Q&A with Firefox's Blake Ross

dotlin writes to tell us the Seattle PI is running a lengthy and interesting interview with Firefox's Blake Ross. In the interview Ross addresses many of the issues surrounding the future of Firefox including their attempt to streamline Firefox in 2.0, the feature comparison between Firefox and IE, different ways of measuring browser market share, and many more.

Comments

Re:Interesting...

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Your request for a flame war has been rejected for the following reason(s):
[ ]Incorrect assumptions about what people care about.
[ ]Uncreative formulation.
[x]Too obvious an attempt to start a flame.

Re:old news

[LiquidCoooled]

Considering how slashdot is designed to cross post, I don't see how this can be avoided.
After all submissions are made based upon what users of websites find, so its inevitable that some of those sites are on your bookmarks list.

As it happens I read 2/3 of the sites you listed, but hadn't read this interview so slash is doing its job.

Re:old news

[Threni]

> I assume everyone here reads ars,

no

> inq

Never heard of it.

> and el reg

Shit. They think they're funny, but they're not - and most of their stories (apart from the...uh.fascinating "ram production up 2.1% in Q2" type nonsense) are on Slashdot anyway.

Re:Obligatory Question....

[SCPRedMage]

No^H^HWho cares?

Re:old news

[welshwaterloo]

I assume everyone here reads ars, inq and el reg as well as /.

Erm... no. As my boss says (without a hint of irony) "When you assume, you make an ass of yourself

Pesky users

[PinkyDead]

Fortunately we've become kind of accustomed to complaints from the blogosphere and from geeks, which is generally where this line of pressure comes from. We're pretty good at picking out the points that are important to us and really just letting the others go.

Having wombled around the Firefox support site for awhile looking for answers to memory issues, I came to the conclusion that there was a certain level of disinterest in problems that were less than exicting to fix; more so, than other OSS projects. (I fully accept the subjectiveness)

This snippet sort of ties in with this feeling.

Sure, OSS developers can do what they like - I'm not paying them so I don't have much right to complain, fair enough.

But if you want to compete against MS, who are too customer focused then maybe a balance needs to be found which doesn't involve letting so many go.

Re:Pesky users

[bluebox_rob]

Well the paragraph before the one you quoted seems to say the exact opposite, i.e. less emphasis on whizz-bang new features and more tuning under the bonnet:

It looks like the 1.0 release because most of the work that has been going on has been to make it more stable, how do we fix the memory problems that people are complaining about, how do we make everyday tasks easier

I'd say they're heading in the right direction...

Re:Pesky users

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes the user is wrong. One of the strengths of Open Source is that the developers can do the right thing because they don't have to answer to their users. Of course, sometimes the developers are wrong and the users are right, so it's always wise to at least listen to your users' complaints, but if you know that a certain complaint is a misconception, it is better to clear up that misconception than to try and fix something which isn't broken. Some people will not listen when you try and clear up the misconception. As a developer you simply have to let these people go.

Re:Pesky users

[CastrTroy]

It's because the memory issues don't actually exist with Firefox. First there's 2 kinds of memory issues. 1 is the problem with the feature that has it store the pages in memory so that the history feature works better. This isn't a bug, and isn't a memory leak. The second is users complaining that Firefox takes up 700+ MB of RAM. I don't know what kind of funky extension these people are running, but I've never seen that happen. I've had firefox running for days at a time without seeing anywhere over 100 MB. I rarely ever see it go over 75 MB. Then again, I haven't kept it open for months at a time. Maybe if I did, then I may see problems. Then again, its a web browser. You can turn it off once in a while. Get one of those session saving extensions if you don't want to lose all the tabs you have open. They have more important things to fix, like trying to make sure it's CSS/Other standards compatible, and ensuring that there are no security holes.

Re:Pesky users

[FireFury03]

This isn't a bug, and isn't a memory leak.

Well, it might not be a memory leak, but I'd argue that it is a bug. If I leave my FireFox pointing at a auto-refreshing page for a couple of days it *will* OOM my machine. Whether or not that's a memory leak, I'd argue that causing the OOM killer to come out and start blowing away applications is a bug. Now I understand that this memory is supposidly used to cache content to speed up the browsing experience but I'd counter that argument by pointing out that if FireFox is so deep into swap space that it causes my machine to go on holiday for 5 minutes every time I do something because it's thrashing the swap then this isn't speeding up anything.

I've had firefox running for days at a time without seeing anywhere over 100 MB. I rarely ever see it go over 75 MB. Then again, I haven't kept it open for months at a time. Maybe if I did, then I may see problems.

I never close my FireFox unless I absolutely have to. Currently it's using about 281MB:
    PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
  1934 steve 15 0 281m 94m 8624 S 0.0 12.5 191:18.84 firefox-bin
(Yes, I know this includes mmap()ed resources, but I doubt FireFox is mmap()ing much huge stuff).

Then again, its a web browser. You can turn it off once in a while.

That's not really an excuse though is it... Hey, no need to fix memory leaks in Windows, it's only an OS, you can reboot it every so often... :) Shutting stuff down in order to work around a bug is a horrible and very annoying kludge.

Re:Pesky users

[Finuvir]

I've never explored the memory usage issues in Firefox very deeply myself, because as you say it's less than exciting. But the impression I've got from following the project over the last few years is that the memory problems are very hard to find and to fix.

There are lots of bugs that cause memory leaks, a huge number of which have been fixed already. There are also extensions that cause leaks, and combinations of extensions that cause leaks, and so on. If a developer can't reliably reproduce the problem you're seeing then it will be very difficult to fix. But they do seem to be putting a lot of effort into memory problems, from my perspective.

I usually end up killing Firefox no more often than once a week, and that's almost always because of a plug-in problem (Flash, Windows Media Player or Quicktime). This is with 2.0alpha3 on OS X.

Re:Pesky users

[bunratty]

If I leave my FireFox pointing at a auto-refreshing page for a couple of days it *will* OOM my machine.

What page? If that really happens, let's write up a bug report so the problem can be fixed.

