More usage means more exploits, as proven in the new BN article http://www.betanews.com/..._in_the_Wild/1134066679

firefox is a good browser. iam waiting for seamonkey as it will be even better

Firefox 1.5 Final and earlier version affected by new DoS exploit released yesterday.

Check yourself:
http://blog.tech-security.com

FF rocks .. its the best .. using it since it was launched :) but yeah facing this major issue of MEMORY usage .. hope MOZILLA ppl hear our prayers :P ...

I'm a firefox fan boy since 1.0.x
but still, the memory leaked issues really is troublesome.

my firefox.exe mem usage with 4 tabs open, themed, 3 extensions installed :

http://i3.photobucket.co...ed/firefoxmemusages.jpg

http://www.extensionsmir...ndex.php?showtopic=2875

Just a suggestion - try this tweak by creating a user.js file in your profile. Change the number in the line "user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);" to be the max memory footprint. I think the default is 4Mb, but 32 or 64Mb would do the trick.

I know it's not a support forum, but thought this would help! This is another reason I like firefox - if IE isn't doing what you want it to, you just live with it. Firefox lets you customize and fix problems yourself. The ideal browser - you install all the features you want and don't install useless features you'll never use.

thanks. going to try it out soon. and yes, firefox rocks !
i don't bother much about the mem usages btw, i got humongous source of RAM that anyone could ever dreams of.. :D

Didn't take long. Security Focus published a DOS exploit for Firefox 1.5. Same old, same old.

compare IE : http://secunia.com/advisories/12889/
to Firefox: http://secunia.com/product/4227/

Most computers are runninng on no less then 256mb of ram and most are double or triple that. So who cares about 5-10mb for a much better surfing experience.

I use Firefox and Opera. I'm addicted to the Inline Find and the Bookmark search. It's ruined IE for me. I use the IE tab extension to automatically load domains that are hostile to crossplatform support.

I like Opera's use of platform GUI calls. I think they use Qt. I really can't stand XUL. It could be good--like XAML. Maybe Google could have Joe Beda lead a team to fix it? *hint* *hint*

I've used Firefox as my primary browser since .5 and have never looked back. There were some rough patches a few years ago and I would occasionally have to use IE for certain sites, but it is the superior browser now and I don't see that changing in the near future. What makes it stand head and shoulders above all of it's competitors is the robust extension community. No other browser can touch it once you add extensions to the mix. Yes, they are a pain to configure if you're a newb, but once you get them all set: it is heaven.

I'm not a diehard Mozilla lover either (Thunderbird still has a long way to go, imho), but I've used Firefox OmniWeb, Safari, Camino, IE 5,6 and 7(b), regular Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, Avant, Maxthon, Flock, and Crazy Browser; Firefox (plus extensions) blows them all away. I even prefer it on the Mac platform.

One thing I wish they'd do is to throughly test and incorporate the best & most popular extensions into the install (like K-lite does with codecs) so that the user can pick and choose which extensions to add upon install. Once they streamline that process and the updates, they'll be no stopping the Fox.

How many people installed the new version just to test it for a short time and then will uninstall it? I am one of these people. This will bump up FF usage stats across the net anytime there is new release, doesn't mean people are sticking to it.

Firefox is the BEST, ive used every browser mentioned in this article and sum more, and even though FF might be a bit hungry on resources and should be slimmed down, it is still fast, and superior.

If your not running firefox, you dont know what your missing. I pitty you.

FIREFOX RULES

Ahhhh - I was wondering when the "l33t fanboi cr3w" would show up.

He'd have had more credit if he said "FIREFOX AND OPERA RULE", and you'd have had more credit if you didn't say "Everyone should adopt MS/IE's standards!"

As one who uses Firefox exclusively, I must say that your comment makes me ashamed to be associated with Firefox users such as yourself.

FireFox is ok but i can't see myself using it very offten because ff takes about 7 seconds to just load when you first start and it only takes about 3 to get exactly where i want to go using ie if i have the site bookmarked which is most of the time atleast ff is improving doesn't freeze my system any more so i will continue to give new versions a try but can't see it as my primary browser

I use Portable Firefox. It takes between 2-3s to start the first time after a reboot, and then starts up pretty much instantly after that.

Might have to try that out when i eventualy get around to picking up some SD cards:)

Opera is best tbh ~~~~ Firefox take alot of memory on my PC also the website script support is not greater than Opera

Yeah, memory complaints are BS. FF usually takes up around 5 to 10 more megs than IE. I'm not complaining.

