Firefox is a PIG on memory

[Peter Schwenke]

Matt Patterson wrote:
> I have noticed that if I leave firefox open for a long time (week or
> more) that the memory usage on my machine just steadily climbs (swap and
> memory used). Even if there is only one firefox window open, the instant
> I close that window I can watch my memory usage drop 300mb or more. I
> like leaving many windows open (several per desktop with several tabs
> each) because that is how I organize my various parrallel tasks. A way
> to make firefox clean up after itself would be great.
> 
> Any ideas?


It's been worrying me, as well.  There are a whole lot of parameters you
can tweak by typing

about:config

then selecting an action on a parameter by right clicking.

If browser.cache.memory.capacity is not there you might want to try

1. right click/new/integer
2. type browser.cache.memory.capacity Hit OK
3. Specify the amount in KB - say 50,000 or 65535
4. Restart firefox

That hasn't helped me much.

There is an article on Tuning Firefox I have bookmarked for further
perusal at
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=53650&postdays=0&postorder=asc&postsperpage=15&start=0

I have fixed this on a Windows version of Firefox I no longer have
access to.  I'm sure there were some other memory parameters to tweak.
I'm also suspicious of Flash usage.

I'll look into it some more.

                                                              ...Peter