Re:Pesky users

[ozmanjusri]

But if you want to compete against MS, who are too customer focused

Now THAT is comedy gold!

Re:Pesky users

[Macthorpe]

I agree with you entirely.

TFA was an interesting read, but nothing on their thoughts on the memory issues and plug-in problems, and certainly nothing on Opera or other browsers, which are trying to leech market share from Firefox like Firefox are from Microsoft.

Firefox 2.0 is going to have to be a lot more efficiently coded in order to keep interest in it. There will always be a hardcore of 'FIREFOX FREE OPEN-SOURCE YAR', but there are also people like me that use the browser that actually works best, and for me Firefox is a lumbering oaf and IE is a security nightmare.

Re:Pesky users

[NickFitz]

TFA was an interesting read, but nothing on their thoughts on the memory issues...

From the answer to the first question:

..most of the work that has been going on has been to make it more stable, how do we fix the memory problems that people are complaining about...

Re:Pesky users

[script_daddy]

[It ain't a bug, it's a feature!]

I agree that Firefox isn't suffering from any memory leaks unless there are poorly programmed extensions involved. A memory leak usually implies an ever-growing usage of memory until the dreaded pagefile is invoked and everything bogs down, while Firefox usually tops out at 100-200MB (depending on number of windows, tabs, and length of history in the individiual tabs). It's hard to deny that Firefox is a memory hog though. Call it a feature if you will, but it's kind of silly to have so high memory demands for a browser that is marketed as light-weight.

I tried installing Firefox on the old PII/III computers on the school I work at, but had to scrap the project because Firefox simply didn't perform well enough under those conditions. Opera, on the other hand, worked like a charm, so don't come dragging with the "IE has an advantage because it's embedded into the OS" lark.

As an addendum, right now Firefox is using 65MB on the computer I'm sitting at with only two tabs open, and the only extensions I've got installed are Tab Clicking Options, New Tab Homepage and Antipagination. I have the luxury to don't care much though, since I've got 2 gigs of system memory, but the Firefox development team would be well adviced to remember that not everybody has that luxury..

Re:Pesky users

[mlefevre]

Well, it might not be a memory leak, but I'd argue that it is a bug. If I leave my FireFox pointing at a auto-refreshing page for a couple of days it *will* OOM my machine.

That sounds like it is a bug, and a memory leak as well. Next question is whether it's a bug in Firefox, or in a plugin or an extension. If you can do enough diagnosis work to allow a developer to reproduce it or figure out where the code is wrong, then it might actually get fixed.

The fact that you can avoid it by closing the browser occasionally doesn't mean it's not a bug, but it does mean that it's likely to affect less people seriously, and therefore that it's less like to be seen as a priority by many of the core developers. But it is open source, so it could be fixed by someone else...

Re:Pesky users

[Jester6641]

Not to sound too much like I'm a sarcastic little jerk, but I don't get your logic. Sure, if you leave your program on for days it will be using a lot of memory and you'll eventually have to shut it down and restart, but why leave it on for a couple of days? What advantage is there in having FF running when you're asleep? Is there some kind of strange connection where if you log off this one site a bomb will go off and you'll kill a bus full of people and Keanu Reeves? I mean, sure, this is something that the loverly Mozilla people should be working on, but closing your browser every once and a while isn't a kludge. They probably looked at the typical user and decided that in normal circumstances people will restart before it becomes a problem and therefore, it's low priority. If it's really baking your noodle, try opera or IE7 or something else and come back with a cost/benefit annalisis and let us know if having to actually close you browser once a day is worth it or if there's a better option out there. But back to my original question, and one I would like answered, is what is so important that you don't ever shut down your browser, even while eating/sleeping?

Re:Pesky users

[Macthorpe]

That's not a thought. That's a confirmation that they are thinking.

Re:Pesky users

[aaronl]

There are two times that *I* am not running a browser, and most people I know are in the same boat. The two times are: rebooting the machine or Firefox crashed.

Also, if you leave FF open for a while without using it, it takes a couple of minutes (really, *minutes*) before you can use it. The UI doesn't update, and the machine is thrashing. This has gotten better over the last few releases, but it still happens, particularly under Windows.

Crashes occur most commonly for me because of Java, Flash, Acrobat, or the Flashblock extension. Java pretty consistently screws up the browser whenever it's started, as does Acrobat Reader. Flash is a random thing, so I'm not certain of how to reproduce it, but sometimes it will trash FF. Flashblock has a memory leak in its JS code. The biggest memory leaks seem to happen by just using the browser, though. Right now, on my Ubuntu box, it's using 256MB total virtual, and 154MB actual RAM.

As far as why you might do this... well, often you are looking at something, and have to leave. People that go and do thing that aren't sitting at the computer 24/7 often have this happen. I doubt even the most hardcore anti-social type on this site never leaves their computer. It's silly to clog up your bookmarks with something you only wanted to finish looking at, too. So, as you're going through things, you pop up a window, minimize it, and come back later. Later might be in a day or two.

Another reason might be that you're reading documentation, and haven't finished what you're doing. This is also rather common. You might have a few sets of documentation that have to be gone through to finish something, so you may even have *several* windows open, that you need to go through.

There are tons of reasons why you might leave the browser running. People leave their IM client open, a lot leave their email client open, you leave your UI open, and your OS running. Why should we have to restart our web browser when we don't restart any of those?

Re:Pesky users

[kminchau]

Well I too am annoyed by this 'bug'/memory leak, and I have needed to close my browser and re-start at least once a day.

The problem with closing the browser for some people is that they may have lots of pages open in tabs at a time (one of the reasons for switching to FF in the first place). Now, you are going to argue that there is such-a-such extension that saves your tabs when you close the browser, but that is less practical when you have more than 10 tabs open at a time. I personally have around a dozen to 40 tabs open at a time every day (I do a lot of surfing), and having it force me to restart my browser is at least a 5-10 minute affair due to the number of tabs that I have open.

Essentially it should not come down to it being the user's responsability for what *I* consider a programming flaw.

