Firefox Add-on Irony



  • Usually when you install an add-on, you can click "Restart Firefox" right after installation. There's also an add-on called "Restart Firefox." It adds a File menu item that does exactly what you'd expect. However, after installing it...

    [img]http://img3.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/a9126b1fb8.png[/img]

     

    I can't even count the levels of irony in this screenshot.



  • How is that irony?

    It's hardly even coincidence.

    It would be irony if the addon was called "after installing this you'll never have to restart firefox again", and even then it would barely scrape.



  • Wow, are firefox users that lazy?

    I use Seamonkey,  and some days I'm disappointed that 99% of the new firefox extensions that everyone is yelling about will never get ported to my browser (because programmers are lazy). Other days I don't feel like I'm missing anything important.



  • @ailivac said:

    Wow, are firefox users that lazy?

    Apparently some of them are. I'm not - the only time I restart FF is for extension installation (I love hibernation), so I wouldn't use it.
     



  • @LightningDragon said:

    the only time I restart FF is for extension installation (I love hibernation)

    ...and memory leaks?
     



  • Firefox 3 changes this so the restart Firefox button is always active.



  • It might just be me... but I would venture a guess and say TRWTF is that you need to restart Firefox so much you need an entry in your menu for it.
    I suppose that is one way to fix a memory leak though...
     


  • @sootzoo said:

    @LightningDragon said:

    the only time I restart FF is for extension installation (I love hibernation)

    ...and memory leaks?
     


    What memory leaks?



  • Firefox, have memory leaks?  Impossible!



  • @aythun said:

    @sootzoo said:

    @LightningDragon said:

    the only time I restart FF is for extension installation (I love hibernation)

    ...and memory leaks?
     


    What memory leaks?

    It's not actually a memory leak. It's just a badly misguided caching policy.

    A memory leak is when the application allocates memory but then loses track of it, so it's permanently allocated and unusuable. Firefox knows exactly what is in all that memory: cached, prerendered copies of all the pages you've visited recently, on the grounds that modern systems have a lot of memory and nobody runs more than one application at once. 



  • @asuffield said:

    @aythun said:
    @sootzoo said:

    @LightningDragon said:

    the only time I restart FF is for extension installation (I love hibernation)

    ...and memory leaks?
     


    What memory leaks?

    It's not actually a memory leak. It's just a badly misguided caching policy.

    A memory leak is when the application allocates memory but then loses track of it, so it's permanently allocated and unusuable. Firefox knows exactly what is in all that memory: cached, prerendered copies of all the pages you've visited recently, on the grounds that modern systems have a lot of memory and nobody runs more than one application at once. 

    That would explain why on my system FF is taking up >220 MB of memory, and the unreasonable amount of disk activity on resuming from hibernation. Anyway, I've never run into that sort of memory usage being a problem, except once, while running:

    • DTP software editing a >50MB file with lots of huge linked pictures,
    • Inkscape (which did seem to leak memory),
    • Blender (3D graphics also eats memory, especially if you have even one 2048x2048 texture in memory),
    • Photoshop (with one of the aforementioned huge pictures loaded)
    The whole thing was almost unbearably sluggish, because of all the swapping that needs doing on a system with half a gig of memory, to fit all that in. Admittedly another part of FF's memory load is that I never clear out the list of downloaded files (a small load, except when viewing the list, when it has to be paged in).



  • @asuffield said:

    @aythun said:
    @sootzoo said:

    @LightningDragon said:

    the only time I restart FF is for extension installation (I love hibernation)

    ...and memory leaks?
     


    What memory leaks?

    It's not actually a memory leak. It's just a badly misguided caching policy.

    A memory leak is when the application allocates memory but then loses track of it, so it's permanently allocated and unusuable. Firefox knows exactly what is in all that memory: cached, prerendered copies of all the pages you've visited recently, on the grounds that modern systems have a lot of memory and nobody runs more than one application at once. 

    ...which is limited to a value which can be changed easily by the user.  I think the default is roughly 60 megabytes.  There is also the "fast-back" pre-rendered previous pages, which are roughly 5 megabytes per page for I think 5 pages by default.

