Firefox not responding

It’s the weekend which means boring technical posts and repeats.

Click below to read my not particularly interesting analysis.

As I’ve mentioned before I love the Firefox internet browser, but it does have some problems which cause me frustration on a daily basis. I think I’ve worked out the problem though. Firefoxes problem is that it won’t leave the past behind.

Let me explain. With one ‘tab’ open Firefox uses 30000-40000K of memory. A lot compared with most programmes, but not unworkable. But then with a number of tabs open this figure rises until it can reach 80000 to even 120000K. Unfortunately my computer is at severe risk of going into meltdown at this point. But all would be well if when one closed some of the tabs the memory usage figure reduced. But the problem is that on my one year old computer, running Windows XP Service pack two with no viruses and no spyware and running Firefox 1.0.7 with all the updates… it doesn’t. Firefox holds on to the maximum memory usage figure and continues to opeate using that much memory, even if you only have one tab open.

[Other programmes blanked out for security purposes]

So the only answers seem to be to restrict Firefox to two or three tabs at the most, or to close Firefox down at regular intervals, which can be a time consuming process at by this point it will usually be not responding.

Update for those who have surfed in: Since writing this post I have upgraded to Firefox 1.5 which does seem to be a bit better on the whol. Here’s a button for you to get it (button might not show in all browsers).