On a side note: I consider this to be a serious problem. When you write a computer program that uses the malloc() command, what is the first thing that any Computer Science student learns in their programming course? Immediately use free() to free up the memory when you are done and are not using it (i.e. when you close a tab, free up the memory (yes you can close all your tabs and the memory is still being used)) otherwise you create a memory leak, which is not good. This is basic memory allocation 101. If you write a program that does have these major problems, you did not design the program correctly. Now, (this will probably start some discussion if modded high enough) I will venture that part of this problem was because the program is an open source program. (for sake of discussion) If FireFox was created by Microsoft, we would not have *any* memory problems at all because they plan and design things, and they do stringint testing to ensure that there are no memory leaks or other problems. AND to prove that it would not have any memory problems, they would have built FireFox on top of .NET, which alone, will eliminate all memory problems.

Re:Pesky users

[n0dalus]

Shutting stuff down in order to work around a bug is a horrible and very annoying kludge.

Get Session Manager so you can close your browser and restart it again while saving all your open tabs (I usually have about 20 tabs open). If Firefox starts using too much memory, restart it and all your pages will be back as you left them.

Re:Pesky users

[FireFury03]

What advantage is there in having FF running when you're asleep?

It means I don't have to bother restarting it when I next want to use it. I use the web frequently enough for it to be worthwhile leaving the browser running on my spare monitor so that it's already there when I next want to use it without having to wait for it to start.

closing your browser every once and a while isn't a kludge.

I'm sorry, that's just plain wrong - requiring the user to work around a bug by frequently shutting down software is a kludge. This really is no different to requiring people to reboot their machines every few days because the operating system is incapable of keeping them running.

try opera or IE7 or something else

Opera's user interface is terrible (IMHO), IE is incompatable with all of my computers, has very poor support for web standards and is terminally insecure.

Re:Pesky users

[Sloppy]

Sure, if you leave your program on for days it will be using a lot of memory and you'll eventually have to shut it down and restart, but why leave it on for a couple of days?

Who knows? Who cares? A user can leave non-buggy apps running for weeks without them misbahaving, whether or not I know the user's reason for doing that. Users are unhappy that Firefox doesn't behave like a non-buggy app.

Re:Pesky users

[Knuckles]

If I leave my FireFox pointing at a auto-refreshing page for a couple of days it *will* OOM my machine

It might not be the best solution in general, but firefox has several settings to limit it's memory usage if you run it in non-typical situations. The relevant settings are really easy to google (first hit for 'firefox "memory usage"'), surely quicker than writing your post ;)

Re:Pesky users

[Knuckles]

its not it's. Does anyone else have the experience that his spelling deteriorates after reading /. for too long? I learned English as a second language, and probably because of that I *never* made mistakes based on different spellings for similar pronounciation (their/they're, loose/lose, its/it's, and all the other typical /. stuff). Nowadays though ....

Re:Pesky users

[Pink Tinkletini]

Try Safari. Lean, mean, beautiful, elegant, and somewhat more standards-compliant than Gecko for the standards that matter (i.e., CSS). Oh, and plugins too (that page is maintained by the guy who drew the Firefox icon, who has since switched to Safari).

Re:Pesky users

[Planesdragon]

*never* made mistakes

"make" or "have *never* made".

Your spelling might be correct, but your word-choice needs work.

Re:Pesky users

[jones_supa]

Some people use laptops and just put their machines in suspend. So Firefox does not get closed and the computer is not turned on.

Re:Pesky users

[Knuckles]

In this case I wouldn't call it word choice, but grammatic, and I'm the first to accept that my handle one the English tense system is far from perfect. Can you elaborate?

I thought that saying "I never make mistakes" would mean that I don't make mistakes at all, neither in the past, nor do, nor do I expect i will make any in the future. (Which obviously is not what I tried to express).

And that "I have never made mistakes" would be used to connect the past to the present when the situation described extends through both. Again not what I wanted to express, which was that in the past I didn't, but I do today.

Oh and btw, I didn't claim that I ever spelled perfectly. I just said I didn't make these specific mistakes, probably because I learned the spellings consciously at the same time I learned the word as such, as opposed to first learning the word phonetically and later learning the spelling.

Re:Pesky users

[aaronl]

Considering that all of my machines have 1GB, it isn't that. I have free memory, and I disabled the previous page cache. It's a well known flaw in Firefox.

Re:Pesky users

[feeling kettle]

(that page is maintained by the guy who drew the Firefox icon, who has since switched to Safari).

Actually, I think it's safe to say that Jon Hicks (the person you're talking about) is more of a Camino user than anything right now. He also made http://pimpmycamino.com.

Re:Pesky users

[FireFury03]

Try Safari. Lean, mean, beautiful, elegant, and... ...Incompatable with all my computers.

Re:Pesky users

[Pink Tinkletini]

Not bad! Thanks for the tip.

Re:Pesky users

[Planesdragon]

In this case I wouldn't call it word choice, but grammatic, and I'm the first to accept that my handle one the English tense system is far from perfect. Can you elaborate?

Of course. (Word choice and grammar are essentially the same things.) "Made" is the past-tense of "make." "I never make mistakes", and "I have never made mistakes" are all subtly shades of the exact same meaning.

For common English vernacular, a claim to prefection (such as "I don't make mistakes") tends to come off as rather arrogant. Even Shakesphere had his off moments. A simple passive correction is usually better, such as "didn't you mean 'its'?" or the sarcastic, such as "what about its cool?"

The "I had to learn this as an adult; why can't you keep up with something you learned in grade school?" is a good line, too.

Re:Pesky users

[kimvette]

99MB here with just four tabs open and browser.sessionhistory.max_entries set to 8. It regularly reaches several hundred megabytes and hogs CPU time with heavy use. Oh and for reference sake: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060124 Firefox/1.5.0.1

I'm sure that 1.5.0.4 has improved, but this version hasn't been very painful to run. I have to kill it once or twice a day during heavy use, but most of the time it's after using web apps like ASSP (ASSP brings firefox to its knees, while Konqueror and Opera handle it just fine). To be honest, I'd use konqueror more if it had the same selection of extensions available. That's what keeps me using firefox on Linux.