     I for one increased these values considerably, as I am willing to sacrifice a bit of memory for extra speed.
     



  • @aythun said:

    What memory leaks?
    Given the rate they have been fixing them lately:

    http://www.squarefree.com/2007/09/20/firefox-memory-usage-and-memory-leak-news/

     it would be rather absurd to claim it doesn't have any now, even if a lot of the memory in use is cache.
     



  • @Cthulhu reencoded said:

    @aythun said:

    What memory leaks?
    Given the rate they have been fixing them lately:

     it would be rather absurd to claim it doesn't have any now, even if a lot of the memory in use is cache.
     

    It certainly has them, but the thing everybody complains about is really just the misguided caching defaults.



  • @Dark Shikari said:

    @asuffield said:
    @aythun said:
    @sootzoo said:

    @LightningDragon said:

    the only time I restart FF is for extension installation (I love hibernation)

    ...and memory leaks?
     


    What memory leaks?

    It's not actually a memory leak. It's just a badly misguided caching policy.

    A memory leak is when the application allocates memory but then loses track of it, so it's permanently allocated and unusuable. Firefox knows exactly what is in all that memory: cached, prerendered copies of all the pages you've visited recently, on the grounds that modern systems have a lot of memory and nobody runs more than one application at once. 

    ...which is limited to a value which can be changed easily by the user.  I think the default is roughly 60 megabytes.  There is also the "fast-back" pre-rendered previous pages, which are roughly 5 megabytes per page for I think 5 pages by default.

     I for one increased these values considerably, as I am willing to sacrifice a bit of memory for extra speed.

    If you're thinking of the values in the preferences dialog, that's only part of the story. There's a lot of other caching going on that can't be controlled from there.

    There's no real problem with the features existing, but the default configuration permits it to chew up far too much memory (several hundred Mb when all the caches are filled).


  • Considered Harmful

    @mountain said:

    Firefox, have memory leaks?  Impossible! Unpossible!

    Fixed that for you.



  • @asuffield said:

    @Dark Shikari said:

    ...which is limited to a value which can be changed easily by the user.  I think the default is roughly 60 megabytes.  There is also the "fast-back" pre-rendered previous pages, which are roughly 5 megabytes per page for I think 5 pages by default.

     I for one increased these values considerably, as I am willing to sacrifice a bit of memory for extra speed.

    If you're thinking of the values in the preferences dialog, that's only part of the story. There's a lot of other caching going on that can't be controlled from there.

    There's no real problem with the features existing, but the default configuration permits it to chew up far too much memory (several hundred Mb when all the caches are filled).

    More may be done via about:config, but I wouldn't know.

    FFX never does extremes like 220 meg for me. Currently, it's 50+.



  • Mine's at 150MB, but I have about 30 tabs open. 5MB per tab doesn't sound too bad.



  • how does 5MB per tab seem reasonable to you!?!?!??!  do you have any idea how much nonsense can fit in 5 MB?  Also, I restart firefox about once a day because when I'm on my computer I usually have eclipse (perhaps 2 copies if I'm doing plug-in work), outlook, winamp, and a number of other programs.  I can't afford the 220-250MB that it takes up after it's been running for a while.



  • That's always been an annoyance to me, although I still use firefox for some reason.

    Supposedly you can adjust some settings to control how much memory firefox can use, like:

     

     

    Although I've never bothered with any of it.


  • @tster said:

    winamp

    Winamp uses about 3-4 megs when it's minimized. I think you can scratch it from the list of programs you need more memory for.



  • @dhromed said:

    @tster said:

    winamp

    Winamp uses about 3-4 megs when it's minimized. I think you can scratch it from the list of programs you need more memory for.

    yeah your right, I forgot about that.



  • @tster said:

    @dhromed said:

    @tster said:

    winamp

    Winamp uses about 3-4 megs when it's minimized. I think you can scratch it from the list of programs you need more memory for.

    yeah your right, I forgot about that.

