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I went back to Firefox as a default, because eventually with a dozen or so tabs open, IE would almost always lock up or be so slow that I would just get too frustrated.
How many people open 100 tabs? I don't think either FF or IE are too much worried about optimizing their memory footprint for this case.
The real problem occurs with rich AJAX applications like Sampa that creates and manipulates many objects, IFrames, AJAX calls, etc. On that case, in my tests, Firefox is faster than IE in terms of CPU, but it ends up consuming more memory.
Somebody writing a poor AJAX app can really drain a lot of resources from your browser, either IE or FF. But if the dev is doing a good job cleaning up memory, Firefox memory will most likely be higher than IE.
But, again, who cares? Users should only care if their browser are getting slower, but not how much memory it consumes.
As a good practice for Web 2.0 users, you should close your browser every few hours or so. That is not ideal, but it is the reality of the world today.
When I close IE and FF (per Marcelo's comment), FF takes about 1 to 2 seconds to shut off. IE takes 8 to 10 seconds.
And, in my previous comment, I said "with all the windows open" and I meant pages open as tabs.
Also, you're right. This isn't scientific. That's why I'm asking for other people's experiences. That way we can triangulate in on the truth together.
I will stay with Firefox for the foreseeable future. Especially since we will have probably two new major updates to Firefox by the time the next IE is released.
At least download real task manager from http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/ProcessEx... and report number of Private Bytes vs. Virtual Size vs. Working Set.
Most of memory used can be some caches used to actually speed up rendering of pages - not slow your computer down. You have always apply tradeoff in algorithms - speed vs. memory.
As well what's a reason to make application do not use memory in case if it's already fully paid and plugged in into your motherboard ?
TAG makes a couple of good technical points - I don't think that the performance difference is due to the additional VM allocation, for instance. My recollection from the IE7 blog is that IE7 is thread-per-tab, with a lot of IPC; each tab is almost a full instance of IE6, due to some architectural issues in the IE6 implementation. Here's the link: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/05/26/422...
They were concerned about footprint, but were hoping for better responsiveness. Ah, well.
SK
My simple test results:
In XP. In both browsers I opened reddit, the first 10 links from reddit in tabs, gmail in a tab, google maps pointing to Indianapolis, IN in a tab, and google reader in another tab. IE7 took 175M, FF 95M. At that point they seemed similarly responsive and is a relatively normal load for me. I made no modifications to IE7 and have 9 extensions installed in FF.
The only reason I installed IE7 on my machines is because I'm a web developer, and I kinda HAVE to, plus to just plug more holes in the OS.
I'm switching my home machine to Ubuntu soon, anyway. Wish I could do that at work...
u are right on ie7 and why it s waste on system resources.
i have 60 - 70 windows open in firefox at any one time.
usually its things i saved in my last session each session adds 10 new tabs.
so in a week i am browsing 70 tabs
in fact this was one the first reasons why i shifted from ie to Firefox 2 years back.
i not only open browser windows but i also open chaT AND WEB DESIGN TOOLS AND WINDOWS EXPLORER
i have 10 gb of software old and new and i install as many as i can but use as little as i can
this can cause quite a drain on any system.
in fact my pc crashed thrice in 3 months
so format and reinstall
but good old firoxy- Firefox nick name has never let me down.
if at all 1 disappointment's i face is how do i save`my settings from 1 windows installation to another like say 1 i have now to the one i install tommorow
also wont it be nice to have a feature of system sync what are doing now and restart from the same place with the same windows open and the same application states again when u shutdown and restart.
i know this is what system restore does but cant i add session save feature for my windows applications
i know om malik was angry at apple for apples disservice to macbook pro but he did appreciate firoxys session saving ability.
why cant it be done through out a OS like even for vista
why cant scyrbe like functionatlity be implemented through out windows or macintosh or better for linux for that matter
why cant a windows or any computer user switch off the pc and do the same things he did when it was on
this is called the offlirevo and scryrbe is good in it.
if u are thinking where i came up with this idea- i honestly know it came while i was typing but i had been thinking on these lines for quite some time
i have restarted my blog again
see at at http://www.arunbalaji.com/blog.php
my aim is still resource networking and i have found a way for it
by the way why dont u do urself a favor and beg borrow or try to get your hands on suns darkbox data center in a box . it will sure help your download costs.
also try using www.dnsmadeeasy.net
the same service meebo uses
i will be putting a web portal soon
its in the intial stages
bye
@runb@laj!
For example, I am using Maxthon 1.5.8.112, and with 50 tabs opened the memory usage is not even 30MB (and there is YouTube, flash website, etc.). Moreover Maxthon being a front end to IE, I am using IE7 Final.
Besides RC1, I was having some issues with Flash heavy sites (too many tabs and i was on a turtle-pc)
But on the latest version, Is al going well, most of the time im with 20-30 tabs with a consumption of 100-120 mb
sweet!
I am using Windows XP. Not Vista. I know Vista is better, but most people don't have Vista yet.
I left IE behind when I found Opera, and then later moved to Firefox. I find it to be generally better in everything, and less crashwise than Exploder.
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/5116;_ylt=A9G_...
Watch this video to understand and how to detect memory leaks. It also shows you the tool you can accurately measure the private memory, not virtual memory. The site use a AJAX tab that is commonly used in web 2.0 on the test.
http://www.barelyfitz.com/screencast/javascript...
Douglas Crockford http://www.crockford.com/javascript/memory/leak...
explains IE's own memory manager get confused and IE DOM is not managed by JScript.
Microsoft has documented the memory leak issues in many places including http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=.... It mentions "This memory leak occurs because DOM objects are non-JScript objects". And it states "This memory leak will end when the browser opens a new Web page or when the browser window is closed."