Re:Pesky users

[Myen]

Umm, the TFA was an interview with Blake Ross. Who, as far as I can tell, has mainly been focusing on his Secret Startup Thingy and SpreadFirefox. That is, not the actual coding... Of course there's nothing interesting about memory issues!

To actually get things that are interesting, you'd need an interview with people deep in the coding - say, dbaron (to randomly pick a name out of a hat) for the back-end stuff, or mconnor for the front end stuff. Of course, they're not a "founder"...

They might as well have interviewed hyatt (the other guy to have started this, IIRC - now at Apple...)

Re:Pesky users

[killjoe]

"But if you want to compete against MS, who are too customer focused then maybe a balance needs to be found which doesn't involve letting so many go."

If you read TFA you would have read the part about where MS abandoned IE for years. Where it didn't give a flying fuck about what was happening to their customers in terms of security and the features their customers wanted.

Do you really think MS track record with IE is better then firefox? If so you need to get educated. MS abandoned this project while their customers were suffering from a relentless assault of security problems.

Re:Pesky users

[Knuckles]

I think I don't understand what you tell me. So what's the correct tense for "I never made this mistake in the past, but I do now?".

And I find it rather odd to say that grammar and word choice are essentially the same thing.

Re:Pesky users

[Paua Fritter]

I think the phrase you are looking for is "I never used to make mistakes".

Re:Pesky users

[Knuckles]

Cool, thanks

Re:Pesky users

[heinousjay]

Safari has an interesting habit of shutting itself down on my macs. I guess that's about as good as restarting Firefox.

Re:Pesky users

[boron boy]

If FireFox was created by Microsoft, we would not have *any* memory problems at all because they plan and design things, and they do stringint testing to ensure that there are no memory leaks or other problems.

I have firefox open with three different websites in tabs.
I then fired up three instances of IE with the same websites.

Firefox memory usage: 80MB
IE Memory usage: 60MB + 35MB + 35MB = 130MB.

In this case firefox wins on memory usage. Of course memory leaks are another thing entirely, but I've had this instance of firefox running all day at work, as I do everyday. I've never seen it go over 100MB.

Of course that is just one man's experience, others have had problems. I switched my roommate over to firefox from IE and he has told me it crashes all the time. Of course that could be because his laptop has its air intake fan on the bottom, so it doubles as a vacuum cleaner when you put it on a flat surface.

Re:Pesky users

[plumby]

its not it's.

You complained about punctuation (actually you complained about spelling when his error was actually punctuation, but I'll skip over that), yet you started your sentence with a lower case letter and it wasn't even a full sentence (unless the first its was meant to be an abreviation of "It is", in which case you should have had an apostrophe in it). What you should have written was You should have used "its", not "it's".

I really should get back to work...

Re:Pesky users

[Gr8Apes]

Then again, its a web browser. You can turn it off once in a while.

That's not really an excuse though is it... Hey, no need to fix memory leaks in Windows, it's only an OS, you can reboot it every so often... :) Shutting stuff down in order to work around a bug is a horrible and very annoying kludge.

This is more akin to installing driver/module 'x' into your os kernel, and it causes a leak. The real answer is to uninstall the problem extension(s). This is not a problem with FF. You can configure the cache settings specifically in the about:config page to shrink FF's memory footprint down, if you want to. I agree this could be a slightly more user friendly process.

I've had FF running for months at a time. It rarely exceeds 150MB, and I do have quite a few extensions loaded. If one starts giving me problems (ForecastFox) it gets unloaded and life returns to normal. BTW, Tab Mix Plus rocks. Don't know about stability issues with it, and there seems to be a hesitation with Ctrl-W closing a tab now, but haven't tracked that down to Tab Mix Plus yet.

Re:Pesky users

[psmears]

(Word choice and grammar are essentially the same things.)

Not at all. Gramatically, "I never made mistakes" and "I never swam mistakes" are equally correct. But the second one would be a very poor choice of words :-)

"Made" is the past-tense of "make." "I never make mistakes", and "I have never made mistakes" are all subtly shades of the exact same meaning.

No, they are not: "I never make mistakes" conveys that you are now in the habit of always being correct (and so won't make any mistakes in the future, or haven't in the recent past). It doesn't say anything about the distant past—so you could quite happily say something like "Now that I read slashdot I never make mistakes"(!). "I have never made mistakes" conveys that, up until now, you haven't made a single mistake—but says nothing about what you intend to do in the future: so you could say "I have never made mistakes, but I want to start now".

I think the GP's intended meaning would probably be best conveyed by saying "I never used to make mistakes"—indicating that, in the past, he wasn't in the habit of making mistakes, with the implication that that's not true now.

Re:Pesky users

[Knuckles]

You complained about punctuation (actually you complained about spelling when his error was actually punctuation, but I'll skip over that), yet ...

Dude, I complained about my own punctuation.

Re:Pesky users

[kminchau]

I had to restart FF, after using it for the beginning of the day (basic e-mail and slashdot surfing), now I have 5 tabs open and FF is taking up 159 MB. For me (because I open many (12+) tabs usually), it is rare for me to see FF under 100Mb

I will have to see what the memory usages for that same kind of scenario is in IE 7 I believe it should be around 80Mb.

Re:Pesky users

[plumby]

Sorry. Didn't notice that. I'll let you off.

Know thy enemy.

[Volanin]

Quoting from the article:

The truth is that [Internet Explorer 7] actually looks pretty good. People don't expect me to say that, they expect me to say that it's terrible [...] I think that it's a solid product, but I think that by the time it comes out, we're going to be another world ahead of them again, so I think it's kind of a step or two behind us.

And quoting The Art of War from Sun Tsu:

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.

I, for one, have pleasure being in the Firefox side of this "war".
And it's relieving to know that Blake seems to have a very clear sight while leading this.

Re:Know thy enemy.

[RonnyJ]

I'd be more interested in their thoughts on Opera, but there's not a single mention of it. IE is certainly a "step or two behind" Firefox as they say, but the same cannot be said for Opera, which, in many ways, is significantly ahead of Firefox.

