I ran Firefox 3 beta 3 on Windows for a week without closing it just recently. It was using 150 MB of memory, with a peak mem usage of 250 MB. Having to close Firefox every few hours isn't the typical Firefox user's experience. Firefox using 100-150 MB of RAM is typical, even when running for many days. It sounds like you're having an unusual problem if you're having to restart it every few hours. Perhaps you may want to follow some of the suggestions on the page I linked to.
Sites that depend on the behavior of IE7 will break unless they add a tag saying they are designed specifically for IE7. Sites that were developed according to standards, and do not rely on the behavior of specific versions of specific browsers, will not break. This is the advantage of designing web sites according to the standards. As a further advantage, they also tend to work in other browsers and on other operating systems.
Hmmmmm... Firefox looks like it uses less memory than other browsers to me. How would we see this "memory whore" thing you're talking about? Can you give me a site to go to that causes Firefox to use much more memory than another browser?
Firefox 2 is one of the most standards compliant browsers around. What other browser does significantly better overall at standards compliance than Firefox? Check out the link I provided to webdevout's information on browser standards support before you reply...
No, the back/forward cache is not going to use hundreds of megabytes fifteen minutes after you start the browser. It holds only up to the last eight pages you visited, for an average memory usage of about 32 MB. It sounds like you are experiencing a very serious memory problem that hardly any Firefox users experience. Typical memory usage is 100-150 MB on Windows.
No, they have not designed it to work in a low memory environment. The minimum memory requirement for mobile Firefox is the same as for the desktop version: 64 MB. That means that mobile Firefox will be limited to running on smartphones at first. In a few years, even typical mobile phones should come with enough memory to run Firefox. I would think the bigger problems would be the small screen and small keyboard.
It is common to see complaints about Firefox's memory usage on Slashdot, but in reality very few people (out of 140 million users) experience serious memory issues. On the MozillaZine forums, discussion of serious memory problems is almost non-existent. Caching will not cause Firefox to use a gigabyte of memory, and neither will fragmentation as far as I'm aware. I don't think anyone knows exactly why Firefox mysteriously uses many hundreds of megabytes of memory for no reason for some users. The users who complain about the problem think it's a problem every Firefox user experiences, so they don't seem to feel the need to explain the details of the problem. I used Firefox 3 beta 3 on Windows for a week, and it was using only 150 MB when I closed it (the peak was 250 MB). Now that many smartphones come with 512 MB of RAM, it doesn't look like lack of RAM will be a problem for Firefox except on low-end smartphones in the near future.
They're looking at getting Firefox running on mobile devices with at least 64 MB of RAM. Smartphones today have 128 MB of RAM or more. If you have a typical mobile phone, Opera Mini is probably a better bet for now.
It looks pretty lightweight to me, if by that you mean it consumes fewer resources than other browsers. On the other hand, if you've got a way to demonstrate Firefox being a pig (one that we can all see and confirm), we'd all love to see it...
If Firefox can't get memory management right at least let make windows/tabs run in separate processes so that we can kill instances we don't care about, rather than keep ending up in a "all 1GB or nothing" situation.
Firefox does have memory leaks, but none that I've seen in Firefox 2 final releases or Firefox 3 beta releases cause Firefox to use 1 GB of RAM in a short time. Perhaps they add up to make Firefox use about 200 MB after a week. If you can tell us how to reproduce Firefox 3 eating up 1 GB of RAM in a short time, give us the steps to reproduce, and then we can file a bug report and get the problem fixed.
If species evolved from one species to another, they would of had to die some time in the middle of the evolution. If this was the case, a majority of fossils on earth would be of these intermediate states.
But every species is always in the middle of evolution, and is therefore in what you might consider an "intermediate state". It's just like the tectonic plates are always moving. At any point, it's where they happen to be at that point. You can't think of species as discrete points that individuals evolve from and to. That's silly.
A condition caused by mutations in one or more genes is called a genetic disorder. However, only a small percentage of mutations cause genetic disorders; most have no impact on health. For example, some mutations alter a gene's DNA base sequence but don't change the function of the protein made by the gene.
If you honestly believe that scientists are deliberately or accidentally leaving out important data from their analysis, please point it out. In this case, however, you are simply mistaken about a basic fact.
