I still keep an eye on the browsers, even though now I have 1GB of RAM installed, for their memory leaks. Firefox and Safari are nortorious for leaking memory when too many tabs are open for too long. But thanks to this blog, there’s now a way to reclaim unused memory space back from Firefox:
If you minimize Firefox, it will (automagically) reclaim memory that it’s no longer using.
IT WORKS! Firefox was using 180+MB of RAM even though only 3 tabs were open at the time. By simply minimizing the window, the memory usage went down to just above 110MB. Nuts.
But seriously, a browser that requires 100+MB of RAM to run is just crazy. When Firefox is first launched, it only takes about 85MB of RAM. It creeps up as more and more tabs are opened/closed… etc. And the longer you run Firefox in one shot straight, the more memory it will take up over time. The same issue applies to Safari. But at least now there’s a work around for Firefox.
Damn you, Apple Safari team.