Who do I trust more? I trust Douglas Crockford's expertise and his extensive knowledge in browser. As long as IE is staying with their DOM strategy, web 2.0 developers will have to spend more time debugging IE7 and write more codes to handle memory leaks.
Firefox and Opera's DOM strategy is on right track.
Now which headache is bigger? Hacking IE CSS on IE6 OR debugging memory leaks on IE7
Jeopardy question - music please...
CSS is usually handle by designer or interface engineer. Usually it is a one-person job. It is visual hack.
Almost all of the web 2.0 developers must handle AJAX. It is going to add burdens to the entire developer team. It is not visual fix. You have to use tool to audit the memory leaks. It is more time consuming to handle the memory leaks.
This bring up another issue. What you are experiencing on the memory overload on multiple tabs is something that IE has to work on. It seems like IE architectural strategy that IE team inherited is stepping on their own toe.
Apps nowadays get packed with stuff I don't want (think mobile phone with so many functions you hardly use).
Re: typing a name in the address bar and getting a relevant result (bill gates microsoft profile or george clooney's imdb page)
This is the result of the "I'm feeling lucky" option of google's search.
Start -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Internet Explorer (no add-ons)
I am sorry to say that I was utterly dissapointed by IE7. It has greater tendency to crash as compared to FF 2. Memory consumption of IE7 is much higher than FF. I usually open around 25 tabs at a time and IE7 becomes sluggish in this case as compared to FF. On top of that, it cannot open many sites properly such as gmail etc.
Now Microsoft has admittedd this fact and have provided a tool "User Agent String Utility" for people through which they can use IE6 engine to open a site in IE7.
Apart from this, I was amazed that there was no "Check Updates" link in IE7. You have to use Windows Update for it. They should have provided this link in the Help section of IE7 itself. Moreover, they have not given much tweaking tools to the users. The settings are almost same as IE6 and the new features such as Tabbed Browsing should have options to personalise.
All in all, Microsoft has reitrated the fact that they ship old wine in new bottles. So it would be insane on the part of users to expect something new from Microsoft.
"All in all, Microsoft has reitrated the fact that they ship old wine in new bottles. So it would be insane on the part of users to expect something new from Microsoft."
This is not correct. Have you looked at Vista, IE7, Office 12? They have tons of new code in it. Also, Software devlopement does not mean that you release a new OS, or a tool and you write it from scratch. Only insane people will do that. There are tons of things new from MSFT. Look at Xbox 360, Zune (coming up), Windows Live. You cannot make a cmpany this big by selling repetitive and bad software.
IE7 release never claimed that MSFT has written the browser from scratch. Yes, IE7 came a bit late in the game but I believe realising mistake and learning from it is a much bigger thing. There are tons of improvement done in IE7. This is not only limited to tabbed browsing, phishing filter and RSS feed. There is a lot of improvement in printing, choosing multiple search provider and a cool new look. Not to forget number of bug fixes, tons of improvement in javascript engine and all. And pretty of smaller stuff like 'Delteing the entire cache in one go', 'Having a X in the tab', 'Hiding the menu bar', a better favorite organizer, capability to Import/Export fav/settings in a better way, Quick tabs. All this has involved lot of effort.
I have been using IE6 throughout my life and I simply loved IE7. If a page displays a second late here and there I really don't care. Plus, I open 5-6 tabs at the most. I have a laptop at home which is having XP Home and 256 MB RAM and I am pretty happy with IE7.
A> Ie7 used an average of 50-70 mb's ram with under 10 tabs open. Firefox would use over 100 mb's ram with the same amount of windows open, and if they were left open for several hours (which is ALWAYS the case) then the memory would climb to 200-300 mb. Closing all but a few tabs would no cause firefox to release the memory, only periodically restarting the program could start at 100 again.
B> So i switched to ie7, but when 10 tabs are open, scrolling is horrifically slow, especially on long pages. Ie7 can't seem to be able to handle more than 10 tabs without slowing to a crawl.
Conclusion> buy more ram. Memory usage on firefox sucks, but the speed blows away ie7.
I agree that IE and FF are not concerned with memory consumption. In short, they should be. Before IE's tabbed environment I opened up several windows (with alt-tab, I really didn't have a problem with this). I didn't use up half as much memory as I do now. Why does a tabbed environment on IE7 make it run so much worst than IE6. The solution of "just add more memory" just sucks. Why should I upgrade (or buy a new computer in some cases) just to be able to do what I did last year? My computer shouldn't slow down just because I have 7 or 8 webpages open. What's the problem? I'm sick of companies releasing code as quickly as possible and leaving it to hardware upgrades to make it usable. It's like a car manufacturer blaming gasoline for not giving it better mileage. BUILD A BETTER ENGINE!!!
By the way moron (aka DJB), partial source in IE doesn't give exact HTML either.
For people who want to turn this into an MS versus open-source debate, do it elsewhere please. I work
in computers. I love MS because it's easy and it makes me money. I love Linux because it's open and it makes me money. ;)
I think it is even better than firefox when dealing with dozens of tabs! Responsive instantly! Firefox is good as well, but i usually end up overloading it with plugins to do my job.
IE drains all my system's resources and i cannot open a window after some hours.even when i close many tabs, ie still holds 150MB+
At the moment I'm looking at IE7 in taskmanager. The figure is 975,420K. That's a Gb folks.
I have a total of 5 tabs open. None of them are web 2.0 stuff particularly. Just forums oh and stumbleupon.
I'll try firefox later on, though I recall it being about 200mb.
Any cure?