I am still convinced that Firefox is a great browser, but lately something went terribly wrong. The browser would take up 1.7 GByte of virtual memory almost immediately after starting, almost independently on the number of open tabs or visited pages.
In order to debug the problem I installed another add-on (after actually reading on the web that add-ons might be the culprit in the first place). The add-on Tab-Data indicates in each open tab the amount of memory used by rendering the contents of the tab.
Well the numbers really did not add up. I usually have around ten open tabs at a single time, and with an average of 2 MByte per tab I really did not come close to 1.7 GByte of virtual memory needed.
The main suspect according to the general agreement on the web is the Ad-blocker. And of course I use an Ad-blocker, because otherwise the web has simply become unusable – blame yourselves with your banners and popups,…
I used to use Adblock Plus but earlier this year I switched to its fork Adblock Edge due to performance and compatibility problems. Yesterday I found the information that Adblock Edge wasn’t recommended anymore and instead it was forked into uBlock Origin “Finally, an efficient blocker. Easy on CPU and memory.”
And so far I must say that this self-confident message appears to be justified. Firefox is now satisfied with about half the amount of virtual memory compared to before the switch and has not crashed yet…
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