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Mozilla Fixed a 14-Year-Old Bug In Firefox, Now Adblock Plus Uses Less Memory

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla launched Firefox 41 yesterday. Today, Adblock Plus confirmed the update "massively improves" the memory usage of its Firefox add-on. This particular memory issue was brought up in May 2014 by Mozilla and by Adblock Plus. But one of the bugs that contributed to the problem was actually first reported on Bugzilla in April 2001 (bug 77999).

41 of 410 comments (clear)

  1. Why use ABP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    When you can use ublock Origin, which uses even less ram.

  2. Nice! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Now I can not only block the Kardashians but also Donald Trump and Taylor Swift.

    1. Re:Nice! by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Funny

      I’m sorry, Taylor Swift is good and all, but Beyonce had one of the best presidencies of all time!

  3. Other bugs by penguinoid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When will they fix the bug that's slowly turning Firefox into a crappy clone of Chrome?

    --
    Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
    1. Re:Other bugs by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 5, Interesting

      When will they fix the bug that's slowly turning Firefox into a crappy clone of Chrome?

      I think that particular cancer has it has gone malignant and spread to far already. I think I am going to jump ship to sea-monkey if this keeps up, I mean, I already use Firefox and Thunderbird, and they have crammed webIDE into Firefox anyway so I may as well have it all in one piece. I will probably wait for my biannual OS version bump, But that may change to now too, as Ubuntu has jumped aboard the systemD titanic on the next LTS version.

      Is is just me or has the whole software world lost its mind.

      Windows is trying to go full panopticon and you pay a subscription for it.
      Linux distros are going batshit crazy and slapping a tablet UI on desktops and putting immature, kitchen sink crap-ware as their init
      android is trying to kill external storage as unlimited dataplans are killed off.
      Mobile has killed the idea of fallowing open standards and you need separate apps for every network so you can talk to everyone Skype, face book messenger, google hangouts/voice/chat/mail/talk, snap-chat, whatsapp, ... when previously I could just use pidgin and talk to everyone.
      Cloud storage everything, when storage has never been cheaper.
      And Mozilla's insanity from lets clone chrome to making Firefox a catch all when it was meant to be just the browser, and wasting resources on building their own os.

      what the hell.

      --
      ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
    2. Re:Other bugs by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

      what the hell.

      Monetization. Ad revenue. Analytics. Corporate branding. Vendor lock-in. Cloud services. Walled gardens. Subscriptions.

      Absolutely the software world has lost its mind. The software isn't the point any more; all this other crap is.

      I've lost track of how many apps I've now uninstalled because they do NOTHING you can't access with a browser. But the apps want to embed themselves so they can access your data.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    3. Re:Other bugs by Anna+Merikin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Aaah, I can tell you're a young one.... 'Tis the sign of another tech bubble, all of it. It's a replay of 1997-2000, but in a different mix. Now, google plays the part of Microsoft; Mozilla is alter-Netscape, trying to catch up; and Girls is Bizarro-Friends.

      As Mark Twain famously said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."

    4. Re:Other bugs by edxwelch · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That's why I use Pale Moon - which is basically the Firefox UI as it was 5 years ago, but with all the latest core updates.

    5. Re:Other bugs by Lennie · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Why would you single out software ?

      The whole world has lost their mind (with the US being one of the countries at the front).

      Let's take the economy as an example.

      You think this interest rate is normal ?:
      http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

      You think quantitative easing is the new normal ?

      Even if you agree that these are necessary measures you'd have to agree they should only be temporarily.

      --
      New things are always on the horizon
  4. Analogy of my Relationship with Firefox by The+Faywood+Assassin · · Score: 5, Funny

    Using Firefox has become like that relationship that used to be perfect and then out of nowhere your partner starts cheating on you and each time swears its going to be the last time.

    And you keep falling for it.

    --

    "I'm a humble person really,

    I'm actually much greater than I think I am"

  5. New Tab by nmb3000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Firefox 41 also removed the New Tab URL preference (browser.newtab.url), telling people to use a third-party extension instead.

    The reason? Malware can change the setting. Full stop. That's it. So, because someone's computer is already compromised, and that malware changed a Firefox preference (alongside doing things like, you know, running a keylogger), Mozilla decided to cause headache and grief for everyone else. And to top it all off, if you want to continue to configure the new tab URL, you should use an extension written by some random guy.

    I just don't understand the mentality. Choosing the default URL for a new tab seems like such an obvious feature, yet it's getting ripped out too, like so many others that Gavin Sharp has pissed on. Fuck Mozilla.

