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IE7 vs Firefox 2: The Memory Usage Showdown

lifehacker.com — "After running Internet Explorer 7 for a full day now and throwing just as many tabs at it as the 'fox, its RAM suck-uppage consistently stayed less than HALF of Firefox's."

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  • heatus, on 10/12/2007, -38/+1051. Go to about:config
    2. Right click and select New and click boolean
    3. Enter "config.trim_on_minimize" and set it to true

    Now firefox releases memory each time it is minimized. Memory problem solved.
    • latova, on 10/12/2007, -12/+39The question is, does IE7 have any of its data loading at startup, or does it possibly store any of these things in other places? It's hard to compare them unless we know the answer to these two questions.
    • Trention, on 10/12/2007, -10/+26This also causes performance slowdowns, however. Wouldn't it be easier for them to just finally fix this hole? Or do you guys not have the slowdown on maximize and tab switching?
    • Mejogid, on 10/12/2007, -23/+5Don't forget antivirus & antispyware.... especially if your in the habit of running Norton or McAffee.
    • markrubi2, on 10/12/2007, -9/+62"1. Go to about:config
      2. Right click and select New and click boolean
      3. Enter "config.trim_on_minimize" and set it to true

      Now firefox releases memory each time it is minimized. Memory problem solved"

      yes it does release memory when you minimize. However, it goes right back close to using what it was when you max it again.
    • Pstonie, on 10/12/2007, -10/+87"Now firefox releases memory each time it is minimized. Memory problem solved."

      That's not solving it. It's sweeping it under the rug.
    • yttrx, on 10/12/2007, -17/+54Now tell us how much memory Explorer AND IE are taking up concurrently on that box. That's a far more fair comparison, since an enormous portion of IE functionality is in Explorer itself.
    • GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -19/+13IE7 doesn't use Explorer these days. They have made it non integrated into the system, you can't do all the filesystem browsing tricks in IE 7 anymore*. Kudos to MS for doing that but Firefox is still better than IE7 by some way. The new interface for IE7 is awful.

      *there are some variations between XP and Vista mind so experiment and see what happens.
    • VipeNess, on 10/12/2007, -14/+6i love how GINA hides the program in her task bar, but doesnt cover up her name. weird
    • tsupersonic, on 10/12/2007, -13/+7This was not a great comparison. I want to see two browsers with the same amount of tabs open with the same pages loaded, then compare the memory usage. IE 7 surprisingly eats memory, but not as much as Firefox. I am using Firefox 2 and not seeing much difference between memory consumption, I usually have anywhere from 1-10 tabs open.

      Most computers these days come at least with 512 MB RAM, that's plenty enough to run Firefox and more. I only have 768 MB RAM, and Firefox runs smoothly.
    • Scottish, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19VipeNess:

      She's the editor of Lifehacker... her name is listed publicly right there on the sidebar of the site.
    • JamieBarrows, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12@yttrx
      "Now tell us how much memory Explorer AND IE are taking up concurrently on that box. That's a far more fair comparison.."

      It may be a more "fair" comparison of the two browsers memory usage, but that comparison doesn't mean anything. you are stuck running explorer on windows whether you want to or not. The truth is that if you run windows with IE7, and compare it to running windows with firefox, IE7 wins on memory usage.

      By the way, I prefer Firefox to IE7, but I'm not blind to the fact that it does have some memory issues. Over all, I think Firefox is better.
    • llbbl, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1Firefox is still better. This article is lame.
    • tensvb, on 10/12/2007, -7/+25> 1. Go to about:config
      > 2. Right click and select New and click boolean
      > 3. Enter "config.trim_on_minimize" and set it to true
      >
      > Now firefox releases memory each time it is minimized.
      > Memory problem solved.



      Yeah
      Because every Firefox zealot can browse the Web with his browser minimized.
    • mulling, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4"1. Go to about:config
      2. Right click and select New and click boolean
      3. Enter "config.trim_on_minimize" and set it to true

      Now firefox releases memory each time it is minimized. Memory problem solved."

      Interesting. Not only does it not free up a bit of memory when I minimize it, it uses up MORE memory. Is this some kind of stupid prank?
    • RandomEngy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Guys, watch the memory use when you do this. When I turn this setting on, after I minimize it does use less memory to start... but it immediately starts climbing back up and within 1 minute it's back at its previous level without ever un-minimizing it.
    • skyshock21, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4This setting unfortunately doesn't work.
    • skyshock21, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3"Now tell us how much memory Explorer AND IE are taking up concurrently on that box. That's a far more fair comparison, since an enormous portion of IE functionality is in Explorer itself."

