The recommendation for users to not to use the latest version of Firefox until they resolve the issues on memory which at times can exceed 2 gigabytes and could continue to grow during any session regardless of open tabbed windows. In the lab the decision was made just to start up Firefox and have the latest updates applied which at this stage is 35.0.1 and open any single browser session to any favorite web site.
To conduct the similar test all you need to do is:
- Start a firefox session and open a single browser session to any web site.
- On a Windows 7 machine, click on start and enter taskmgr in the search text box. This will start up a task manager session. Task Manager provides the end user with simple measures to review what is happening on the memory manager, processes and services for a windows session. Go ahead and click on the processes tab. Finally click on the memory column to sort by the highest usage.
- On a Windows 8 machine, right-click on the Taskbar and select Task Manager from the popup window. Do the similar steps described above.
- Watch as Firefox continues to eat memory by doing absolutely nothing, you do not even have to move around the web site you chose.
When confronting Firefox, they listed between 10 to 12 options to review what is happening in the browser. Naturally the first thing is to always get the latest version, next is to update any plug-ins and finally, believe it or not, add memory. This is all nonsense, there are serious issues with Firefox that are not being taken as a high priority and this will come back to haunt them if it is not taken care of in the near future.
Meantime, Baron Software recommends to use Google Chrome which is by far the less resource hog on any windows machine. Internet Explorer (IE) is sometimes very buggy and now Firefox which was a favor is being pushed to the bottom since the resource drain hampers any type of work session.