Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

Hi, my Firefox (the latest public version 2.0.0.1) is leaking memory. I know that you think you’ve heard this before and that it’s extensions, or old version, but seriously this has to stop:

Fixed! Removing the Firebug extension completely solves the problem. I don’t know why Firebug leaks memory, but trust me, it does.

Yup, it’s using 623MB of memory. Opening a new tab is visibly sluggish. Closing a tab, clicking on links–every action takes seconds to perform on my Core Duo 2 6600 processor with 4 GB of RAM. Extensions? I’m running two: Firebug and an S3 attachment:

The secret Firefox memory cache page (about:cache) returns nothing out of the ordinary:

Number of entries: 1114
Maximum storage size: 28672 KiB
Storage in use: 75316 KiB
Inactive storage: 0 KiB

I have no idea what’s causing this behavior, so I’m going to ask for help. Digg this and let the world know Firefox *still* has memory management issues.

The new Firefox 2.0 RC2 is up for public download and spots one new UI change I really appreciate: shiny tabs. Their new tabs look fabulous, with brighter colors and web 2.0 gradients:

If we compare this to the IE7 tabs we see a similarity emerge:

Firefox here is innovating their UI off Microsoft’s IE 7 by providing “shiny tabs,” not that I mind, of course.

Design Detector has an awesome article which details the problems faced by IE7. I’ve pointed out font problems that I encountered myself, but the real sticker is that IE7 doesn’t feel sleek, new, or awesome. It’s better than IE6, but it still lags way behind firefox in terms of general usefullness. Why are people going to use Microsoft’s browser when it doesn’t perform better than Firefox?