    Which is weird because, up until I actually did some loose testing using the Taskmanager with foobar2000, I thought Foo was way ahead of Winamp in conserving ram. Which it is, if you look at the percentages (foo 100% vs Wimp 200%) , but is not if you look at the absolutes. 3 megs. That's quite pft waevs.



  • @Thief^ said:

    Mine's at 150MB, but I have about 30 tabs open. 5MB per tab doesn't sound too bad.

    I've got 140MB, with 130MB VM Size... 4 windows open.  Gets annoying when my mem usage is > 900MB, with only minimal development tools open.  Thank goodness I have 2GB RAM 



  • @dhromed said:

    Winamp uses about 3-4 megs when it's minimized. I think you can scratch it from the list of programs you need more memory for.

    Pfft, only if you're using the crappy current versions of Winamp. I'm
    still using 2.95 (the last non-bloatware release), and it only eats
    around 1MB when minimized.



  • @sootzoo said:

    @LightningDragon said:

    the only time I restart FF is for extension installation (I love hibernation)

    ...and memory leaks?
     

    I program in Eclipse all day, so Firefox's memory consumption pales in comparison.



  • @vt_mruhlin said:

    @sootzoo said:

    @LightningDragon said:

    the only time I restart FF is for extension installation (I love hibernation)

    ...and memory leaks?

    I program in Eclipse all day, so Firefox's memory consumption pales in comparison.


    I actually meant "leaks", not "excessive allocation", which asuffield nicely covered above. I know that FF is/can be a memory hog, and they're far from the only app to behave this way, and that they're fixing most of the verifiable leaks in the 3.0 alphas yadda yadda yadda.

    My favorite leak bug was not freeing the "highlighted text" buffer, which I have an odd compulsion of using all the time. Instead of mouse scrolling, I highlight the block of text I'm reading, or above, or below... you get the point. It seemed funny that this one weird defect I seem to have while web browsing is actually shared (and made worse) by my browser.



  • @tster said:

    how does 5MB per tab seem reasonable to you!?!?!??!  do you have any idea how much nonsense can fit in 5 MB?  Also, I restart firefox about once a day because when I'm on my computer I usually have eclipse (perhaps 2 copies if I'm doing plug-in work), outlook, winamp, and a number of other programs.  I can't afford the 220-250MB that it takes up after it's been running for a while.

     


    can't afford


  • @Vechni said:

    @tster said:

    how does 5MB per tab seem reasonable to you!?!?!??!  do you have any idea how much nonsense can fit in 5 MB?  Also, I restart firefox about once a day because when I'm on my computer I usually have eclipse (perhaps 2 copies if I'm doing plug-in work), outlook, winamp, and a number of other programs.  I can't afford the 220-250MB that it takes up after it's been running for a while.

     


    can't afford

    Evidently you have a computer with unlimited RAM slots. And a gadget to put DIMMs in laptops.



  • @Zylon said:

    @dhromed said:

    Winamp uses about 3-4 megs when it's minimized. I think you can scratch it from the list of programs you need more memory for.

    Pfft, only if you're using the crappy current versions of Winamp. I'm
    still using 2.95 (the last non-bloatware release), and it only eats
    around 1MB when minimized.

    There's the "neutral, OS-look" of Foobar and the eyecandy of Winamp 5 + default skin, but damnit Winamp 2.x default skin is just indigestible for the retina.

    And still: 3 meg... out of a thousand.

    Perspective, is what I'm saying.

    ) disclaimer: I do not condone truly wasteful practices that lazily eat memory because "there's enough anyway". Try to limit the mem usage -- but don't spend time squeezing every last byte out of it when that time could be spent making your app work better.



  • @m0ffx said:

    @Vechni said:

    @tster said:

    how does 5MB per tab seem reasonable to you!?!?!??!  do you have any idea how much nonsense can fit in 5 MB?  Also, I restart firefox about once a day because when I'm on my computer I usually have eclipse (perhaps 2 copies if I'm doing plug-in work), outlook, winamp, and a number of other programs.  I can't afford the 220-250MB that it takes up after it's been running for a while.

