Mozilla Corp. recently released Firefox 3.0 Beta 3. According to the company, the memory consumption is dramatically improved in this beta version. Developers have been aggressively attacking the open source browser’s notorious memory leaks, trying to improve the single biggest complaint about the web browser. According to the company, the leaks have been a source of concern for years and have been worked on since those concerns rose, but the real breakthroughs have come in the past six months. Three months ago a member of the Mozilla board of directors made it clear that the memory usage issues had to become a top priority, saying that attention had to be paid the issues if the browser was going to compete in the RAM-tight mobile market.
Whatever the reason, Mozilla is claiming progress on the memory front. In the release notes for Beta 3.0, the company trumpets the fact that the newest version has plugged more than 350 leaks, with over 50 of those stoppages coming in the last eight weeks. This type of progress is relatively unheard of in the market, and it has the company boasting that the product is now dramatically better than Internet Explorer 7. Whether this is an exaggeration or a bold statement of facts remains to be seen, but it is clear that Firefox has come a long way in a short period of time.
The work is not finished yet, according to the company. While the majority of the major memory issues have been solved, there is still additional work that needs to be done before the company can truly consider it a finished product. This is why the company is currently working on Beta 4 for the browser, trying to work out the last of the issues that remain. Mozilla acknowledges that it will take time to do at least one more beta build.
According to the company the Beta 4 code freeze, when all work will stop in preparation for the build to enter the final testing stage of testing before release, has been tentatively scheduled for Feb. 26th. This leaves the company hoping for a March delivery of the next beta. They have continued to decline on setting a release date for the final version of Firefox, saying instead that it would likely be shipping sometime during the first half of the year.
Firefox has been criticized for years for its memory leaks, which is what originally prompted the company to take a closer look at what it could do to address the issue. In its previous versions, the longer the browser runs the larger its appetite for memory. At some point this appetite becomes too much, and the overall performance of the computer is degraded or the browser itself locks up. Closing tabs isn’t enough to reclaim this memory, and users have to completely shut down Firefox and restart it to regain usage of the memory. When Firefox 3.0 comes out in its final stages, these issue should become a thing of the past.
Tags: browser, firefox, mozilla, open source
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February 21st, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Quote: “When Firefox 3.0 comes out in its final stages, these issue should become a thing of the past.” About time honestly. I love Firefox, but damn if it doesn’t get annoying from time to time. Good read.
February 24th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Sounds great! Can’t wait for the release of Firefox 3.0.
February 26th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Looking forward to the final release. I found the current version so bad I immediately upgraded to the 3.0 beta and so far find it much more stable. The final release should be even better.
April 14th, 2008 at 12:37 am
My RAM usage with FireFox is HORRID on 2.0. It runs almost into 1GB’s. Amazing that I have to dedicated 1GB of RAM to Firefox. I haven’t upgraded to the beta because my plug ins aren’t supported yet.
April 17th, 2008 at 2:43 am
I’m a big fan of Firefox, a very big one. I was very excited when I heard the new 3.0 release…so far in this beta version there are no extensions available and that’s not ok. It’s more stable indeed and looks good to, but I really need FireBug and FireFTP and all other web-development extensions. I hope they will release them in the same time with the full 3.0.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:27 pm
So that explains why my Firefox browser hangs up sometimes. I didn’t know this but I’ve noticed that it is sometimes slower than IE7. When I’m doing disk clean ups using tune up utilities Firefox has the largest space used. I hope version 3 will be out soon and will be able to solve this problem.
June 13th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I think that is good for Firefox to use less memory. I found that the only reason why I cant get a lot more people using the software is all purely because it uses too much of their system resources. I’m sure that if they successfully plug this hole, the number of users will surely shoot up.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Glad to see that they are taking care of what needs to be. Also happy that they are improving in areas the competition cannot compete. I love the fact that I do not have as many problems using Firefox as I did when I used internet explorer. Agreed that if this works out that the number of users will triple in a short matter of time.