Recently, there have been numerous reactions from users regarding the memory leak issue in Firefox 1.5. However, according to a developer of this open-source browser, this is actually… a feature of the browser.
Ben Goodger – one of the programmers involved in the development of Firefox – stated that user feedback concerning Firefox’s memory usage has been around for quite some time. The primary concern is how Firefox uses memory to temporarily store web pages but does not release that memory afterward.
“I believe what users are discussing about Firefox is not actually a memory leak, but rather a feature of Firefox,” Goodger said.
Goodger explained that the Back-Forward feature in Firefox 1.5 often temporarily stores web pages to allow those pages to appear instantly when users click the Back or Forward buttons. “This feature may require storing a lot of data, which can consume memory, but in return, users will experience faster access speeds.”
Depending on the memory capacity of the system, Firefox can temporarily store up to 8 different web pages. If the system has 1GB or more of RAM, Firefox will store 8 web pages; however, if the PC has only 256MB of RAM, it will only store 3 web pages temporarily.
However, users feel that Firefox does not release the memory used for temporarily storing web pages even when the browser is closed. This leads to a sluggish system if you have many tabs open with different web pages in Firefox.
“Firefox should free up the memory it has used,” Mike Schroepfer – the technical director of Mozilla – affirmed yesterday. “However, there are many types of cache in the browser, which makes the freeing process quite complicated. Therefore, in cases where freeing memory is not possible, we must acknowledge this as a memory leak.”
Nonetheless, Goodger still maintains that all versions of Firefox do not suffer from memory leaks; rather, it is a common issue encountered in complex software.
Users can configure the cache usage of the Back-Forward feature by reducing the memory allocated for this feature. To do this, open the Firefox browser and type “about:config” (without quotes) in the address bar to access the configuration file. Look for the line “browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers” and double-click on it. If you enter the value “0,” the feature will be disabled. Values from 1 – 8 will allow the feature to store the corresponding number of web pages, and “-1” will reset to default.