      Wrong.

      Since Firefox doesn't have the additional functionality that the integration with Explorer provides, you can essentially discount Explorer from that equation. Remember, we're comparing just the browser aspect. Not the shell integration.
    • Lagged2Death, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@Pstonie: "That's not solving it. It's sweeping it under the rug."

      Hm, I dunno. This makes FF work like IE and Opera already do, marking memory as "swappable" when the app is minimized. Task Manager's "Mem Usage" figure only includes memory that isn't considered swappable, so "Mem Usage" plummets when the app is minimized, even though minimizing the app (by itself) doesn't necessarily move anything out of RAM.

      There's an entry on this in the Mozilla knowledge-base/wiki:
      http://kb.mozillazine.org/Config.trim_on_minimize
    • autoy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1This tip is useful and works great here, it's nice to switch between firefox and illustrator whithout the virtual memory going bonkers. It goes from 150 to 3 MB just minimizing. No speed penalty because of the tweak here.
    • museo, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3mountains out of molehills.Who really needs to use firefox long enough for its memory usage bug to become a problem? Just restart firefox if its whoring out your ram.
  • GnuTzu, on 10/12/2007, -5/+21A real comparison would examine more than just default memory usage and would take into consideration how resources are used along with the benefits that such usage provides.

    For example: Opera has always had configuration options that affect the amount of memory used. In particular, Opera can be configured to use different amounts of memory for cache (in addition to the disk cache). Configuring a larger memory cache will definitely increase the memory usage but will also increase performance to varying degrees. Theoretically, this exists in other browsers as well, but settings of this type are not always exposed to users.
  • takitus, on 10/12/2007, -26/+52Well if you use IE, the viruses and spyware that it lets past will probably take up the difference in memory between the two. I also would trade a small portion of my ram for the ability to render web pages correctly. IE7 is crap.
    • DaysInTheDark, on 10/12/2007, -29/+15Yes, IE lets all kinds of viruses and spyware past.

      Especially if you're an idiot with bad browsing habits.
    • jambarama, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"Especially if you're an idiot with bad browsing habits."

      Yes, not being careful can expose you to some nasty stuff in any browser, but the point is this. With IE you can get infected by simply VISITING certain sites! If I have to know in advance if a site is going to infecte me before I visit it, that defeats the value of web browsing.

      Yes you can still get some nasty stuff with Firefox by clicking "ok", but with firefox you have to be intentionally irresponsible, with IE all you need to do is visit sites.
  • MorningCoder, on 10/12/2007, -6/+30Wrong column to compare! They should compare the "VM Size" not the "Mem Usage" column.

    (the following explanation was copied from http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-memusage)

    Mem Usage: The online help calls this the working set of the process (although many would call it the resident set) -- the set of pages currently in main memory. However, the catch is that it includes pages that can be shared by other processes, so you must be careful not to double-count. If you're trying to find out the combined memory usage of two processes that use a common DLL, for example, you can't simply add their Mem Usage values.

    VM Size: The online help describes this as the "total private virtual memory allocated by the process." To be clear, this is the private memory that has been committed by the process. This can be quite different from the size of the total address space if the process reserves memory but doesn't commit it.
    • DigeratiPrime, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15yup this is a problem with Task Manager really, people have been fooled by the stupid program for years, MS is finally fixing the column names in Vista.
    • humbled, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6People also forget that IE is an explorer extension, and that most of IE's components are already loaded by explorer. It's probably fair to add at least part of Explorer's consumption to the total for IE.
  • pumacub, on 10/12/2007, -10/+75IE7 has all that free memory from the standards it doesn't have to support.

    (yes this is a joke)
  • r00tus3r, on 10/12/2007, -26/+7Does this take into account all the memory used by the spyware that I.E lets onto your system. I didn't think so!
  • Kericr, on 10/12/2007, -36/+11Digg down this comment.
  • marlinspike, on 10/12/2007, -13/+20Firefox's memory leak is a really annoying problem in an otherwise excellent application. In general, I'm loathe to use IE on the web, just because of the plethora of exploits and vulnerabilities out there for IE, and the fact that it being so integrated into the OS makes any vulnerability that much more alarming.

