Firefox 4 final

[d000hg]

Not sure why you think the memory use reported in task manager wouldn't be "accurate" although I can understand that it might not be reporting what you think it's reporting (it's the "working set" i.e. the memory physically mapped to that process, although some pages might be shared between more than one process).

Just something I read somewhere. As you say it's the working set, from wikipedia:

The Mem Usage column on the Processes tab is actually the process' working set. The process has little or no direct control over its working set, which turns this column useless to determine how much memory a process is consuming.

That might be bad info but I always believed TM was bad at knowing when memory had been released.

Also, the fact it's at 500Mb doesn't mean automatically this is bad... it might simply be caching a load more stuff. It's only bad if it uses memory you need elsewhere... no doubt there are ways to configure it but I couldn't tell you how.

[doodab]

Just something I read somewhere. As you say it's the working set, from wikipedia:

That might be bad info but I always believed TM was bad at knowing when memory had been released.

Also, the fact it's at 500Mb doesn't mean automatically this is bad... it might simply be caching a load more stuff. It's only bad if it uses memory you need elsewhere... no doubt there are ways to configure it but I couldn't tell you how.

Working Set (Windows)

My reading of it as bad comes from the way my work machine gradually grinds to a halt. I don't particularly notice it on my personal laptop but that has 8GB in it, the work one only has 2.

[VectraMan]

If there's a difference between this and the last release, I can't see it.

[NickFitz]

If there's a difference between this and the last release, I can't see it.

Quite a few differences actually: Mozilla Firefox 4 Release Notes

[TheFaQQer]

Most of my installed plugins don't work, so it's back to the previous version for a bit.

[AtW]

It's tulip and I say that categorically as the person who used every version since beta 4 of FF4.

Memory usage is WAY too high - it totally leaks memory very quickly.

The idiots who thought it was good idea to remove status bar completely still seem to run the show.

The only reason it does not seem to show more mistakes on websites is because way too many websites already broke backwards compatibilty and look fulip in FF2

[AtW]

Also, the fact it's at 500Mb doesn't mean automatically this is bad...

No, it doesn't. Say SKA uses at times 50 GB+, and that's ok considering what it does.

Firefox 4 uses way too much RAM than it should be - you can run a fooking recent 3D game these days with that much RAM used, not just render some 2D webpages that are retrieved over super slow IO pipe.

[AtW]

My new PC has just been shipped so will be here tomorrow - might try it on there and see how much of the 16GB RAM it uses

Send it back and get a memory upgrade, you'll need it...

[AtW]

Oh, forgot to add - FF4 is a

MEMORY LEAKING ELEPHANT

[NickFitz]

So, AtW seems to think it's pretty damn good

Anybody else formulated an informed opinion about a complex piece of software within a few hours of its release? Obviously, pointing out that it does a bit more than Netscape Navigator 3 and therefore has a greater memory footprint than a piece of software designed for the days when 128MB was a huge amount of RAM for a desktop machine is an important point to make, but I was wondering if anybody had any views on some of the more recondite aspects of this release - stuff like the bit more that it does than Netscape Navigator 3, or indeed than Internet Explorer 4