I use Firefox and often have dozens of tabs open. Memory usage goes up through the roof. What can I do?

Question

Firefox 2, latest updates.

I have the following extensions, also with the latest updates:

- Foxytunes
- Better Gmail
- DOM Inspector
- Free Download Manager plugin
- netcrafttoolbar
- Skype Extension for Firefox
- Talkback

Is there any way I can make the memory usage lower? And how do I avoid Firefox sometimes exploding CPU usage to nearly 100%? Any tweak I can do to improve Firefox for my typical usage?

I have a 1.6 single core Centrino, 512 Mb RAM.

Thanks in advance =)

Answer 1

Firefox dynamically assigns memory cache usage. If you wanna specify the memory cache capacity yourself, do it by first typing 'about:config' (without quotes) in the Firefox address bar and add a new preference(right click on the about:config page and select new-integer) and name it as browser.cache.memory.capacity and specifiy the integer value in KB ...however this should depend on the amount of physical RAM you got. For 512 MB RAM this should be between 6500 and 8000. So experiment with the memory cache capacity and see what works best for you.



Not to mention, the changes will be reflected and seen when u type 'about:cache?device=memory' (without quotes) in address bar. Here you can see the max storage size, storage in use..etc...



Also, add another preference(if you wish) , right click on about:config page and select new->boolean. type in config.trim_on_minimize as the preference name and set it as 'true' . This tweak is for lowering down firefox memory usage when you minimize it.



Another memory tweak is to reduce memory usage by affecting the back and forward browsing, read about this from here http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers



Also disable some of your extensions if you don't need them temporarily. That'll reduce some of the memory usage. If you don't know already, disable them by clicking Tools-> Add-ons-> Extensions->Here select the addon which you don't require all the time and hit 'disable'. The addons themselves can pose a memory leak issue. The article about problematic and memory hogging extensions is here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Problematic_extensions



Good Luck

Answer 2

Look, I tell you, I was using Firefox too, but I have delete it because it starts very slow. Now I'm using Internet Explorer and I'm very joyful. If you're using Microsoft Windows XP your computer has already Internet Explorer. If not, you can download it from the net. Internet Explorer is very fast and i think it's a very good browser. I have delete Firefox because it was occupying my harddisk free space.

Answer 3

use ccleaner (www.ccleaner.com) to clean up your pc, and delete temp int files, .. that will help.



Or lose some extensions.

Answer 4

Try opera