    I really hope that the Firefox memory leak is fixed SOON. I'd much rather have this one bug fixed, than have Firefox 2 delivered earlier. You just can't run Firefox for over a day, while opening and closing several tabs... it just gobbles up any spare RAM you have. Once in a while, I have to give it ol' kick-start.
    • somacore, on 10/12/2007, -20/+17You know it doesn't have a memory leak, right? I think it's even on the front page now.
    • GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12The problem is Firefox 2 is just an expansion of 1.5. Version 3 will be out early next year and will be very different so may have fixed the issues.

      In all honesty it isn't as bad as people make out anyway and certainly isn't anywhere near as bad as it used to be.
    • pogfreak, on 10/12/2007, -11/+14somacore: no matter how much proof or explanation is offered people will continue to dig anyone down who suggest FF doesnt have "memory leaks".
    • Moocha, on 10/12/2007, -7/+7@somacore:

      "You know it doesn't have a memory leak, right? I think it's even on the front page now."

      A cache with a bad policy is another name for a memory leak:

      http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/05/02/588350.aspx
    • zacmccormick, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8IE is the one with the gigantic memory leak. The well-known cyclic reference bug in the javascript garbage collector has been a problem forever, and still remains unfixed (although to be fair, it is probably impossible to fix if the jscript engine remains decoupled from MSHTML). I haven't noticed any leaks in Firefox, though I do notice that it uses a lot of memory sometimes, but it seems to not grow out of control and it frees correctly when you close/refresh the page. Firefox seems to use boat loads more memory when there is an instance of a flash object on the page...

      If you are looking for a general compaison of the 2 apps for performance, than looking at the single column memory statistic in task manager isn't going to be enough. Using more memory could be a good thing, a very good thing. Here is an example, when the page loads, the browser loads all the images into memory, when you switch tabs, it could remove the images used by that tab from memory, or it could choose to leave them in memory in hopes you will revisit that tab. When you revisit the tab, the images are already in memory and the page can be displayed instaneously. The same goes for minimizing, another opportunity to flush out unneeded resources. This is just one very basic example of the implementation choices they have to make when creating a browser. Using a lot of memory can be a good thing for the user, and I think there is a general misunderstanding that using a of memory means there is a memory leak. As long as it frees the memory when it is done there isn't a problem with using a lot of memory.

      From a quick glance at the comparison I did (with threads/gdi objects/vm size columns enabled) it shows a little different story. I had 8 tabs open with the same pages in each browser and Firefox was in fact using more memory in the default 'Mem Usage' column, but IE7 had a good bit higher VM Size, which is a very important stat (it includes memory pages out to disk, which is much slower to access than memory residing in physical ram) IE7 also uses more than twice as many threads as Firefox while running (although this might not be important because if the threads aren't executing than their context is likely paged out to disk and their time slices are yielded anyways). On another note, IE7 used 2-3 times as many GDI objects also. I don't know if this is adverse to the performance or not, again, more handles could mean better performance if a caching mechanism is used.
  • jugaaru, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2The site is down.
    Http/1.1 Service Unavailable
  • _Caboose_, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4Mirror: http://www.duggmirror.com
  • z3rgRush, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2I'm unable to install IE7 - gives me a ".. could not install" towards the end of the whole progress.
    I tried it with disabled virus/spyware software and I even turned the firewall off. Apparently there is a problem that causes such software to interfere with the IE7 installation progress. However, I turned mine off during installation.

    What else is there I could try to get IE7 to install?
  • edzieba, on 10/12/2007, -14/+10Is it really a memory leak? IIRC, the memory Firefox uses is to cache pages to make back/forward browsing faster. If you turn this off, memory would be save at the expense of performance being slowed. This doesn't take into accound the relative speed differences of FF and IE.
  • MonkeyMCSE, on 10/12/2007, -11/+5I've noticed that when you turn on IE7 it opens explorer(11MB) and IE(17MB) for a grand total over just over 28MB of memory used, no tabs. FF RC3 with 3 tabs is using 32MB. I haven't noticed much difference either way, but I'll stick to FF for my normal everyday browsing.
    • MonkeyMCSE, on 10/12/2007, -11/+6Just did it with 3 tabs all on the same pages, FF at 51MB, IE7 with explorer at 64MB, IE alone has 54MB, maybe i'm missing something here
    • tsupersonic, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8No, explorer.exe should be already open. explore.exe is the desktop, the start menu. IE 7 is a different process.
    • skyshock21, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Monkey MCSE,

