Firefox3 Vs IE6

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MeetYourMaker

MeetYourMaker

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Jun 8, 2001
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First of all, I could no doubt do some looking around myself or even some googling but I cba, so hopefully someone can answer the following which involves me doing less work :D

I use IE6 on a win2K machine at work, this is my main browser, im not changing it!
Recently I've been using igoogle to track some investments, Ive got two accounts to track and to save me logging out and then logging in again to track both Ive installed FF3 (3.0.14), that way I can have IE6 logged into 1 account and FF3 logged into the other and I can flick between the two, they are usually left running all day.

The problem Ive got is that FF is regularly using 100MB whereas IE6 is 50MB (both single tab, displaying same page more or less),
Theres only 512MB of memory in this PC(no not adding more because its a pain to find Rambus) and im quite often using well over this which is giving me a big slow down.

So, any ideas why FF is using so much ram or if there is a way to curtail what its using?
 
try this: about:config -> browser.cache.disk.capacity -> 8192

you also might wanna give seamonkey a try :thumb:
 
Searching the web gives much replies.

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I have not tried one of this myself.
 
I dont really need to speed up loading of 1 page which is only refreshed

Tried the cache stuff, doesnt make any difference. FF is still using miles more memory than IE6. Currently IE6 has been loaded since 9AM and its using 33MB where as FF was restarted a couple of mins ago and is already using 64MB.
 
I use IEtab addon for firefox, works perfectly. It adds a little icon to the bottom right bar. If you click it the page is loaded as if it was Internet Explorer. This way you can also log into sites with multiple accounts (one account for FF and the other for IE :D)

Don't know why FF is using much more memory..
 
ok well I like the fact I can do two different accoutns within FF, so thanks for that sneez although it doesnt really solve the problem.

2 instances of IE6 (doesnt support tabs :( ) is 95MB
1 instance of FF with 2 tabs = 140MB
 
Foo said:
You're not willing to change browser, but then you should upgrade to a newer computer!
Click to expand...

Technically I am willing to change as im trying FF3, but newer versions of IE arent supported by win2k.

I could upgrade my PC but as this is a work PC and the software I use on it is restrcited to win2k I would still be back to square one, the software cant even cope with SMP.
I would say its a reasonable request to be able to use 2 browsers side by side to display 1 simple page without having to use more than half the ram I've got installed! Sneez's solution would be perfect if FF3 didnt then up the ram usage for the extra tab.



Ill try that tomorrow Thrash and see if its any better than FF3 for mem usage
 
Ðeadßoy said:
http://www.ioage.com/en/index.htm

u can have tabbed browsing using the ie6 engine

its also faster than ie6
Click to expand...

The down-side is that the tabs will share the same session cookies.

Don't forget MyM, that ie6 isn't a low foot-print. It's just that it's able to call on the built-in html engine within windows explorer, so chances are you'll find the memory usage is actually shared. (not that this solves your problem :P)
 
Op1uM said:
have u tryed google chrome ?
Click to expand...

Im using win2k so it limiits what browsers I can try, Google Chrome says XP SP2 and Vista supported

Thrasher (_!_) said:
Use SRWare Iron? (Rebuild of Google Chrome without the feedback to Google)
Click to expand...

Unfortunately for reasons as above I cant use this either, installs unlike Chrome but doesnt run :(

'//3iRd(o) said:
The down-side is that the tabs will share the same session cookies.

Don't forget MyM, that ie6 isn't a low foot-print. It's just that it's able to call on the built-in html engine within windows explorer, so chances are you'll find the memory usage is actually shared. (not that this solves your problem :P)
Click to expand...

Thanks Timo, really helpful :P
 
I'm curious though, why in Useless' name are you working with a crappy setup like that?
 
A lot of the software used for programming the machinary at work wont work on newer operating systems without forking our a ridiculous sums of money for software updates to what is essentially the same functionality just prettier.
You should see the laptop (if you can call it that) I use to program one of the machines, Ive got no chance of getting the software to run on anything else and I have tried.


Anyway thanks for ideas, bit of research has pointed me to K-Meleon, based on same engine as FF3.5 and does what I need. Its using 20-30MB displaying same page as FF3 which is using 60MB and is only 10MB when minimised as opposed to FF 50MB.
 
Shamelessly copy pasted from some firefox wiki page: Urls added below

Download history

Memory usage can increase and Firefox can slow down or hang if the download history is allowed to accumulate [3]. Clear the download history (you may need to exit Firefox and delete the file "downloads.rdf" from the profile folder in some cases [4]) and change this setting to circumvent the problem:

* "Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> Download History -> Remove Files from the Download Manager", select: "Upon successful download".

[edit]
Settings that reduce memory usage

Changing the about:config preferences below may have an effect on memory consumption but may also affect performance or reduce functionality. Read each article for the preference's effects. Each preference includes an estimate of the amount of memory that can be freed on an average (512MB RAM) system by choosing the most memory-friendly setting.
Preference Max memory freed
browser.cache.memory.capacity and browser.cache.memory.enable 14MB
browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers 20MB

The config.trim_on_minimize setting (Windows only) does not reduce the amount of memory used, it just swaps memory from RAM to disk. This may make Firefox slow to "wake up". If config.trim_on_minimize is left set at the default value (false), the memory will be swapped to disk only if it is needed by another application. Therefore, for most purposes the default value is recommended.

The RAMBack extension, available for Firefox 3, allows the user to manually free memory, such as caches, that is usually used to increase performance. This gives the advantage of small cache sizes without having to always suffer the performance hit.
[edit]
Restarting Firefox

If you find that Firefox's memory usage continues to grow after long periods of being open, you may want to consider periodically restarting Firefox to bring the memory usage back to reasonable levels. Close Firefox and select the Save and Quit option to reopen your tabs when Firefox restarts.
[edit]
Memory leaks

Memory leaks can cause Firefox not to release memory that it is no longer using, especially with older versions. There has been a lot of effort to reduce the leaks in recent versions, and Mozilla developers have have created tools to detect them. [5] [6] To minimize leaks, you should upgrade to the most recent version. The most common memory leaks appear to be fixed in Firefox 2. [7] Firefox 3 will likely use even less memory than Firefox 2 due to more memory leak fixes and further efforts to reduce memory usage. [8] [9]
[edit]
Virtual memory

Some Windows users have problems with Firefox memory usage because they have virtual memory turned off or have a paging file that is too small. These articles provide additional information:

* Windows 98 & WinME Memory Management
* Virtual Memory in Windows XP


I (sneez) added the urls:
http://www.aumha.org/win4/a/memmgmt.htm
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm (xp)

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5972 (ramback extension, I haven't tested it but its in above article)
 
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