I beg to differ. Maxthon with one tab open writing a review on Betanews: 9Mb.

FireFox in the same situation: 28Mb.

This isn't necessarily consistent either.

What that tells anywone with eyes to see is that the Gecko engine has issues and needs a thorough and conclusive bug hunt.

Why thorough and conclusive? Because the problem has existed since Mozilla. It's not new.

The FF engine(Gecko) is a memory hog. That's what you get when you play with java. Apps using 20mb for...whatever.

I've come to like Opera and now use it as my primary browser.

I tried firefox for a while, but wasn't impressed, Opera on the other hand has some value added features that gives it an edge.

Internet Explorer + a few spyware toolbars can bring down IE's memory usage and stability just as easily as Firefox + several bad extensions. I've personally found that Greasemonkey causes problems with the Javascript Console and that Firefox sometimes does start to hog memory when I'm using the Java plug-in in conjunction with OpenOffice being open and Azureus. I blame Java in that case =) ... I love FF and don't mind restarting every now and then. It's doing so much more for me =)

Suggestions: IETab, foxPose, Web Developer, FasterFox, Google PageRank indicator, and Google Thumbnails plugins.

I like: Greasemonkey, Adblock Plus, Filterset G Updater, Gmail Notifier.

yada yada yada...

More unfounded HYPE.

We've been down this road ad nauseum.

Firefox will remain an "also ran" until:

1) It visits Jenny Craig and slims down - that means FINALLY fixing the HUGE but elusive memory leak inside Gecko that has been there FOREVER

2) It visits a personal trainer and speeds up to match that of the majors

3) It bundles extensions (or grows native features) to flesh out its spartan feature set. The whole concept of relying exclusively on third party extension is rubbish. They're too hard for the Average Joe to find and hinder widespread acceptance. The least the devs should do if they had any intelligence and really wanted market share is to bundle the more useful ones, or absob them into the build.

4) It developes a common interface to manage the features of all those extensions. The current ad hoc approach of everyone rolling their own is crap. Standatdize on a snap-in architecture and be done with it.

5) It fixes the utterly inexcusable "breaks plugins and installations on every single upgrade" B******T. That's just stupidity.

6) It supports IE sites properly - period.

None of these issues are unfixable. However, the window of opportunity within which they'll have an effect on the mass user community is closing rapidly. IE7 is entering public Beta. Maxthon is a premier MS partner. Any idea what IE7 is going to look and function like? Not rocket science.

Zilland has been at this game for a lot of years now and STILL their products are amateurish and unpolished. They STILL make geek decisions instead of strategic ones. They STILL don't understand what a user is and how to get and keep one using their products.

That's why I *still* won't use Firefox on any of my six computers and do not recommend it. There are just too many other solutions out there that simply outclass it.

So here we have another rah rah article that the "l33t fanboi cr3w" (read: the "greasy kidz" in "greasy kidz stuff") will gush over and vehemently defend but just like the browser itself, it's more hype than substance.

*yawn*

eh people want it scaled down adding all those extra plugins from third parties is an option

but maybe making an approved list and having an option to also download these sounds ok

and running like IE? IE should run like FF, IE has a harder time supporting sandards than FF does.

IE has issues supporting newer web standards - agreed. But FF has issues supporting THE standard: IE.

Well my standard is that everyone should pay me money, and if I ever become rich and powerful I'm going to squish people into oblivion if they don't do what I want!

Err...hey, why don't you people like my standard?

Ah - I see you're trying to make it in the corporate business world - you know, the REAL world.

Good luck with that.

1) Would be very nice.
2) It's fast - not like Opera, but I find on average it renders pages about 30% faster than IE does, and with a few extensions it contacts pages and receives them about 200ms faster. Also, it's not in memory 100% of the time. Things like Portable Firefox are good attempts at slimming it down, and actually work fairly well for anyone that enjoys tweaking and setting up their windows install to suit them perfectly.

3) Yes, that would be nice. A page with all the extensions the average joe should get, and be presented with it the first time they start FF.

4) Most of the devs are doing quite well, and out of the extensions I use the only one that stands out is Adblock. Adblock Plus even fixes that a bit though, but it does still choose to have a separate menu rather than just options in the Extensions panel.