      You have to browse out through a few links on each tab so that the browser will start caching the pages. Then you'll see where things start to get ridiculous.
  • puffarthur, on 10/12/2007, -15/+20I have tons of RAM. I prefer the secure browser.
    • hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -6/+7Yeah, true, I run old computers and haven't had a significant problem as far as memory usage of the app itself. The problems I have are with pages choked with 10,000,000 ads and crap. I've learned to set "view..page style... no style" and set adblock to "cripple" before clicking links to certain trouble sites.

      One ad banner with buggy flash can ruin your day much worse than background memory usage.
    • rocketdonkie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I've got 2 gigs of ram and FF is still a problem, a lot of that problem is due to how Firefox handles large amounts of memory. I like how IE can be open in different processes, even though it takes up more RAM this way it means that when it crashes (and they BOTH crash) not all of them are closed, just the offending process. I use both FF and IE all day long, and I think they both suck, but just in different ways. Take the best of each and you have a decent browser.
    • earl507, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I also have 2Gig of ram and firefox can easily suck up so much ram that my system grinds to a halt after a day or two of use. They really need to fix their cache/memory leak problem. I am sorry, but a program that takes up 768MB or physical ram and more than that in swap really needs to examine its memory management code. Don't get me wrong, I love FF, but they really need to fix their memory problems.

      In case you wonder, I only use adblocker and noscript for extensions.
    • headband, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@ rocketdonkie

      its called opera
    • guinunez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@headband: totally agree
    • GmorG, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'll start using opera as soon as they will implement bookmark *right-click* delete without going to bookmark manager.
      or it is already there in 9.1 beta?
  • hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -22/+4While we're talking about IE7: I've heard that it disables "view source", and there's no way to simply see the HTML code of a page? Is this true? Why would they even do that?
    • estvir, on 10/12/2007, -9/+15Uh, where the hell are you getting your info from, a pro-FF person ?

      Just right click > View Source like in the past versions of IE.
    • hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -10/+4Um, no, places like MSDN IE7 release notes:

      http://msdn.microsoft.com/ie/releasenotes/default.aspx
    • blackmariah, on 10/12/2007, -10/+4Hosiah, you're a *****. That's in reference to the view-source PROTOCOL. This is an addition that let you add a link to a page so someone could click it and automatically view the source to a page. You can still go to the View menu and select Source Code. So please, go die of stupid before you infect anyone else.
    • crimoid, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10The view-source protocol is not the same as clicking on the "View" menu and selecting source. See here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/networking/predefined/view-source.asp
    • hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1Thank you, blackmariah. OK, it's confirmed that I was right if sludge like BM disagree with it.
    • hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -12/+3@crimoid

      Thank you for clearing that up!

      Thank everybody else for modding me down for simply asking a question.

      PS other sites have also gotten this information mixed up as well.
  • Uhrzeitlich, on 10/12/2007, -13/+5I've never had a problem with Firefox and "memory leaks." I don't see why people think it's such a big deal if their browser uses 30, 50, or even 100MB. I've got a gig of RAM. I wouldn't care if it used 500MB, as long as that meant it was faster.
    • GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8It certainly shouldn't use that much but we aren't talking about memory leaks anyway.

      A memory leak is when an allocated section of memory is left with no references/pointers to it and yet hasn't been returned to the system. Firefox doesn't do this, it keeps track of all memory it has available since it was decided it is better to hold memory than to be constantly taking and returning memory.

      Its a design decision rather than a programming flaw. Whether you consider it a flawed design decision is another thing but it certainly is not a memory leak.
    • changyang1230, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1To people who always say that "I have got 2 gigs of RAM, it doesn't matter to me", you do realize that it's the same as Bill Gates saying "I have got billions of asset, the ever-increasing bread price doesn't matter to me"?

      Just because it doesn't affect you, doesn't mean you can sweep it under the rug.
  • thbt, on 10/12/2007, -8/+10"But want a browser that doesn't eat 200 kilobytes for breakfast? Then you might want IE 7."

    If only my browser used only 200 Kb.