Re:Know thy enemy.

[Abcd1234]

Except in market share. In a race, you care about the leader of the pack, not the guys in the rear.

Re:On topic

[shird]

you must be new here

Re:Obligatory Question....

[creepynut]

In fact, it does: http://www.mozilla.org/ports/os2/

Re:Obligatory Question....

[lseltzer]

Does it run on the Commodore 64?

at least

[RockModeNick]

I'm personally more than greatful for firefox, because back in the day, netscape sucked so bad I actually really LIKED IE.

Re:old news

[Haeleth]

As my boss says (without a hint of irony) "When you assume, you make an ass of yourself

At last, a sane saying. I've never understood precisely how you assuming something is supposed to make an ass of me.

Memory leaks?

[Stachybotris]

From everything that I've heard mentioned both here and on other sites, the biggest memory hog in Firefox is the Forecastfox extension. Once I uninstalled that, Firefox's footprint dropped down to the 30 megs or so that it's at now from the 70-ish that it was at. Granted, I haven't used said extension in quite a while, so it's possible that this problem has been fixed as well.

Re:Memory leaks?

[CastrTroy]

Yes, my current session is running at 38 Megs. I've seen it get up to 75, but i'm not really checking it all the time, so it may go up to 100 at certain points. That's why I'm convinced its either 1 extension, or a combination of certain extensions that causes the memory usage problems. Usually it tops out around 75 MB, and doesn't get much higher. I see a lot of people complaining about the 700 MB of memory usage. I would really like to know the exact set of extensions they are using, and under which circumstances this happens.

Re:Memory leaks?

[bunratty]

There are lots of extensions with memory leaks and other serious problems. Be sure you're not using an extension on that list if you're having problems.

Plugins, especially Flash, have also been known to cause problems such as high memory use and 100% CPU use after waking up from hiberation. Be sure to get the latest Macromedia, Java, and Acrobat plugins.

Re:Memory leaks?

[Andrew Kismet]

I'm currently dropping in at 173mb of memory usage... however, this is acceptable due to my 1 gig of RAM and my very tasty set of extensions (some lightweight developer tools, FoxyTunes, All-in-One gestures, Tab Mix Plus, Adblock Plus, and several others...)

Re:Memory leaks?

[drinkypoo]

I guess I'll try that soon. Maybe firefox will be down to about 150MB I expect from a modern program, instead of the 349 megabytes that it's using now. This explains why I ran out of memory last time I used photoshop...

Re:Obligatory Question....

[SCPRedMage]

1982 called, it wants it's jokes back.

Blake is really smart...

[Anonymous Coward]

and he must be going on 10 years old now :P

Seriously, it took a teen to turn the Mozilla project into something worthwhile. Imagine how great the world could be if we demote the old guard!

Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird

[knarf]

The day Netscape released the source to Navigator I compiled it and gazed in wonder at this 'real' browser I compiled on my Linux box. I followed the development of the Mozilla project from the failed start based on the old Navigator code via the slow-starting gecko-based suite all the way to the Mozilla suite. Then, suddenly, Firefox (under one if its many names) and Thunderbird appeared. They looked more modern than the Mozilla suite and individually had slightly better performance. I started using the threesome (Firefox, Thunderbird and the suite) next to eachother. For day-to-day browsing I used Firefox, for more involving things the Mozilla suite has always been more appropriate. I have also followed the development of Firefox (and to a lesser extent Thunderbird) closely, building local versions, testing nightlies, etc.

But... my experiences with the latest iterations of Firefox (both the 1.5 series as well as the 2 and 3 development series) have left much to desire. The biggest complaint is the incredible amount of memory the browser consumes - even without any extensions (errr.. Add Ons... Change the name only because Microsoft copies the feature under a different name...?) and with a clean profile. If a browser manages to bring a 2 Ghz system with 768 MB to its knees in a mere half hour of browsing there is something wrong. Unfortunately this often-heard complaint does not seem to get the attention it deserves. Firefox' development strategy being what it is there is not that much opportunity - other than by filing bugs - to influence priorities and design criteria.

So... lately I have switched more and more from using Firefox/Thunderbird to using the Seamonkey suite - the successor to the Mozilla suite. It still feels a bit more dated than Firefox and Thunderbird but it does offer much more in features while having a much smaller memory footprint. Add the Seafox theme and it looks quite a bit like Firefox/Thunderbird.

The way things look now I think Seamonkey will be my browser and mail app of preference. Should Firefox and Thunderbird ever run on top of XULrunner I might switch back but for now I have better things to do with my memory...

Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird

[bunratty]

If a browser manages to bring a 2 Ghz system with 768 MB to its knees in a mere half hour of browsing there is something wrong. Unfortunately this often-heard complaint does not seem to get the attention it deserves.

I agree. Write up a bug report, complete with instructions for how to reproduce the problem, so it can get the attention it deserves.

Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird

[mgblst]

Bug 23423: Memory leak!

How to replicate this bug.

1. Come around to my house.
2. Use Internet for about 30 minutes.
3. Bug will happen!

Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird

[Oxide]

What's funny about what you mentioned is that when firefox orignally started, it was supposed to be the light weight version of Mozilla. Now you're saying it is a bigger memory hog than Mozilla or seamonkey!!

Maybe now we need a light weight version of the light weight version of Mozilla :)

Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird

[SCPRedMage]

This is why /. needs a +1: Amusing mod option; not quite funny, but certainly amusing...

Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird

[SCPRedMage]

If a browser manages to bring a 2 Ghz system with 768 MB to its knees in a mere half hour of browsing there is something wrong.

I'd say so, yeah. But I'm not going to judge Firefox based upon YOUR experience. I'm going to base it on my own; for example, I've had Firefox open for days on this system, with no fewer than eight taps at any given time, ALL of the frequently navigated, along with about a half dozen extension loaded, and yet FF's mem usage is sitting at about 140MB after all that. Not NEAR enough to bring this 512MB system to it's knees.

