Firefox 7/ 7.0.1: “Drastically improved memory handling for certain use cases”. Firefox 8/ 8.0.1: “Improved performance and memory handling when using and elements”. Firefox 15: “Optimized memory usage for add-ons”. Of the twelve releases since Firefox 4, only four of them had release notes that mentioned the word “memory”. And the claims about improvements are clearly qualified to indicate in which circumstances they will be noticed.īut what about the release notes? After all, although they are less prominent than the announcements on the Mozilla Blog, they’re arguably a more official description of the changes in each release. The major mentions were warranted - Firefox 7 greatly reduced memory consumption for Firefox itself, and Firefox 15 greatly reduced memory consumption in many cases for users with add-ons. That’s two major mentions of memory consumption, and one minor mention, in twelve release announcements. The improvements make browsing smoother and more responsive.” The text says: “Firefox makes your Web experience faster by reducing memory usage when browsing with certain add-ons. The headline includes: “Firefox Now Uses Less Memory to Make Browsing Faster”. It’s an improvement that makes Firefox start faster and use less memory.” Firefox first loads the tab you are currently viewing, then loads background tabs when you click them. The text includes: “Firefox loads tabs on demand when restoring a browsing session to more quickly get you to Web pages. Heavy Internet users will enjoy enhanced performance when lots of tabs are open and during long Web browsing sessions that last hours or even days.” Users will notice Firefox is faster at opening new tabs, clicking on menu items and buttons on websites. The text includes: “Firefox manages memory more efficiently to deliver a nimble Web browsing experience. The headline says “Mozilla Firefox Significantly Reduces Memory Use to Make Web Browsing Faster”. Only three of them even mentioned the word “memory”. I looked at the announcements on the official Mozilla Blog for all the releases between Firefox 4 (March 2011) to Firefox 15 (today): 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. This drives me crazy, because it’s simply not true. Haven’t they been saying this since Firefox 11? “Firefox 15 introduces a new optimization that can radically reduce the browser’s memory footprint…” How many releases of firefox have we had now that claim to have fixed its memory problems? I make this at least four, which is a few too many for me to believe it this time. 
It’s not the first time a blog post like this has been posted by Mozilla. Really, really hoping that this time is for real. I’m not sure when Firefox got so memory-hungry and leaky, but it’s the single reason I keep jumping around to Chromium and Opera.
Firefox has finally fixed the add-on memory leak for about 10 versions now.
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