    --
    "What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
    /)
    1. Re:New Tab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      They also refuse to honor JPG rotation, because it might break the internet, without bothering to check and see if properly following the standard would make things better or worse.

    2. Re:New Tab by dejitaru · · Score: 2

      That's been Mozilla's method lately. They decide what they want for the browser, and not the used, which is why there was a lot of customization removed from the browser. Their only excuse is to use an extension, in which needs to be signed by them. I am starting to think that most browsers are just moving to the casual user and making them dumb-down and not caring for any poweruser. I mean, Opera did the same thing, dropped their code and just making a worthless browser based on chromium, losing all of their features that was in 12.x. /2cents

    3. Re:New Tab by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 2

      Wow. As if Mozilla couldn't get any more stupid.

      I love that Tim Berners-Lee called them out on their bullshit:

      * Web Security - "HTTPS Everywhere" harmful

      And Andrea Ronchetti gives perfect use case that this retarded move would break:

      But if i want to see an html page which is saved in my hard disk, can i do it? And with software as EasyPhp there will be some problems?

    4. Re:New Tab by Kjella · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I just don't understand the mentality.

      The mentality is that you can and should build your own franken-browser from whatever plug-ins fits you, it's not supposed to be a fully functional browser you can extend but more like a skeleton you can build on. It happens when you go over the top on flexibility and think people want a DIY kit instead of a product. The problem is the same as why you can't fit any car body with any chassis with any engine with any transmission with any brakes with any interior, they don't all go together. And some parts are shit, but only by hogging memory or crashing in ways that aren't easily traceable. I don't want to be the unit and integration tester in a modern day DLL hell, because Mozilla's will not take any responsibility for plug-ins trampling over each other or bringing the browser to its knees. Don't get me wrong, the basic idea that you can write an obscure plug-in without bloating the main code base and getting approval to push it out to 100+ million users is great. But it should be more of a test bed to see what functionality should be standard for the masses, rather than pushing more and more functionality out of the core. Here's an early alpha of Firefox 100, you can have HTML engine plugins, Javascript engine plugins, UI plugins, in fact any functionality you'd care to think of. It looks like this:

      main()
      {
              loadPlugins()
      }

      Great, yes?

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  6. Re:Ublock = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ah. An AdBlock thread without APK is like a outhouse without the stink.

  7. It's not a bug by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Informative

    AFAICT it's not a bug, more of a feature request.
    The problem was that style sheets were not being shared between pages, even if they were identical. So AdBlockPro had a copy of its style sheets shared in each tab. Apparently it uses a large style sheet?

    So this change allowed for some de-duplication.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    1. Re:It's not a bug by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      I can't imagine that matching all those rules against the page as it loads is particularly fast either...

      I think you're probably right, but compared to actually loading the ads, it seems to be an order of magnitude faster.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  8. What? by OverlordQ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I thought Firefox didn't have any memory issues? That was the party line from Mozilla for so long.

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
  9. Re:Ublock = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    On behalf of all other AC's I apologize for this piece of unintelligible tripe.
    I realize we do not have a very good reputation, but this is below even our standards. And that includes goatse, GNAA and even DICE editing standards.

    Again, on behalf of all AC's, our sincerest apologies.

  10. Re:Ublock = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Here comes Slashdot's resident spammer to tell us why browser extensions are bad, but some bullshit software he wrote (which just rides the coattails of other people) is good.

    Notice he never addresses how advertising companies spin up new servers day in and day out, but no operating system's implementation of /etc/hosts will support wildcards on a domain. Blocking foo.adserver.com is useless when they create bar.adserver.com and baz.adserver.com an hour from now. Instead, he will ad-hominem attack anyone mentioning this.

    Notice he never addresses the fact that advertising companies have begun serving their ads directly from IP addresses, bypassing DNS altogether. Instead, he will ad-hominem attack anyone mentioning this.

    Notice he never addresses the fact that browser extensions can recognize and block certain DOM elements no matter where they come from, whereas a hosts file is completely incapable of assisting in this manner. Instead, he will ad-hominem attack anyone mentioning this.

  11. Re:Ublock = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by Coren22 · · Score: 2

    Also, that is actually nonsensical as a DNS BL is something you are added to that the other person uses, you can't get by it by using a hosts file on either end (as a hosts file isn't anything like a DNS BL).

    But that is ok, when you bring up problems with his hosts files, it is nothing but ad hominem and "I totally showed you up" when he did nothing of the sort.