    (feel free to digg me down now)
    • GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7I don't think even Links uses 200k. Absolutely moronic statement to be made really.
    • IEatHamburgers, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0anyone think that was supposed to be 200mb instead?
  • epicunion, on 10/12/2007, -12/+4I've been using IE7 and FF2 for about a month now and noticed that IE7 does render pages a little faster; I do like the new version. However, as a web designer and a stickler for standards, I just can't support Microsoft. Sorry Billy-Bob, the damage has already been done for many of us.
    • CPUGUy, on 10/12/2007, -9/+9Heck, IE6 loads pages faster than Firefox.

      A good example would be to open up a digg article that has TONS of comments.

      Opera loads it, by far, the fastest, then IE, and Firefox chokes a bit on it, but after a few minutes will finally load it.
    • arjie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Weirdly enough, IE6 doesn't open pages very fast at all. There's this sudden jam for 4-5 seconds, (even if the page is just a "Hello World!"), and the mouse and everything go into that near-freeze state, then it suddenly unjams and displays the page. Virgin IE, no toolbars and the like.

      Still, it starts way faster than firefox and does take less RAM.
  • dotlizard, on 10/12/2007, -12/+6i've been using ie7 since pre-beta days. the tab-handling features alone made firefox seem annoyingly clunky to use, and now that they've fixed the bug that caused digg.com to crash upon expanding dugg-down comments, i am completely, utterly hooked.

    internet explorer seven is a really, really good browser. firefox is good, but it's not ... ie7 good.

    there, i said it. i feel a little dirty, but i said it.
    • GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -13/+9Whats wrong with Firefoxs tab handling features. You middle click to open in a new tab and middle click on a tab to close it. If you don't have a middle mouse button then your hardware is crap and you should worry about that before which browser you use.
  • duoproductionx, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3just like the general public to try and give out facts that are irrelevant, wonder how many tabs they had open, if they were using default settings, if it was a 32bit or 64 proc...these things make a huge difference, death to the machine that does support real standards and creates their own!!!
  • nomore, on 10/12/2007, -9/+9Is that a fair test?

    IE is a user interface to front the Microsoft inet technology which is already loaded into RAM for use in the OS. Even Windows Expolorer (in 2000/XP at least) use this to render javascript pages etc. So surely the memory used shown in the process list for example is just for the instances of teh IE UI and cache.
    • DigeratiPrime, on 10/12/2007, -8/+6Internet Explorer has always masked its true resource usage because it is integrated with other dll's and processes already loaded by the OS.
    • IngisKahn, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11What difference would this make? Using FF doesn't magically make Windows release this memory anyway.
    • nomore, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I said 'Is that a fair test', not how to get Windows to release memory.
    • IngisKahn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1And I'm saying it is a fair test.
  • vitriolix, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2hm... something tells me i shouldnt trust a memory performance benchmark by someone who doesnt know the difference between a megabyte and a kilobyte. as has been mentioned many times before, if you want to do an accurate comparison, you have to disable/remove your extensions. many of those random extensions you have installed are big memory leakers.
  • UltraNurd, on 10/12/2007, -12/+13I left IE7 open overnight, and when I logged in in the morning, it was using 2.1 GB of virtual memory.
    • ignorantcow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I left Firefox open overnight, and when I logged in in the morning, it was using 5.6 GB of virtual memory.

      Baseless comments FTW.
  • dkoon, on 10/12/2007, -9/+11If the result is the other way around, i'm 100% sure you guys would be praising firefox all the way without any questions on the test. Oh ya, and any tests that favor M$'s programs must had been fake or made up, my bet is most of you haven't even try IE7 before dissing it.

    BTW, the test should be monitoring the whole system resource instead of just the programs, since IE should be much more "integrated" with Windows than FF. And please don't include Anti virus in IE's like some idiots suggest.
    • hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -12/+4"any tests that favor M$'s programs must had been fake or made up"

      Oh, like MS has *never* made up stories in it's marketing? *cough*"Get the facts"*cough*. They do make a widdle weputation for themselves...
    • dkoon, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3so your logic is, if M$ doesn't get their fact straight, everyone should make up ***** before even really testing it?
  • lessew, on 10/12/2007, -6/+19I have Opera open with 19 tabs open (mostly MSDN material), while IE7 has 5 tabs open. Opera is using 96 MB of memory, while IE is using 167MB.
    • webbsk, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13@lessew

      I don't know why you were dugg down because I experience the exactly the same thing. Amongst the 4 major browsers, I think Opera is a clear winner in almost any category you choose -- including memory usage. It's stunning how little attention it receives because its such a superior product.
    • JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11"It's stunning how little attention it receives because its such a superior product."

