There are millions of people who love Firefox for its simplicity and extensibility but few have ever ventured to see “what lies beneath.” We constantly hear about the great security that it will bring to you but many of us also know first-hand what the memory leaks are like.
Someone decided to use Klocwork’s K7 static analysis tool to analyze Firefox 1.5.0.6 to see what kind of memory leaks, defects, and vulnerabilities they could come up with. The results were pretty staggering:
- 446 null pointer dereferences
- 141 memory management issues (pictured above)
- 71 vulnerabilities
- 68 uninitialized variables
As you can see there are several areas for concern but the tester did not post the specifics on any of the tests, especially the vulnerabilities. The information has been sent over to Mozilla so that they can look through the report to determine its validity.
The first thing that popped into my head was that Mozilla is working on a new release, Firefox 2, which is due out in 6-weeks. This new version fixes several memory leaks and numerous bugs but I guess Firefox 1.5.0.6 is the mainstream version of Firefox right now. Too bad other Web browsers weren’t open source so that they could be put through the same test for comparison sake.
i havent had memory problems in a long time.
Are you using Firefox 1.5.0.6 or Firefox 2?
I LOVE all you do!
Comment: The ORANGE text AND LINKS aren’t easy to read (at least for me) Both on White, and on blue…just too light. Can you consider a darker color?
Thanks again for your work. You’ve REALLY helped me in many ways.
I’ve been running FF 2.0b2 for a bit now and memory usage seems a little better compared to 1.5.0.6. I was expecting a better improvement, but two things need to considered…
First this is still Beta and they may still be working out the memory issues. Second, I am still running/forcing many extensions which were designed for 1.5.0.6. So they may not be working as efficiently as they should if they were designed to run under Firefox 2.0.
We have made the links a little darker and we hope that helps make it easier to read. We do like our Orange/Navy theme that we have going on so I don’t think you’ll see a major overhaul anytime soon. Thanks for the recommendation though!
After switching away from Yahoo! Mail Beta, Firefox 2.0b2 memory usage is way better than I was getting with 1.5.0.6!
Yes, Yahoo! Mail Beta is a power hungry beast that definitely needs to be tamed…at least in my experiences. But hey, it’s Beta right?
They did a good job with the Maps once it was out of Beta so may be the mail will improve. I might be going back to Yahoo!Mail since it looks like My Way is eating my messages (says I have new mail, but the in box is empty).
Memory issues have always been FF’s worst “feature”. My FF grinds to a halt and CPU goes 100% when I lose my network connection for a second. Horrible.
I’m surprised you’re not using GMail, any particular reason?
The memory leaks have definitely gotten better in Firefox 2 which is very nice. You have to remember that it could be one of your extensions causing the memory leak as well. If that is a frequent problem that you are having then maybe you should start with a fresh installation.
I noticed this memory leak issue on my “release” (not beta) builds of Firefox.
I posted some of the “about:config” tweaks I tracked down that have helped manage the Firefox memory issues more efficiently (on my systems at least).
[grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com]
There is some additional dialog on the subject under the comments of that post as well.
I think that these should also apply to the Firefox 2.0 version as well, according to the MozillaZine Knowledge Base articles.
I’ve been noticing a tendency for my control-key/arrow keys on my laptops/desktops to stop working while in various builds of Firefox lately. It’s a real pain when I’m trying to copy/paste simple text from various sites and then I can’t. It seems to be an intermittent issue as sometimes it works on the same page and other times it doesn’t. Anyone else running into this issue, lately? I think it began with one of the recent patches to Firefox…..
Ughhh! The keyboard wackiness struck on this page right after I posted the above comment!
I could not click back into the name, website fields for the poster id.
I posted, then came back. Now I can get in the fields, but my apostrophe key is not working, my arrow keys and home, end, and forward-slash keys are not working!
I would blame it on my system-drivers, but it happens on my desktops (3) and laptop (2) systems of various models and manufacturers.
I would blame it on my Firefox extensions but it even happens on a “clean” build with no extensions or themes loaded. Grrrrr.
If I hit the forward-slash key, Firefox is launching the “find” tool bar at the bottom. Hmmmm.
Surely I am not alone in seeing this behavior am I?
If I open, say, Notepad, and paste something into it, then re-copy it back into a Firefox form-field, the keyboard returns to normal. Strange…..
I have never heard of that issue but I could see how it is very frustrating. I went searching for keyboard problems in Firefox and other people have discussed that issue as well. I didn’t find a solution though.
Have you ever thought of using Google’s GMail?
I have not had any memory leakage issues that I know of. Definitely nothing that I have seen commented about here. I am using v1.5.0.6