprint grows as you browse... To check memory usage you would need identical systems with identical add ons browsing exactly the same sites, etc. So really it's all just blahblahblahblah...

//edit2: To prevent Firefox using so much memory go to edit -> preferences (Windows: tools -> options) -> advanced -> network and override the cache management to specify how much you want to use. It also tells you how big the cache currently is.
 
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