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  12. Re:The hosts file or DNS are better solutions IMHO by bananaquackmoo · · Score: 2

    So you would slow down your router instead of your browser? The router that's used for more than webpages? The router that has less horsepower than your computer?

  13. Re:Coren22 WRONG: If I avoid DNS by Coren22 · · Score: 2

    DNS Blocking isn't the same thing as DNS BL, stop backpedaling.

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  14. 14 year old bug huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well, way to go Firefox! Right on top of things! But I thought Firefox has been saying for years it has no memory issues? So is this a 14 year old issue that really isn't an issue that now has been fixed? Got it.

    1. Re:14 year old bug huh? by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 4, Informative

      We are relatively lean and mean compared to other browsers, but that doesn't mean "no memory issues", of course. So enough with the straw men.

      FF used to be lean and mean, but honestly, there is no way I can say that with a straight face now. I still like FF, but with all the crap packed into it by default, "lean and mean" just doesn't apply.

      Is it still the best browser out there? Maybe, but I feel it's gone downhill in the last 10 ~20 releases. There's no denying it, and this bullshit memory issue has been plaguing for a long, long time.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  15. Re:I have seen that happen. by Daetrin · · Score: 5, Informative

    I would buy into that argument more if Firefox actually released all the memory from tabs when you were done doing using them.

    Coincidentally i just happen to have 100 tabs open, spread across 9 windows, and Firefox is currently consuming 2,871,288 K of private memory.

    Close one window with 8 (graphically dense tabs). Wait 30 seconds. Now down to 2,802,295 K.

    Close a window with 15 tabs of webcomics. Wait 30 seconds. Now down to 2,717,452 K

    I won't bore with you with the rest of the details. Continue closing windows, then tabs, until this post is the only tab left. Still using 1,979,024 K!

    The other 99 tabs were apparently just a little it's over 9000 K each, but this last tab is holding on to almost 2 GB of memory with a death grip

    The incentive to close extraneous tabs and windows is pretty minuscule when it doesn't actually gain me that much. So instead i open as many tabs as i feel like, then just close everything and start over when either Firefox or the PC starts getting sluggish.

    --
    This Space Intentionally Left Blank
  16. Memory hog by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    After a few hours of use with, say, ~10 tabs open, Firefox 40.0.3 leaks memory until it's using 2.6G of RAM, at which point it randomly stops loading images, gets very, very laggy, and freezes for ~30 seconds at a time.

    I hope this fixes that (I fail to see how it could make it any worse, frankly).

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    1. Re:Memory hog by Mal-2 · · Score: 2

      I had a problem the last time I was streaming video. There was a gap of several seconds between each item in the playlist, for reasons I could not discern. I had copied everything to a local drive (not pulling it from the NAS box) ahead of time for this exact reason, yet here it was doing it.

      It turned out to be the browser -- 64-bit Pale Moon in this particular case -- using 6.5 GB of RAM, making my machine thrash swap (I have 8 GB). Now I know to close and re-start the browser before streaming if it has been active more than a few hours.

      --
      How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
    2. Re:Memory hog by Mal-2 · · Score: 2

      I suppose I should put a time frame on this so people have some idea what era of Pale Moon build I'm discussing. My swap-thrash incident is a whopping 13 days old now. I was streaming to ConnectCast at the time, and getting more than my usual number of decompression burps (where everything goes gray or green until the next keyframe), but didn't think to suspect the browser until I loaded up Task Manager in desperation.

      I have a feeling it wouldn't have made that much difference if I had 16 GB of RAM rather than 8. It just would have postponed things a few hours, and possibly have made the thrashing twice as bad once it did set in. Maybe this is why Windows builds of Firefox are still 32 bit, they want to compartmentalize the damage a little bit.

      --
      How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
  17. Re:I have seen that happen. by Daetrin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And then close Firefox, open it again, with this post as the only tab. 349,349 K. Opening up a second tab takes it to 357,096 K.

    So when you start Firefox has a base footprint of about 340 K + 8K per tab. (Depending on the contents of the page of course.) If it could actually _stay_ like that and recover memory properly when i close tabs then i wouldn't complain. Instead however there was about 1.6 GB of crap stuck in memory before i closed the program completely.

    --
    This Space Intentionally Left Blank
  18. Re:Another open source bug by TemporalBeing · · Score: 2

    Such as? Please show a link to a bug that was reported 30 years ago and not fixed.