The insects that look 59% like a leaf are just slightly less likely to be eaten by a bird. On average, they will tend to have slightly more offspring that share their increased resemblance to leaves. This increases the number of insects that have genes that cause them to resemble leaves. Over thousands and millions of generations, insects will therefore come to look more and more like leaves, if that gives them an advantage in passing on their genes to the next generation. Whether or not you find it intuitive, the idea works. It's used in genetic algorithms to great success.
Except that religion is a set of supernatural and moral claims. Science, on the other hand, deals with the natural, objective, and pragmatic. Its beliefs are not dogmatic, but instead are testable and falsifiable. And do you really not realize the enormous public benefit that science has given us, such as that computer you typed your message on? I'd say it's well worth taxpayer dollars to support such a useful endeavor. No, I'd have to say that science is pretty much as dissimilar to religion as you can get. They are not at odds with each other, but instead complement each other.
I was under the impression that the layering was, in fact, consistent with deposit by a flood followed by tidal pumping and liquefication. I will have to look into this in greater detail. The hydroplate theory, in its full detail, actually accounts for most of the points in article you link to, but not all of them. The points it does not explain are the interesting ones, from my point of
No, most of the layers of the Grand Canyon are consistent with deposits over millions of years in a shallow sea off the coast of a continent. You can tell from the radiometric dating, the size of the deposited grains, and the fossils of life that lives in shallow seas. How could a flood thousands of years ago result in nice horizontal layers deposited with fossils of animals that live in calm, shallow seas, that happen to date to millions of years ago? I'm not a geologist, but I did take several geology courses in college, including two field trips in a nearby area (the Sierra Nevadas and Death Valley) that was deposited and uplifted in the same way, and a course on the geology of the Grand Canyon.
Yes, still a theory. On the other hand, we do not constantly use the term theory when discussing theories. It is understood that all the equations and explanations in science are theories. We speak of Maxwell's Equations, even though they are just theories. We speak of quantum physics, even though we all know it is just a theory. Yes, the theory of evolution is subject to change, if anyone comes up with an alternative or deeper theory with some evidence to back it up. Do you know of any such theory?
It was clear to me when I was in science classes that we were being taught the best understanding of how the universe is, and that our understanding was subject to constant revision. On the other hand, I see people dismissing perpetual motion machines simply because according to the second law of thermodynamics they cannot exist. Scientists (and the rest of us also) should understand that that law is also just a theory, and it maybe needs some revision because it may not be 100% correct in all cases. Therefore, claims about perpetual motion machines and other claims that are "impossible" according to our current understand cannot be dismissed without reviewing the evidence.
The bottom line is that I do agree with you that scientists can become dogmatic in practice. On the other hand, someone who truly groks science knows that all of our current understanding is subject to revision and is open to other possibilities. I, for example, am open to the possibility that evolution does not explain the variety of life. On the other hand, I have yet to see any evidence of any other theory.
I agree bugs are not something to be simply tolerated. On the other hand, experience has shown me that all browsers do crash on occasion. Experience has shown me that all browsers have security vulnerabilities. These are not something to be simply be tolerated, but nonetheless, all browsers have those problems. They are a result of poor design or poor debugging, but whatever, all browsers have those problems. Likewise, in my experience all browsers have memory leaks. They should not be tolerated, but all browsers do have them. If you're going to wait for any browser to have no memory leaks, or never crash, or have no security vulnerabilities found in it, you're going to have to wait for a long, long time.
No, sorry, neither I nor any Firefox developer has ever claimed that Firefox has no memory leaks. Certainly there are extensions with very serious memory leaks. Firefox has some leaks, too, but they are far more subtle than claimed. In most of the memory leak bug reports I've seen recently, you need a special debug build to determine that any memory at all is leaking. If you're seeing Firefox leak lots of memory, please do tell us how to reproduce the problem (it shouldn't be hard at all if the problem is as serious and widespread as you claim), and then developers can fix the problem. I'm asking because I'd like to help get the problem fixed, if there is in fact a problem. Don't you?
If you can find a set of steps that can reliably reproduce a problem with Firefox not releasing memory when closing tabs, go ahead and file a bug report. I've gone through the memory leak bug reports on Windows recently, and haven't run across any bug report that is similar to what you describe. You should test with Firefox 3 beta 3 or a later build, as Firefox 3 has over 13000 bug fixes in it, including over 100 memory leak fixes.