5) I think the whole point of the 1.5 update was to do this. It's got lots of fixes and new features, so hopefully we can all get another year in before they break everything at v2.0. :P

6) Impossible. That would require adding tons of exploits and s***ty code to FF. IE renders sites how it does, because it doesn't adhere to standards. Surely you've heard about all the XSS attacks recently? I'd hardly want FF to support that type of page parsing and site rendering.

"Impossible. That would require adding tons of exploits and s***ty code to FF. IE renders sites how it does, because it doesn't adhere to standards. Surely you've heard about all the XSS attacks recently? I'd hardly want FF to support that type of page parsing and site rendering. "

Funny thing - Maxthon runs the IE core, plugged the holes and has no issues. Mind you, that dev KNOWS what he's doing.

The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. Translation: they're nice to have but generally don't amount to a hill of beans in the face of practical, operational de facto "standards". The idea is to have the page display properly. How that is accomplished is largely irrelevant. Standards discussions in this case are more for the "why is there air" academic crowd and are about as meaningful. Something else is alrerady out there in great preponderance. Support it or get out of the game (translation: get used to always being niche - which FF is and will remain).

On the concept of 1.5 plugging memory leaks:

It Failed.

Again.

Well, they're up to Gecko 1.8. Perhaps they're aiming to correct all memory leaks by 2.2? :P

Yeah....Maxthon is good, but IE is quite bad. If Maxthon came packaged with windows I'd be happy. If IE did I'd gut it out because of all the exploits it brings with it.

I wonder if it would be possible to slap an IE skin on Opera? Everyone agrees that Opera is one of the fastest and most secure browsers(although it's not integrated into windows, so it does need to load when you start it). Currently I only know of the convert FF to IE skin.

Roj, your list of complaints are completely valid. I agree with almost every single one of them. Too bad you negate the effectiveness of your post with that last (unnecessary) paragraph.

"3) It bundles extensions (or grows native features) to flesh out its spartan feature set. The whole concept of relying exclusively on third party extension is rubbish. They're too hard for the Average Joe to find and hinder widespread acceptance. The least the devs should do if they had any intelligence and really wanted market share is to bundle the more useful ones, or absob them into the build."

My God, you're right! That LINK on the FIRST PAGE loaded once you've installed it to the EXTENSIONS site is absolutely HIDDEN!

"5) It fixes the utterly inexcusable "breaks plugins and installations on every single upgrade" B******T. That's just stupidity."

That's not Firefox, that's the developers. Seriously. They put the max version in the extension-file. If it's set to 1.4, it will not work on 1.5 or later until either updated by the dev, or edited by the user.

"
6) It supports IE sites properly - period."

Never. Going. To. Happen. Period. ActiveX will never see the light of day in Firefox. Thank. God.

As far as the memory bug is concerned, I have not seen it on *any* system I have installed Firefox on. What extensions/plugins are you using? Have you updated your video-drivers lately?

Wow, another immature rant. Allow me to break down your comment, if you would call it that, number by number.

1.) Oh, no! Firefox with one tab open takes up 20 MB of RAM? Let's see what IE7 has to say (and don't give me that "But it's only beta!" crap, we're comparing apples to apples). Hey, 48.2 MB! Yeah, I can TOTALLY understand where you get the whole "memory leak" idea.

2.) Firefox is fast. If by "majors" you mean the likes of Internet Explorer and it's clones, then you must seriously have never used Firefox, or at least any of the past six versions.

3.) The whole point of Firefox is to install nothing other than the browser itself. Add extensions, then you get a larger installer. While that might not concern someone like myself who has DSL, people on dialup would suffer, because downloading a 5+ MB file @ 5-7 KBps is slow as it is.

4.) Extension Manager. I promise, it isn't like Santa, it really does exist. In addition, extensions are coded by programmers of various levels of experience. "Standatdization" already exists, as you don't require custom builds of Firefox to run a certain extension. That brings us to number....

5.) Extension compatibility only goes as far as the extension programmers want it to go. If a programmer isn't comfortable with an extension running on 1.6a, then they'll set the compatibility range for 0.7 to 1.5, for example.

6.) IE sites? Are you out of your freaking mind? Yeah, let's have a W3C compliant browser support an unofficial set of extensions to the W3C standards! Finally, my FrontPage site'll look just as good in Firefox as it does in IE!

Feel honored that I took the time to actually analyze your comment and completely counterargue it, with valid statements.