      Maybe the result of word of mouth "publicity" from the FireFox fanboy army. They go out of their way to give FireFox credit for stuff that Opera did earlier --- like tabbed browsing. They refuse to acknowledge all the stuff that Opera does better --- like security and memory usage. And they ignore all the stuff that Opera provides that FireFox doesn't --- like email, newsgroup and torrent support.

      As they say, a lie told often enough becomes the new truth.
    • koko775, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2Believing Opera is superior doesn't make it so. Yes, it excels in memory usage and features and if I recall, was one of the first to have (besides tabbed browsing) gestures, but extensions are simply too useful *not* to have a for a great deal of FF users. Please don't automatically assume FF "Fanboys" are ignorant about Opera...I used opera for a while and went *back* to FF.
    • JimW311, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I'm an avid supporter of FX, but I do recognize that Opera is a great browser. But I don't support it as much, but if someone asked whether they should use Opera or IE I would definitely say Opera hands down. But it's the Mozilla foundation that is really great. I like how they deliver a striped-down browser that can be customized to your liking. That's not something you can say about Opera. I do recognize Opera is probably THE most secure browser out there. But again I support non-profit organizations more than for-profit organizations. To a certain point, if it was a completely crappy product (referring to FX), I would not use it. But FX is a very good product, with MUCH better intentions. Now IE, is the worst of both worlds, a for-profit company that doesn't care about the customer AND a completely crappy product.
    • JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"But again I support non-profit organizations more than for-profit organizations."

      NEWSFLASH: Mozilla is a FOR-PROFIT organization.
    • jman8888, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Because opera gives the site too much room and i cant stand not having my extentions...
    • mvent2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@JQP:

      "The Mozilla Foundation was incorporated as a California not-for-profit corporation to ensure that the Mozilla project continues to exist beyond the participation of individual volunteers"
      Straight from the horse's mouth.
    • JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2They just had to make it complicated. Mozilla is a multi-headed endeavor with both non-profit and for-profit elements. There is the Mozilla *Foundation* which is non-profit but there is also the Mozilla *Corporation* which is for-profit. Basically, any money they make goes to the *Corporation* leaving the *Foundation* profitless.
    • ignorantcow, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Opera's main downside has always been its inability to render pages properly and/or consistently, due to its hackjob of a rendering engine, "Presto". One good example: relative font-sizes randomly appear one notch smaller in Opera depending on the value used. The outcome: Sites often display in a weird way.

      Did you know Opera is unable to load Gmail? Opera fanboys argue there's a built-in mail client for that.. 'cept, one problem: it sucks. Speaking of built-in features: IRC, Mail, Bittorrent, Newsgroups, RSS Reader, WIDGETS.. dare I say, bloated POS software?

      Plus, anyone who has gone through the Apple HIG will argee: Opera on OSX is one fugly *****.
  • cronot, on 10/12/2007, -10/+5"After running Internet Explorer 7 for a full day now and throwing just as many tabs at it as the 'fox, its RAM suck-uppage consistently stayed less than HALF of Firefox's."

    No *****!

    Maybe that's because IE is so tied up to system? Get real, IE will ALWAYS be less resource intensive just because of that and, well, because it is Windows-only. Not that this makes FF any good at resource management - I acknowledge that its memory leaks and the fact that it uses a from-scratch widget display only makes the situation worse for it. But I can afford Firefox's bad resource usage in exchange for its extensibility and security. Its bad resource usage will eventually be fixed, in a way or another. If isn't, something better will replace it (maybe even IE! Though that's a very remote possibility right now). That's just how it works - survival of the fittest.
    • JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4"Maybe that's because IE is so tied up to system?"

      Maybe a better comparison would be FF vs. Opera? In which case, FF loses again.
    • mvent2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1JQP, are you even thinking? Why the heck would you leave the majority browser out of the equation? And why would you go against the browser who actually brought awareness of standards compliance to web developers?

      Without FF's popularity, the only websites you'll be browsing in Opera would be "This page requires IE...", or if you're masked as IE, broken pages.
    • JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0"Why the heck would you leave the majority browser out of the equation?"