I'd bet there's some underlying issue with the FF build and/or system setup that causing your problems.

Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird

[cortana]

One way to make such a bug report actually useful would be to install an http proxy and attach the proxy log to your bug report. That way it should be easy to reproduce the pattern of sites that cause you to run out of memory.

Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird

[xoundmind]

Well, here's my experince with Firefox/Mozilla/Seamonkey on Debian testing: Seamonkey is noticably faster in both loading and throughout and the last few weeks since I installed it. I believe a bug report has been filed with Debian pointing out Seamonkey's absense. Hopefully it will appear in sid in the near future.

Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird

[CTho9305]

See, reports like this are why developers get jaded. Hundreds of people say, "use the browser for 30 minutes". Developers use the browser for days and don't experience the problem. Now what? The user is generally either unable or unwilling to get into the nitty gritty of real leak hunting, so nothing can be done. The developer gets frustrated, wondering where this problem is that he can't find.

Fortunately, David Baron wrote the Leak Monitor extension, that looks for a relatively common type of leak, which you can install, but it doesn't catch everything.

Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird

[Anc]

(errr.. Add Ons... Change the name only because Microsoft copies the feature under a different name...?)

Where did you get this one from? They didn't rename extensions to add-ons. Add-ons is just a common name for both extensions and themes and it's nothing new (addons.mozilla.org has existed for quite a while, you know).

But... my experiences with the latest iterations of Firefox (both the 1.5 series as well as the 2 and 3 development series) have left much to desire. The biggest complaint is the incredible amount of memory the browser consumes - even without any extensions [...] and with a clean profile. If a browser manages to bring a 2 Ghz system with 768 MB to its knees in a mere half hour of browsing there is something wrong. Unfortunately this often-heard complaint does not seem to get the attention it deserves.

Quite the opposite, fixing existing memory leaks has been one of the priorities of the development process recently - take a look a the following tracking bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32091 5. You can be sure that you report will get plenty of attention if you can provide reliable steps to reproduce you problems. However, to my knowledge nobody has been able to do that.

Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird

[T-Ranger]

The day Netscape released the source to Navigator I compiled it and gaz.....

No, you did not. The source code that Netscape thrust on the world did not so much as compile for months afterwords. It was missing both third party libraries and the complicated build enviroment required to make it.

Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird

[knarf]

Been there, done that:

Firefox' development strategy being what it is there is not that much opportunity - other than by filing bugs - to influence priorities and design criteria.

The bug reports are there. They just happen to hang around a long time... Often the memory problems are blamed on:

• extensions (but as I already said I use a clean profile (without extensions) for testing purposes)
• 'it is not a bug but a feature to make your browser faster'. It doesn't make it faster if it thrashes the cache...
• 'I never see the problem on my $_box with $_memory and $_tabs open'. Good for you. Others are less lucky.
• 'use the leak detector extension'. I do sometimes just to see what it warns about. It obviously does not warn about the browser hogging memory when that is considered to be a feature.
• 'just use about:config to change the defaults'. If that is necessary the defaults should be changed, Firefox was intended as a browser for everyone - not just the about:configging /etc/sendmail.cf grokking crowd...

I really hope the memory problems (or features if you prefer) get sorted out as Firefox has quite some momentum behind it. It would be sad to see this momentum lost because of some (mis)feature eating PCs alive...

Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird

[dveditz]

No need for an http proxy, the Mozilla networking library comes with built-in logging that can be turned on. For instruction see http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/http/http-d ebugging.html

Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird

[dveditz]

It was certainly incomplete, but it *did* compile. The PBS show "CodeRush" documented this initial effort.

Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird

[dveditz]

'it is not a bug but a feature to make your browser faster'. It doesn't make it faster if it thrashes the cache...

That caching feature makes memory use larger, but isn't a leak -- it's capped at a certain number of pages. If you're seeing a leak (and some people are) that's something else. Many leaks have been fixed in the code that will become Firefox 2 (beta coming soon), you might try that if you're not already too steamed about it. We fixed a few small leaks in the 1.5.0.x releases, but the patches that got the big wins were inappropriate for stability/security releases.

'just use about:config to change the defaults'. If that is necessary the defaults should be changed, Firefox was intended as a browser for everyone - not just the about:configging /etc/sendmail.cf grokking crowd...

Quite true, the about:config changes are more a diagnostic tool. If turning off or limiting the caching feature mentioned above doesn't help then we can stop blaming it. If that does fix it then we know the problem is probably in the code that's intended to limit the amount used by the cache. No one expects normal people to ever use about:config anymore than they should hand-edit linux config files or the Windows sytem registry.

Re:Seamonkey vs. Firefox/Thunderbird

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

I call these 'Heisenbugs'

Re:old news

[eddy]

Sorry, since Ars redesigned away from the Black and Orange to that horrible mess, I don't come back.

The incredible amount of memory

[Vexorian]

I have a 768 MB RAM 2.4 Ghz comp and I always use firefox, I have never experienced problems so far, I can even have firefox open while I play some 3d games , I don't see where your post is coming from, is it really about a real experience? D you use like 30 browser windows at the same time?

I have never seen firefox use more than 70 MB of RAM , that is too much but it is not enough to bring down a comp like mine/yours.

A lot of open-source projects ...

[wysiwia]

because they're started by developers for developers -- people scratching their own itch -- tend to end up with very geeky products. They don't believe in marketing, they don't believe in the mainstream. They're supposed to be the anti-mainstream, right, so it's very hard for most open-source projects to break out of that mentality

Geeks want geeky products, users want usable products. Why can't OpenSource projects break out and make usable products. Live would be much better if at least some could overcome this barrier.

O. Wyss

Re:A lot of open-source projects ...

[desNotes]

"Geeks want geeky products, users want usable products. Why can't OpenSource projects break out and make usable products. Live would be much better if at least some could overcome this barrier."

What is your definition of a 'geeky' product? Is it unusable? I would consider myself a 'geek' an I expect products to be usable and probably expect more from them then a typical user.

Re:A lot of open-source projects ...