I'm in sync with our binary friend. Any page that does not render properly with FF is not in compliance with W3C - MS does not dictate the standards. The Gecko engine is on steroids. Sure there's room for improvement, just like MS is trying to make improvements with IE7. If you can't handle that, then beta testing is NOT for you - as there is sometimes a blur between the cutting edge and the bleeding edge. BTW, I propose we remove the word "bloat" from Betanews, as most people use this word without knowing what the h#ll they're talking about. Just one last gripe... we should first attempt a "standatdization" with the English language. A lame argument is only underscored by a lame commenter who can't spell.

Yeah, new features in 1.5 is great, but the memory... Each time, when I open more than ten pages, my FF starts to blow up everything. Thats why I still use combo FF and Opera, Opera for normal use and FF for uncompatible-with-Opera pages, maybe sometimes IE for some only MS pages

But I've wondered of 0.53% market share Opera, its a really good choice

Never had that problem. Seems to affect some folks but not others. It would be interesting to see what extensions, plugins, and other programs are installed that might be a contributing factor.

i get that problem only when i open jpgs (more than 15 at a time) but maybe because im using an old CPU (athlon 800 mhz)

Athlon....or Duron?

Why would it matter what processor he has?

I've played around with several durons. One of them ran FF fine, but it had a GeForce 2 MX 400 in it. Another had some 8mb videocard I've never heard of, and it performed a bit poorer...visible and slow rendering and stuff.

I've been running AMD since 1998 and never found a thing that wouldn't run properly because of the processor or chipset. Video drivers - another matter entirely.

8Mb video card? Whoa bro - get real. This is 2005. :)

Heh, it's not mine. :P

I just fix them up after people bring totally screwed and dead comps to me...usually with Norton.

Critical mass yeah right it's a fricken browser lets not over dramatize, it's still a memory hog and still buggy!

I wonder what percentage is still on peoples computers!

It's on 100% of my computers.

While I always liked Internet Explorer, I've now customized Firefox with so many extensions that there's no way I could go back to a "normal" IE, even with tabbed browsing. IE now feels so naked, and not in a good way!

Now, if they could only decrease the memory used by Firefox...

I think 'so many extensions' might have somethig to do with that.

;)

I have 7 installed, and firefox.exe is taking 33.148 K with 6 tabs open.

I just opened 2 windows of IE, one to BN, and one 2 Slashdot @ 34,736 K. (obviously no extensions)

Can't say I'm at all upset by Firefox's memory usage.

I used to use FireFox.
Like the previous comment,.... way too much memory usage for a simple web browser for me.

I just keep my Anti-crapware updated, and haven't really had any issues at all.

Oh, except the browser I use only uses 8 megs of memory with a bunch of windows open, as opposed to 110+ megs in FF. What's up with that ?

Maybe FF users all have over a gig of ram, or something, I don't know.

Usage stats from my PC: (Personal Experience)

Opera (4 tabs, no 3rd party apps/plugins
Firefox (7 extensions, 4 tabs, the big 3 plugins)
IE, plugins, no extensions, 2 windows.

Opera: 35,700
Firefox: 38,328
IE: 34,900

*shrug*

So, it's IE, Opera, Firefox, but the differences are negligable. The most usefull, for me, is still FireFox, by far with the 7 extensions I use heavilly.

Though, I gotta admit, I being ablt to close the tab with the button *on* the tab in Opera.

...I'm sure there's a FF extension out there for that somewhere.

You're completely wrong with your assumptions, and I don't want to go to boring details or flame...

but FF memmory usage is ridiculous! It is his great weeknes and BIG BIG problem, it is normally using 300MB of memmory with just 1 tab open, sometimes goes to 700MB w/o a hassle.

I don't want to provide details, you can check them on forums or on developer lists or on Burning Edge blog or anywhere.

The problem is there, it is being working on but very very slowly, because the memmory leaks existed for some years and it seems it will exist for some time...

maybe you didn't read your other post, or you are making this up as you go, or maybe you have a memory leak.. either way, you are contradicting yourself.

--
Opera (4 tabs, no 3rd party apps/plugins
Firefox (7 extensions, 4 tabs, the big 3 plugins)
IE, plugins, no extensions, 2 windows.

Opera: 35,700
Firefox: 38,328
IE: 34,900
--

Now you state you are getting 33,148 in FF with 2 more tabs open? WTF?!?

