Review: FireFox's Memory Usage

I've been kind of watching the memory usage of FireFox using the Windows Task Manager. I was curious how much it used because I had left my gmail test account open last night and this morning FireFox was up to 1G of memory. So, I was wondering how much it uses by default.

The odd thing was that it settles around 74M of RAM after startup. Then I minimized it for a few minutes. When I check the WTM, it is now at 150M. When I bring it back to maximized, this actually drops down to 76M of RAM. I tried this minimized/maximize one more time and got 150M dropping down to 100M. It has not dropped below 99M as I am typing this blog on Chrome.

Even if I leave FireFox maximized but in the background, the memory usage remains the same. This seems very odd because I thought that inactive windows would actually take up the same or less RAM. It could take up less RAM due to its inactivity status which would the OS should start moving some of it to the harddisk so that it has more RAM for active applications.

Not as pertinent to FireFox, I always find it odd that the memory usage would fluctuate when nothing is happening with the application.

Buggish: Secure Connection Failed Error When Accessing Google+, Drive via FF through a VPN

Secure Connection Failed

An error occurred during a connection to plus.google.com. SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length. (Error code: ssl_error_rx_record_too_long)

    The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
    Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem. Alternatively, use the command found in the help menu to report this broken site.

I get this error with Firefox ESX 31.0 when trying to access Google Plus or Google Drive when connecting via a VPN. I do not have any problems via Google Chrome.

Buggish: Blogger on Chrome with Google Plus Comments

I still have not quite figured how blogger counts the visitors to my page. The number of visits per post does not seem to add up to the total visitors to the site. My top pages have about 14k hits. I have almost 300 posts which should be about 30-ish hits each thus about 9k hits. That will give me almost 23k. My all-time is 25.6k. Most of the posts have less than 10, but then I do have a few random ones that hit 100.... but it is not one for ever four which would average to about 30-ish per page. So there seems to be quite fewer hits by aggregating the post hits versus the site hits which should be approximately the same.

I was actually trying to manually count the number of posts by adding them up in my head. I had reached perhaps the 8 or 9th page. I found that the biggest issue in scrolling through the page was that each time it would load the google comments count. While it loads the count, I cannot scroll the page. Some times it would even jump around because it queued the commands while it was loading.

With all the memory that Chrome already consumes, I am surprised that it cannot handle a user scrolling while it loads data in the background. After been using Chrome for a while, I am starting to feel that Firefox is more my preferred browser. Chrome just uses too much memory and it just makes my system crawl at snail speed. Once Chrome is closed, everything else on the system seems to return back to normal.

This occurs even when I have Chrome minimized and not in use. This may be perhaps with the ads or other scripts, but I have not find this to be a problem with FF or even IE. At times, even Dota consumes less memory than Chrome.

Review: IE vs FF vs Chrome

Comparing Internet Explorer, FireFox, and Chrome on Browser Behavior from Generic End-User POV

I've been using IE, FF, and Chrome as my primary browsers. In recent years, Chrome has been my default browser. FF was my primary before then, and IE when I first started using the internet. I still use FF and IE occasionally to keep up with their changes and there are some sites that still work better in FF or IE.

As for the impact to my computer, I notice that FF is most effective for the long-term. By long-term, I mean keeping the browser window for a long period of time (in days). FF has not had any significant impact to my system if left open for several days. IE is similar to FF but will slow down my system in a few days. Chrome seems to slow down my system dramatically if left open for several hours.

By slowing down, I mean that everything (word processing, other browsers, games, applications) else seems to slow down dramatically. Once IE or Chrome are closed, everything else improves dramatically in performance. Chrome seem to do even worse as there are more tabs. I can even notice the difference in performance as I close each tab. I have not noticed this problem with IE.

IE seems to load the fastest with FF seemingly the slowest. I have not timed any, but I think my senses are important in that this has a direct impact when I am trying to search for information especially back in tech support days. When rushing, you will notice even fractions of second delay when a customer is breathing down your neck. I have defaulted to IE for those instances and basically the only reason it was a part of my life.

Today, I use IE the least except maybe to test Bing and for some sites still developed only for IE. To my dismay, IE8 is the only approved browser at work (tech support will only troubleshoot web applications when using IE8, web developers also only design for IE8 for in-house uses). Many Microsoft applications seem to integrate better with IE. I find that IE is the worst at handling javascript exceptions.

I primarily use Chrome because it is youngest of the browsers and still figuring the ins-and-outs of it. It seems more compatible to other sites than FF, but renders IE specific sites worse. I like that Chrome allows me to drag and drop tabs into different Chrome windows. Surprisingly, I use that a lot more than I originally thought (which was never and how silly that feature was). I really like the built-in developer tools although FF and IE have similar features as add-ons. I find the Chrome version the easiest to use. I do not like Chrome's configuration placements. It seems to take me much longer to find certain configurations and sometimes never find them. I am mixed on the logging into the browser part. There are some good features and some I prefer not to have.

I do not have much to say about FF except that it works as I expect a typical browser should do except opening slowly. It renders almost all webpages, configurations are decently logical, and I like supporting a non-corporate built application. It has some nice add-ons. It is only unfortunate that it is not more popular because it is not a default installation like IE and Chrome.



Reference:
My PC is about 4 years-old built from scratch with relatively cost-effective parts (ie not the cheapest but also not the most expensive).