Sorry, the solar minimum occurred in January 2008, when the new solar cycle started. Anyway, when did anyone say that the sun doesn't have an effect on global temperatures? That's a strawman argument.
Let's try again... I hit submit instead of preview:
The arctic icecap is growing again now that it's winter in the Northern hemisphere. Duh.
The small amounts of carbon dioxide given off by humans before the industrial revolution were enough to stave off an ice age. Well, I wonder what catastrophic effects the widescale burning of fossil fuels and forests will have?
Over the past year, the global temperature has gone down somewhat. But the original poster of that data says that it is an anomaly and does not mean global warming is reversing.
The solar minimum is causing temperatures to decrease. The solar minimum is over, so we'll be looking at warming again for the next several years.
Now, I'm no climatologist, but it still seems to me that there's still a consensus among scientists that manmade global warming is occurring. Could you point me to some actual facts and conclusions written by a scientist that might persuade me to think differently?
Slashdot Mirror
I ran Firefox 3 beta 3 on Windows for a week without closing it just recently. It was using 150 MB of memory, with a peak mem usage of 250 MB. Having to close Firefox every few hours isn't the typical Firefox user's experience. Firefox using 100-150 MB of RAM is typical, even when running for many days. It sounds like you're having an unusual problem if you're having to restart it every few hours. Perhaps you may want to follow some of the suggestions on the page I linked to.
Sites that depend on the behavior of IE7 will break unless they add a tag saying they are designed specifically for IE7. Sites that were developed according to standards, and do not rely on the behavior of specific versions of specific browsers, will not break. This is the advantage of designing web sites according to the standards. As a further advantage, they also tend to work in other browsers and on other operating systems.
Hmmmmm... Firefox looks like it uses less memory than other browsers to me. How would we see this "memory whore" thing you're talking about? Can you give me a site to go to that causes Firefox to use much more memory than another browser?
Firefox 2 is one of the most standards compliant browsers around. What other browser does significantly better overall at standards compliance than Firefox? Check out the link I provided to webdevout's information on browser standards support before you reply...
No, the back/forward cache is not going to use hundreds of megabytes fifteen minutes after you start the browser. It holds only up to the last eight pages you visited, for an average memory usage of about 32 MB. It sounds like you are experiencing a very serious memory problem that hardly any Firefox users experience. Typical memory usage is 100-150 MB on Windows.
No, they have not designed it to work in a low memory environment. The minimum memory requirement for mobile Firefox is the same as for the desktop version: 64 MB. That means that mobile Firefox will be limited to running on smartphones at first. In a few years, even typical mobile phones should come with enough memory to run Firefox. I would think the bigger problems would be the small screen and small keyboard.
It is common to see complaints about Firefox's memory usage on Slashdot, but in reality very few people (out of 140 million users) experience serious memory issues. On the MozillaZine forums, discussion of serious memory problems is almost non-existent. Caching will not cause Firefox to use a gigabyte of memory, and neither will fragmentation as far as I'm aware. I don't think anyone knows exactly why Firefox mysteriously uses many hundreds of megabytes of memory for no reason for some users. The users who complain about the problem think it's a problem every Firefox user experiences, so they don't seem to feel the need to explain the details of the problem. I used Firefox 3 beta 3 on Windows for a week, and it was using only 150 MB when I closed it (the peak was 250 MB). Now that many smartphones come with 512 MB of RAM, it doesn't look like lack of RAM will be a problem for Firefox except on low-end smartphones in the near future.
They're looking at getting Firefox running on mobile devices with at least 64 MB of RAM. Smartphones today have 128 MB of RAM or more. If you have a typical mobile phone, Opera Mini is probably a better bet for now.
It looks pretty lightweight to me, if by that you mean it consumes fewer resources than other browsers. On the other hand, if you've got a way to demonstrate Firefox being a pig (one that we can all see and confirm), we'd all love to see it...
Yes, it sure does. I just clicked on it again and the site was up in seconds. Might I suggest remedial trolling?
The insects that look 59% like a leaf are just slightly less likely to be eaten by a bird. On average, they will tend to have slightly more offspring that share their increased resemblance to leaves. This increases the number of insects that have genes that cause them to resemble leaves. Over thousands and millions of generations, insects will therefore come to look more and more like leaves, if that gives them an advantage in passing on their genes to the next generation. Whether or not you find it intuitive, the idea works. It's used in genetic algorithms to great success.