    There have been a number of good examples in Windows; for instance there has been a WMF bug for years, fixed in pretty much every version of Windows only to come back again. There's also equivalents of Bash ShellShock, and others. And really, if you want a link just search the /. archives as they've been mentioned in the last year or two as well.

    --
    Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
  19. Re:Been there/done that (ALL that) by MyAlternateID · · Score: 3

    I actually ENJOY watching these troll worms flail all over, blowing all their modpoints (& I just run them dry of them eventually via my UNLIMITED posting abilities here, unlike other ac posters).

    So you you put some effort into being a spammer (boast about it in fact) and you admit that you like disrupting the normal functioning of this site.

    Did you ever ask yourself, "are these the actions of a happy, fulfilled person who has a meaningful life?" You're a pest and you like being a pest. The irony? You have done more to give your hosts program a bad name than anything anyone else could have possibly said.

  20. Re:Been there/done that (ALL that) by MyAlternateID · · Score: 4, Funny

    Get on topic. Do something useful like apk has in his program. You can't prove his points on hosts wrong either. I suppose I for one expect too much from you slashdot trolls. You don't possess the skills to do either one, so go away troll, shoo. I think it's hilarious how apk makes you fools go nuts but you never ever prove him validly technically wrong. Not ever.

    That's the amazing thing about APK and his bootlicking myrmidons (like you). You just can't actually respond to what someone is saying. You read what they said, but you lack the argumentation skill to actually rebut it. Being childish, that causes you to feel like you really don't like that person. Unable to meaingfully respond and filled with your vitriol, all you can do is hand-wave, call names, and change the subject.

    If (for some strange reason) I wanted to, I could do that, too. What I couldn't do is act that way, and then convince myself that I am right and the other guy is a big dummy. That is a true masterwork of functional self-deception.

  21. Re:Ublock = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts by MyAlternateID · · Score: 2

    You're welcome. I think it's funny when apk makes trolls go nuts when they can't prove him wrong.

    If by "go nuts" you mean laugh at how pathetic apk is, then yes, you've driven us stark raving mad. Of course "troll" is "anyone who doesn't agree with apk".

  22. Re:Coren22 WRONG: If I avoid DNS by MyAlternateID · · Score: 2

    DNS Blocking isn't the same thing as DNS BL, stop backpedaling.

    APK and his myrmidon supporters don't backpedal. Backpedaling when it's obvious you are wrong requires honesty, integrity, and a concern for what the truth is. It also requires the courage to admit fault and the grace to want to.

    Expecting APK and his myrmidons to do that is like expecting a cockroach to appreciate opera. It's far beyond their reach.

  23. Re:Another open source bug by Mashiki · · Score: 2

    I dumped FF the moment they decided to start jamming ads in, and included plugins that I'll never use as part of the feature set. Compared to Palemoon or Waterfox, Firefox has a lot of problems and they seem to be killing themselves.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  24. Re:I have seen that happen. by reikae · · Score: 2

    I closed Firefox, opened it again, with that post in one tab and this reply in another. 174,192K. I wonder why the difference is so big.

    Viewing HTML5 video seems to make Firefox's memory usage grow fast and, more importantly, stay high even days after the video tabs have been closed.

  25. Re:Answer this Coren22 (yes or no answer) by Cito · · Score: 2

    Hosts files won't work in Windows 10

    That's been squashed.

    Use DD-WRT on your router, install auto daily blocklist update. Now no devices on network including mobile devices will never see any ads.

  26. Great! So now they can continue fixing ... by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 3, Interesting
    ... all the other 14-20 year old bugs.

    Any idea why it took them so long?

  27. Re:Answer this Coren22 (yes or no answer) by Coren22 · · Score: 2

    If you send me an email, and my mail server is using a DNSBL, my server will get a response such as 127.0.0.5, this would indicate that you send spam (true...), and therefore my email server would drop the email you sent. Please explain how your hosts file will get around DNSBL now, as it isn't something under your control.

    The last digit in the response usually corresponds to the reason that the mail server was blacklisted in some of the DNSBL providers. The RFC calls for the reason to be in a TXT field though.

    If you don't believe me, do a Google search for DNSBL and see what it returns, it surely won't return what you are saying.

    If Slashdot's mail server used a DNSBL, you would never even know your email was refused, it would not reach timothy, he wouldn't even know you had sent an email. Your hosts file will never get around it.

    11.) Get you by dnsbl

    This is a false statement. If you meant it to say DNS Blocking, than change it to that in your future spam.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
    https://tools.ietf.org/html/rf...

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?