     


    can't afford

    Evidently you have a computer with unlimited RAM slots. And a gadget to put DIMMs in laptops.

     

    Yes, I do, I used my timemachine to go get it from the future. 



  • @dhromed said:

    @Zylon said:
    @dhromed said:

    Winamp uses about 3-4 megs when it's minimized. I think you can scratch it from the list of programs you need more memory for.

    Pfft, only if you're using the crappy current versions of Winamp. I'm
    still using 2.95 (the last non-bloatware release), and it only eats
    around 1MB when minimized.

    There's the "neutral, OS-look" of Foobar and the eyecandy of Winamp 5 + default skin, but damnit Winamp 2.x default skin is just indigestible for the retina.

    And still: 3 meg... out of a thousand.

    Perspective, is what I'm saying.

    ) disclaimer: I do not condone truly wasteful practices that lazily eat memory because "there's enough anyway". Try to limit the mem usage -- but don't spend time squeezing every last byte out of it when that time could be spent making your app work better.

    I have a pretty low opinion of systems where a few megabytes is considered an acceptable load for a very simple application.

    You need about 200-300kb for a reasonable, functional audio player. For several Mb I would expect at least a track preference/recommendation system rather than a crude playlist.



  • @asuffield said:

    I have a pretty low opinion of systems where a few megabytes is considered an acceptable load for a very simple application.

    You need about 200-300kb for a reasonable, functional audio player. For several Mb I would expect at least a track preference/recommendation system rather than a crude playlist.

    Winamp 5.5 for me, is 6.3 MB with a pretty trim line-up, 7.6 with the third-party plugins that make it such an awesome program. It's not a very trim, lean program, although I've reverted to 5.094's PII-optimised in_mp3 to get some speed up. I could use a simple media player if I wanted, but Winamp affords me a centralised player of not just MP3, but also tracker music and old DOS game music in CMF, and it has cue sheet support for DJ mixes, some of this with the help of the hard work of so many third party developers. I tried some sidtune players for it, but they all sucked, as did the Amiga custom module player as I recall. DeliPlayer is the absolute ultimate play-everything program for DOS/Amiga nostagists, but the UI sucks rocks. I've already recorded some Amiga custom modules to MP3 to play in Winamp.

    Firefox isn't too bad in recent releases, although you're advised to do any ... JPEG surfing in a new window and close that entirely when done to wipe the RAM cache so that it will release your memory. (It also means you can close a lot of tabs on mass; I miss Close Right Tabs.)

    Some programs, though, are just stupid. Inkscape leaks horrendously, reaching 100 MB after maybe 20 minutes on only the most trivial little image. Thunderbird uses up to 30 MB for goodness knows what reason. Pidgin, bless it's heart, also has a slow leak that after not that many days is up to 50 MB or more. The developers refuse to accept that it's a leak, but honestly, with every window but the buddy list closed, what on earth is it saving 50 MB of? I don't have the History plugin running either.

    Process Explorer leaks, too, it seems. Windows Explorer leaks entire BROWSEUI.DLL threads, until it has so many old threads lying around that Windows is out of window handles and you can't even open a menu any more until you close an existing window. I've oddly not had that happen lately, perhaps I reboot before it gets so bad that I have to slay Explorer. But it's so common for apps to leak -- turning off the PC at night at least serves the purpose of clearing the mess out and starting over, but I just get to go on a killing spree and take out everything that's sprung one.

    The only leak I know of on my Mac OS 9 box is Outlook Express 5. It's a wonderful app, and far more efficient than Thunderbird, but if you use it for IMAP, it causes the kernel to leak RAM. After 60 days uptime, the kernel may have leaked maybe 35 MB? I forget quite how much ... not a lot, but the system does start to slowly grind to a halt at this point and rebooting is necessary. It's the only thing I've ever seen that causes OS 9's kernel to leak RAM, not that RAM leaking seems to occur on 9 at all. The memory model probably got it noticed and nailed very fast ...


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