      I'm not leaving anything out, just responding to the "excuses" offered by the previous poster.

      "And why would you go against the browser who actually brought awareness of standards compliance to web developers? "

      I'm not going against anything, just giving credit where it is due. FF deserves credit for promoting standards awareness. But at the same time, it is neither the fastest nor the most efficient nor the most feature rich nor the most secure nor even the most compliant browser available. I'm sorry if the truth doesn't conveniently mesh with your agenda.


  • CandidateZero, on 10/12/2007, -12/+2From the Microsoft site:
    --
    we heard you
    you wanted it easier and more secure
    introducing Internet Explorer 7
    --
    Oh, really? They heard me? How beneficent of them. I wonder how they managed to do that... lost market share? Maybe just maybe?

    What lazy turds.
  • combatchuck, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1Is IE7 still hooked into the core of the OS? If so, then this is an unfair comparison. The libraries IE uses would be considered part of the "System" memory pool, not IE7.

    I haven't had a problem with Firefox using too much memory since 1.5 came out. And the trim_on_minimize thing seems to prove that it's something they intentionally added to make surfing faster. In the days where most machines are shipping with 1 GB of RAM, what's the problem if a program is using 160 MB of that?
    • dracflamloc, on 10/12/2007, -8/+0Thats exactly what I came here to point out.
    • DaysInTheDark, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Yes, because everyone has a system that shipped within the last year.

      There's no excuse for a browser to have problems running on a system with 256 or 512MB of RAM.
  • rtini, on 10/12/2007, -13/+4IE is irrelevant. It only runs on Windows.
  • elvis314, on 10/12/2007, -7/+10horrible thread here. I was glad to see the VM Size post earlier. When I worked at Microsoft a while back we looked at the reference set, not the memory usage. The reference set is what the impact of a program or action is on the whole OS, not just the Mem Usage or VM Size (although these numbers are good for a quick read). Basically to get a reference set you need some low level OS tools to collect a baseline profile of your OS during boot, sitting idle, and doing simple actions (notepad, help, explorer). Then collect another profile of the app in question and you can diff them and see the impact. It is sup rising what you see including data which is shared (like XML libraries, event logging, graphics processing).

    I am very fed up with firefox and the memory usage, but from what I have seen of IE, it isn't much better if any at all.
  • MonkeyMCSE, on 10/12/2007, -7/+0@tsupersonic

    good catch, damn nyquil has me foggy today, damn flu.
  • cramd, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8As much as I love Firefox I just can't afford the memory needed to run it for more than 10 min. I downloaded ie7 with the intention of getting a good laugh at it. Well i was not laughing - so far it looks solid. I have opened the same sites and tabs in both browsers and just don't know what firefox is doing with the extra 100MB or RAM.

    I am also aware that I can go in and tweak Firefox to handle memory better, but WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO? Should the defaults not be to minimize RAM usage and give us the option to have it eat away RAM if we want?

    • Bamborzled, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2Read the comments above. Try enabling the "VM Size" column in Task Manager.
    • clickwir, on 10/12/2007, -7/+5@cramd

      Yea, and then some guy with 2.5gb of ram comes along and complains about how he has to go an tweak and enable all these options to get FF to use more ram to make it simply perform better.

      FF uses lots of ram for caching webpages, when you go back and forward it stores those pages so they load faster. It's got some of the best caching of any browser I've used.

      Yes, there is a major trade off to having great caching... ram. You have to cache it somewhere fast. Most people have broadband now, caching to the hard drive is almost as slow as just reloading the page over the internet connection. If you want fast speed you need to cache it in ram.

      You don't HAVE TO tweak it. But if you are getting in there and worrying that much about ram use, just take the extra 5-10mins and tweak it a bit.

      At least FF lets you tweak it. When was the last time you saw this many options on IE?
    • sahala, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0@clickwir

      > Most people have broadband now,
      > caching to the hard drive is almost
      > as slow as just reloading the page
      > over the internet connection.

      False.

      > If you want fast speed you need to
      > cache it in ram.

      True, but this is rather obvious. What happens to "fast speed" when you switch applications, or you load up some other heavy-weight apps (photoshop, for example) and FF's memory has to be paged to disk?

      I guess since broadband is so fast we should just page to some remote location instead of to a local drive. I think you're on to something.
    • ignorantcow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Why is it that Opera, or even Safari handles back/forward caches, (and instantly displays them at that..) just FINE without eating up so much memory?