Not eveyone suffers from memory problems.
I have 3 FF browsers open (not 3 tabs)and together
they're using 46MB.
(I have noticed that if they stay open overnight or longer, they sometimes start to increase their memory usage.)

"the browser I use only uses 8 megs of memory with a bunch of windows open"

Dear Orbitration,
What browser uses 8 MB's for several windows??!!
Please reveal your secret!!

I have not tested IE/Opera recently, but here's what I have....

Gutted Windows: 40mb
avast, kerio, TeaTimer, Locate: 55mb
(That's 95mb memory usage after booting....)

I opened 37 windows in Firefox to various sites(my taskbar was nothing but swirly FF icons :) ), and the memory usage went up to 106mb!

I don't use tabs. They're annoying, slow, and seem to have memory leak problems.

"Gutted Windows"?

Please tell me you're not one of these poor misguided folks who actually subscribes to the whole "Windows Lite" BS (not to be confused with turning off services like indexing).

Hey man, whatever floats your boat.

Removing IE's core dropped Window's memory usage 25mb(65mb with nothing running to 40mb)

Removing the .net framework dropped my win2k boot time from 45s to 25s.

Perhaps gutting stuff out isn't the best thing on an XP machine, but on windows 2000, there's no better way to go!

Windows 2000 is quite efficient for single tasks, and I use it for games. Older games(2003-2004) seem to run incredibly fast on it compared to XP. I've beaten tons of X2 4400+'s for game load times(8/14 that I've asked) and lag comparisons(at what point can you no longer click! :D ) with my AMD Athlon 2800+, simply because the games don't support those processors well, and XP is sucking 30% of your gaming power away.

I tried XP once...and went back. I'm happier fooling people into thinking I have something top of the line. When I load right after the dude that spent $2000 on his comp.

Nice way to cripple internet integration that buys you nothing.

Nice "head in the sand" trick to ignore the API that every vendor on every platform is heading for as fast as they can steam, again gaining you nothing.

Game load and boot time ain't squat - it's overall game performance that matters. I also run 24/7 so the whole concept of boot time is lost on me even more so. Essentially you're telling me that you turned your box into an XBox 1.0 - which I guess is OK if all you do on that box is load and play a game...

Seen a friend's P4 3Ghz running HL2 with all eye candy turned on with zero lag under XP (that P4 is about equivalane to to you 2800+). No worries.

But hey, if you believe it helps...

"I don't use tabs. They're annoying, slow, and seem to have memory leak problems."

Not under Maxthon. And I'm utterly addicted to tabs. Have six open in Maxthon as we speak.

The P4 isn't doing diddly for the eye candy. That's his 1337 videocard. The P4 would be controlling AI and stuff mostly...though yes, it does move polygons and textures around.

Yes, I'm aware that tons of programs are switching to the .net framework. I don't care though, since it's such a huge performance drain on win2k. WinXP, sure, but not Win2k!

My computer is quite secure. It's behind multiple firewalls, only has TCP/IP under the LAN configuration(Who needs networking? Those XP comps wouldn't talk to my 2k anyway :P ), and with so many exploitable system dll's gone, the majority of exploits won't work. To top it off though, most programs do work. I don't use s***ty stuff, but good AV/Firewall, games, paint apps, etc. all run fine. I have about 120 programs installed, so...

I'm curious, what resolution?

Ever used a computer? Quite normal for variations to occur, usually limited to 2-3K, any more than that and something is wrong.

No assumption, those were read from Task Manager as I posted it (Hence the inconsistency with the post above it, as again, it varies 2-3K by the minute...which is *normal*)

You may have issues, and it may be realted to a certain extension or plugin you use. But since it does *not* occur on every installation it would be more helpful to try and narrow down the actual cause instead of simply blaming FF.

Tab Mix Plus

You could do all this crap your talking about to make your computer run faster or...switch to a faster OS (Linux).

True, but with all these tweaks and the native win32 environment, it plays games faster than Cedega can.

Why isnt FireFox update feautre working.. i wasnt informed of the new fasterfox extension update or bugmenot or all in one sidebar..

Well, I guess I was wrong this morning. Only using less than 7 megs with 5 tabs open.

http://kensworld.us/images/maxthon.jpg

Why don't people believe the memory issue? What do I have to gain from not telling the truth.
And the truth is, the same amount of tabs open in FireFox use over 105 megs.

I'm not exaggerating or lying.