[cyborg_zx]

Yeah, it's a bloody stupid fallacy. I don't like unintuitive interfaces anymore than the next man. The only difference between me and the next man is that I'm more likely to be creating them. It's half-arsed development from the asthetically challenged that leads to poor interfaces, not being a freelancer.

Re:A lot of open-source projects ...

[texaport]

What is your definition of a 'geeky' product ... I expect products to be usable

I define "regular users" as those who want zero learning curve from a new version or alternate product.

If these "regular users" are going to discover an additional feature, it will be over the course of loading the program dozens of times in the first few weeks when they are putzing around at their own pace.

Microsoft's personalized menu default option for applications and O/S ensure tunnel vision of only showing options and choices that "regular users" use regularly. Windows hiding all else is a death spiral of ignorance.

Re:A lot of open-source projects ...

[wysiwia]

What is your definition of a 'geeky' product?

A geek has the eagerness and willingness to spend the time learning something new, something different. A user is reluctant to learn anything new and avoids anything different. While something looks rather useful for a geek it's many times a complete mystery to the average user. Yet while geeks thinks something usable, they most of the time don't even understand the problem of a user.

Since usability is always subject to the personal knowledge and taste and since users are the vast majority, usability is mostly defined as usable for ordinary users and not for geeks.

O. Wyss

Re:A lot of open-source projects ...

[killjoe]

"Why can't OpenSource projects break out and make usable products. "

Are you really saying that firefox is not usable? Are you seriously saying IE is?

Re:A lot of open-source projects ...

[RobertLTux]

i think projects should split into a set of groups
1 engine/runtime folks (does it go whrrrrrr when i push the button or does it "sound" like GODS F250 stripping gears 2-5 combined with a 300 car train wreck
2 documentation folks (what button does what and what does which file do for the program[ to include settings files])
3 interface/gui folks (does the placement of this button make sense and is it the right shape/color, hinted correctly ect)

a few general tips /wishes
1 for a cli ap the most common useage for the ap should have the shortest comand ie Foo instead of foo -xdfrg --kde-inteface=active --moonphase=full --input-files=[#long detailed list of files here that just happen to be in the current directory by themselves] --output file /home/fred/documents/foofiles/fred.X978r -spam-Spam-SPAM
2 have a way say foo --dump-setup to place all of the set options into a file( including the preset ones) into the current users home directory and set things so this overrides the system level file
3 avoid long per runtime scans of files (ie SMART should keep its channel cache and not rebuild it on every runtime)
4 expect users to have large collections of data (question for the group name the number of distros that do not have per arch 8-12 gigs of install files (exclude deliberate small distros/live cds and respins of full distros)

Re:A lot of open-source projects ...

[wysiwia]

No. Read the last paragraphs of the original article and you know exactly what's meant.

O. Wyss

Control these issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since these issues are apparently fairly well-known about, is there anything that the Mozilla team has done to try to prevent or resolve them? Is there some easy way to kill an extension that may suffer from a memory leak at runtime, without taking down the whole Firefox or Seamonkey session? Likewise, for plugins. What about preventing such issues in the first place? Is there a mechanism in place to limit the amount of memory a particular plugin or extension can consume?

From the sounds of it, a lot of these problems are not much different than those issues that operating systems typically deal with: allocating resources to competing third-party programs (extensions or plugins, in this case). Perhaps it is time for Firefox to off-load such responsibilities to the operating system it is running above, and instead just provide a standard method of communication between an extension or plugin running as its own, separate, killable process.

Re:Control these issues?

[roman_mir]

Well, the browser doesn't actually 'know' that an extension is really leaking memory vs operating normally. Probably the descriptors can be changed to add certain normal operating memory sizes, so that if the extension goes over a predefined memory size, the browser can give the user a choice to kill the extension. I guess it is possible to write an extension to monitor memory used by other extensions/plugins and give the user an ability to kill/restart extension :)

Re:Control these issues?

[bunratty]

Of course! They've written the Leak Monitor extension to help extension authors to find leaks in their extensions. As far as I know, there's no way to limit the memory an extension uses without causing additional problems, or to kill an extension that's using too much memory. If you have a detailed suggestion for how extensions or plugins could run in their own processes, perhaps you should explain it.

Re:Control these issues?

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

Good question. It shouldn't be too hard to isolate extensions and have them under control through a monitored API. If they even have their own memory allocator, great. If it gets out of control, just kill the thread and remove the memory area. If the extension has to use something like C++, you can still overload the memory portion to use a different memory area and free it all at once, basically doing something like cheap garbage collection.

Of course a real, separate process communicating over sockets is the best solution. Sad that nowadays people always equate the need for extensions with the need to integrate everything into a huge, binary, blob, instead of separating it into processes.

Re:Forms, Textboxes and the Cache

[NickFitz]

I would also like to know when firefox is going to allow its users to turn off the cursor going to the first text box on a page by default. It is a security risk.

That's not Firefox; at least, I never see this behaviour on any of the various versions I run on Mac , Windows or Knoppix. It sounds like the owner of the relevant page has stuck a bit of JavaScript in there to do this; that's the only way I've ever seen this behaviour implemented on any browser. Complain to the owner of the site(s) where you see this (as you say) risky behaviour.

I think people see Google doing this and think "Oh, it must be OK, Google do it". They are morons, because behaviour that enhances usability on Google's home page (where one wants to type in a search query, otherwise one wouldn't be there) can, as in the case you cite, actually detract from usability in other circumstances.

(I suppose the culprit might also be an extension: people have been known to dump irrelevant and unnecessary "cool" features like this in them, too.)

Improved download manager?

[Spy der Mann]

One thing I've always wanted in firefox: A download manager that can resume files, even after having restarted the computer. I have a friend with a modem connection and he has to use Getright (eew) because he usually downloads large files, and he can't leave the computer on all the time.

Re:Improved download manager?

[Maian]

You can try the DownThemAll extension. It's a download manager built into Firefox. Has some minor interface issues (can't get the dtaOneClick feature working), but overall pretty solid and polished.