Except that religion is a set of supernatural and moral claims. Science, on the other hand, deals with the natural, objective, and pragmatic. Its beliefs are not dogmatic, but instead are testable and falsifiable. And do you really not realize the enormous public benefit that science has given us, such as that computer you typed your message on? I'd say it's well worth taxpayer dollars to support such a useful endeavor. No, I'd have to say that science is pretty much as dissimilar to religion as you can get. They are not at odds with each other, but instead complement each other.
Yes, still a theory. On the other hand, we do not constantly use the term theory when discussing theories. It is understood that all the equations and explanations in science are theories. We speak of Maxwell's Equations, even though they are just theories. We speak of quantum physics, even though we all know it is just a theory. Yes, the theory of evolution is subject to change, if anyone comes up with an alternative or deeper theory with some evidence to back it up. Do you know of any such theory?
It was clear to me when I was in science classes that we were being taught the best understanding of how the universe is, and that our understanding was subject to constant revision. On the other hand, I see people dismissing perpetual motion machines simply because according to the second law of thermodynamics they cannot exist. Scientists (and the rest of us also) should understand that that law is also just a theory, and it maybe needs some revision because it may not be 100% correct in all cases. Therefore, claims about perpetual motion machines and other claims that are "impossible" according to our current understand cannot be dismissed without reviewing the evidence.
The bottom line is that I do agree with you that scientists can become dogmatic in practice. On the other hand, someone who truly groks science knows that all of our current understanding is subject to revision and is open to other possibilities. I, for example, am open to the possibility that evolution does not explain the variety of life. On the other hand, I have yet to see any evidence of any other theory.
I agree bugs are not something to be simply tolerated. On the other hand, experience has shown me that all browsers do crash on occasion. Experience has shown me that all browsers have security vulnerabilities. These are not something to be simply be tolerated, but nonetheless, all browsers have those problems. They are a result of poor design or poor debugging, but whatever, all browsers have those problems. Likewise, in my experience all browsers have memory leaks. They should not be tolerated, but all browsers do have them. If you're going to wait for any browser to have no memory leaks, or never crash, or have no security vulnerabilities found in it, you're going to have to wait for a long, long time.
No, sorry, neither I nor any Firefox developer has ever claimed that Firefox has no memory leaks. Certainly there are extensions with very serious memory leaks. Firefox has some leaks, too, but they are far more subtle than claimed. In most of the memory leak bug reports I've seen recently, you need a special debug build to determine that any memory at all is leaking. If you're seeing Firefox leak lots of memory, please do tell us how to reproduce the problem (it shouldn't be hard at all if the problem is as serious and widespread as you claim), and then developers can fix the problem. I'm asking because I'd like to help get the problem fixed, if there is in fact a problem. Don't you?
If you can find a set of steps that can reliably reproduce a problem with Firefox not releasing memory when closing tabs, go ahead and file a bug report. I've gone through the memory leak bug reports on Windows recently, and haven't run across any bug report that is similar to what you describe. You should test with Firefox 3 beta 3 or a later build, as Firefox 3 has over 13000 bug fixes in it, including over 100 memory leak fixes.
The link he gave works fine for me. May I suggest trolling 102?
Again, I never said Firefox will not use several hundred megabytes. I said it wouldn't use that much memory for caching.
Sorry, the solar minimum occurred in January 2008, when the new solar cycle started. Anyway, when did anyone say that the sun doesn't have an effect on global temperatures? That's a strawman argument.
- The arctic icecap is growing again now that it's winter in the Northern hemisphere. Duh.
- The small amounts of carbon dioxide given off by humans before the industrial revolution were enough to stave off an ice age. Well, I wonder what catastrophic effects the widescale burning of fossil fuels and forests will have?
- Over the past year, the global temperature has gone down somewhat. But the original poster of that data says that it is an anomaly and does not mean global warming is reversing.
- The solar minimum is causing temperatures to decrease. The solar minimum is over, so we'll be looking at warming again for the next several years.
Now, I'm no climatologist, but it still seems to me that there's still a consensus among scientists that manmade global warming is occurring. Could you point me to some actual facts and conclusions written by a scientist that might persuade me to think differently?