      I still blame XUL and the memory leaks that come with it. A lot of people aren't aware Firefox isn't native to Windows, unlike K-Meleon (another Gecko-based browser), which is. Too bad it sucks.
  • clickwir, on 10/12/2007, -11/+1lifehacker blog spam. Burried.
  • muffins, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2"Also, I am running the Firefox 2 release candidate with extensions, which makes this a bit of an unfair comparison..."

    Inaccurate.
  • person, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Can Firefox fanboys stop thinking that FF and IE are the only browsers in existance
    • Ahnteis, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4Sorry, ones with more then 5% "market" share.
  • Alisic, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4I love it how people really think there's no other (and better) browser than FF or IE.
  • neoknight, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3People that use Firefox use it because they have the option to add all these extensions and use it more than just as a browser.

    Extensions are like apps, so just think if they weren't in your broswer running them separately would take up the same amount of RAM.

    IE is for people who get their internet downloaded with their computers, let them be.
  • DaysInTheDark, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1FF is for people that don't want all those nasty viruses and malware that instantly install themselves automatically when you click the blue e, let them be.
  • 3leggedHorse, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I'm new to this ***** but i tried I.E7 for a day, forgot my digg password and could not reset it.then tonight i get a spy cookie alert. ***** i never had that with firefox once.
    But i tried FF 2 rc3 and it sucked i had to force pages to load couldnt open *****, I'm back on FF 1.5.
  • SilverRocket, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3For god's sakes, RAM is meant to be USED!!!!! It's not like it's taking away RAM from other applications. Unused RAM is completely pointless in a computer.
  • SebastianMoser, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Marked as Inaccurate.

    There's more RAM consumed by the Operating System than what can be seen in the Task Manager. Just count together the RAM in the Processes list and then compare it to the third tab in the Task Manager. It will be WAY less than what is actually consumed.
    Internet Explorer uses a lot of RAM that is not disclosed.

    Let's talk about the fact that IE7 is even slower than Firefox 1.5, and Firefox 2.0 is significantly faster than Firefox 1.5

    Anyways, I agree with the many people who say that RAM is meant to be consumed. As long as OTHER applications don't run more slowly because of it, everything is fine.
    I don't know how often Firefox-people already said that RAM consumption adopts to how much RAM is available.
    • akinder, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Calm down now, don't take it so personal that people are pointing out flaws with a software application.
  • glasgowm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Marked as Inaccurate.

    It's obvious she's running tuns of extensions. I have 9 tabs open and it's eating up 53MB of Ram.

    :-/
  • Kanaka, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0I'd still take Firefox any day
  • Kanaka, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Safari is still worse
    • nanomaton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2totally.. I'm constantly shocked at how much of a memory pig that thing is.
  • Jammerdelray, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1No Extensions with IE 7 thats why.....Extensions in Firefox use extra memory and are well worth it with the memory leaks fixed
  • xixor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I would rather them both use *more* memory and store the browsing cache completely in memory, thus the disk would not be used at all while browsing the web and my battery would last longer while browsing the web without being plugged in.

    On a side note, ie7 and firefox, with the same number of tabs showing the same pages open (6 tabs in all) show the same memory usage of ~75megs. After a minute, ie7's usage drops down to 22 megs, while firefox remains the same.
  • flyinglikeakite, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hmm.. does it really hamper your pc's performance?
    I dont know about Firefox, but Opera ( www.opera.com ) it designed such that it makes full use of available memory. If you have 1gb memory there is no point in having about 500mb of it unused. I believe its the same with Firefox. Run Fx ie7 and Opera on a pc with say 128mb memory and then compare that results. This figure has not significance.
  • Derrekito, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Im only using 46.7 MB on firefox 1.5.0.7 ....
  • tofuComputer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1IE still sucks even after all these years. Still not standards-compliant and requires special attention in order to get websites to run correctly on it.

    And for the record, I don't really give a ***** about this browser or that browser. I do give a ***** about standards and quality and only having to do my work one time. As it is now, I always have to use rubberbands and paperclips to get IE to behaive.
  • TheProfessional, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You guys are aware that Task Manager isn't an accurate tool to measure memory usage, right?

    http://shsc.info/WindowsMemoryManagement

    If the numbers in Task Manager bother you, don't open it :-)
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