Re:Improved download manager?

[jp10558]

What's wrong with getright? I personally prefer it as my download manager.

My Guess On The Stealth Mode Startup

[CarnivorousCoder]

Q: You're working on a startup with Joe Hewitt, but you seem to be in stealth mode. What can you say about what you're doing?
Ross: I honestly can't say anything at this point -- especially to a Seattle newspaper.
Q: Why especially to a Seattle newspaper?
Ross: Because the people who are most likely to care about the startup are most likely to be reading your paper.
Q: Over in Redmond?
Ross: Yep.
Q: There seems to be a good relationship between Google and Firefox. Where do you see that relationship going in the long run?

Can anyone say Microsoft Office killer? Google recently revealed a beta spreadsheet app with collaboration features. If Firefox and Google worked together, they could produce one hell of an office suite available from any computer with Internet access.

Re:Interesting...

[abscissa]

Question for parent: the suggestion of a flame war has been raised by (check all that apply):

[ ] Suggesting that Unbuntu is better than OS X
[ ] Pointing out that Linux is a hodgepodge of little compilations
[ ] The mention of a Macbook Pro
[ ] Use of Redhat Linux
[ ] KDE vs. Gnome flamewar attempt
[ ] K is for "Krap" classic troll
[ ] Mention of iPod

You missed Mozilla?

[SanityInAnarchy]

There was a time we had to make a tradeoff -- IE or Mozilla? IE would start up much, much faster, being built-in to the OS and all. Mozilla would be even slower, it being a whole Internet suite (browser, mail, chat...)

But at that point, the choice was pretty clear. Have the Mozilla quickstarter load on boot, or run Linux and have the sheer speed of Linux vs Win98 trump any advantage IE might have over Mozilla. I almost look back and want to call these the golden days of open source, the time where we could've seized enough market share before Win2k to bring the MS Empire down.

Anyway, Mozilla was still damn good. Firefox was just that much better, and eliminated any thought of giving anything up. You can now switch to Firefox and run IE in a Firefox tab. But even before Firefox, the choice was pretty clear.

Matching feature parity?

[munpfazy]

From the article:

Everyone's talking, for example, about how IE7 is ripping off Firefox. I'm very careful to say that they're matching feature parity.

Matching feature parity? What sort of nonsense corporatebabble is that?

Sure, interviews are tough. It's easy to say something stupid without meaning to do so. But you really shouldn't announce that you're "very careful to say" something stupid.

It sounds like Blake Ross has been possessed by the spirit of a dead sales-department mid-level manager.

Re:Matching feature parity?

[blakeross]

Yes, most words look silly out of context. I thought this one was clear in the context of a discussion about browser religion. Moments earlier I said "We really are trying to make it less of a religious thing." Moments after I said "They are ripping off Firefox in a sense, but the truth is that when we started Firefox, we ripped off Internet Explorer because we wanted to make sure that people who migrated from IE felt comfortable in the Firefox world...I think in general, the community understands that this is kind of a collaborative process. There are always going to be people on the fringes who are just kind of zealots in either direction."

Language matters, especially in defusing a religious beliefs. I'm not interested in promoting the idea that Microsoft "ripped off" Firefox.

Re:Matching feature parity?

[blakeross]

Apologies--if you were just criticizing the fact that "matching feature parity" is incomprehensibly redundant, then yes, I'll have to agree with that :) English is hard, especially when you're trying to formulate it over lunch.

Re:Matching feature parity?

[Tore S B]

> Matching feature parity? What sort of nonsense corporatebabble is that?

That "coropratebabble" is the base of most technological advancement to date. Hell, firefox took most of *its* features from Opera, and implemented them a hell of a lot poorer than they have.
"Good artists copy, great artists steal."
          Picasso :)

Re:Matching feature parity?

[munpfazy]

Apologies--if you were just criticizing the fact that "matching feature parity" is incomprehensibly redundant, then yes, I'll have to agree with that :) English is hard, especially when you're trying to formulate it over lunch.

No worries. That's all I meant. The actual content of your statement is perfectly clear (and quite worthwhile and interesting, for that matter.)

It was just a bit of pre-breakfast, curmudgeonly grammar slamming. Hope I didn't offend. (I've certainly said far, far sillier things in public.)

On topic: Religion!

[Gertlex]

We really are trying to make it less of a religious thing. The whole browser space in general has traditionally been very religious.

No way... It must remain a religion... I just redyed my black Firefox hat again a few days ago (I shit you not, the black fades to orange because of my sin: being outside too much).

They created a holy grail already too...
Surely you've seen it?: http://developer.mozilla.org/contests/extendfirefo x/images/grand-prize-pc.png

It's religious, and IE will burn in flames less holy than those of the great fox.

Re:Obligatory Question....

[wheany]

Well stop making "it's" jokes and spell "its" correctly, then.

Re:Obligatory Question....

[WilliamSChips]

The Doctor called, he wants his intertemporal phones back.

Re:old news

[shish]

One assumes the other will have the material.

For your situation to be true, both would have to assume the other will have the material, so they've both made asses of themselves.

Re:Interesting...

[ZachPruckowski]

Not the parent, but I think Ubuntu vs. OS X is shaping up as the "easy to use, non-MS mass desktop takeover" battle. There was a digg flamewar about it when an article mentioned two promenient converts from OS X to Ubuntu. And it's also totally OT. Unless you count the fact that they both run Firefox.

Re:Interesting...

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

[ ] Suggesting that Unbuntu is better than OS X
[ ] Pointing out that Linux is a hodgepodge of little compilations
[ ] The mention of a Macbook Pro
[ ] Use of Redhat Linux
[ ] KDE vs. Gnome flamewar attempt
[ ] K is for "Krap" classic troll
[ ] Mention of iPod
[X] All of the above.

Re:Obligatory Question....

[tomknight]

Redundant? This was the second comment for this story!

Re:Forms, Textboxes and the Cache

[Kristoffer Lunden]

Are bugs filed?

Re:On topic

[bky1701]

On topic(Score:0, Offtopic)

ROFL.