Firefox 3: A Browser Odyssey

Posted 06/30/2008 at 6:48am | by Nathan Edwards

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Mozilla Puts an End to Memory Leaks

Previous versions of Firefox have drawn criticism for inefficient memory use—the longer Firefox was open, the more memory it used, reaching into the hundreds of megabytes. This was due to a number of factors: the increasingly large memory demands of JavaScript-rich pages like Google Apps and other AJAX sites; the automatic caching of forward- and back-navigated pages, images, and fonts; memory fragmentation; and straight-up memory leaks (caused when Firefox or its extensions would fail to release memory that was no longer being used).

With Firefox 3, Mozilla introduces a memory cycle collector that monitors and cleans up memory that’s tied up in self-referential processes, or cycles. Cached forward- and back-navigated pages now expire after 30 minutes, so if you’re the kind of person who visits lots of sites in the same tab, you’ll no longer be keeping dozens of pages stored in memory.

Compressed images are no longer stored uncompressed in memory for pages you’re not actively viewing, and animated GIFs are stored in a much more efficient format. Hundreds of memory leaks have also been plugged.

In our hands-on testing, we found that AJAX-dominated pages loaded much faster, and Firefox 3 Beta 5 drew about half the memory after prolonged use than Firefox 2 did in similar circumstances. We ran the same 15 tabs (with multiple pages in the history of each tab), including Gmail and Outlook webmail, for two hours in both browsers, and found that while Firefox 2 was using about 240MB of RAM, Firefox 3 had cut that down to 163MB. We still noticed some slowdown and heavy CPU usage when coming back to a long-inactive session that included multiple instances of Gmail and other complex pages, though.

For the most part, Firefox 3 Beta 5 is zippier and less leaky than prior iterations, and we expect to see even more improvements in the final version.

Breaking in the New Browser

You’re not a power user if you’re using Firefox 3 as-is. Here are some tweaks to get you started

Make it Mini

Don’t like the new “keyhole” arrows? Want to make Firefox even less obtrusive? Install the Classic Compact theme (http://tinyurl.com/2eon5x) and its companion, the Classic Compact Options Add-on (http://tinyurl.com/49wz9g). As the name suggests, Classic Compact trims the size of menus, buttons, and tabs, so you can concentrate on the pages you’re looking at—useful for smaller monitors like those on today’s ultraportable notebooks.

The Options Add-on lets you customize the Classic Compact theme, so you can create your own mix-and-match theme that’s as compact as you want it to be. Keep the keyhole, but shrink the tabs? Sure! You can even compress your menu bar into just one drop-down button.

Bookmark Smarter

Get creative with your tags. If you’re a baseball junkie, mark all your go-to sites (for us, that’s Deadspin, Viva el Birdos, Buster Olney, and Baseball Musings) with the same tag—say, something clever like “baseball.” Then open your Bookmark Library (Ctrl+Shift+B in Windows). Find “baseball” in your Tags folder, and drag it to your bookmarks toolbar. You’ve just created a Smart Bookmark. Now click “Open all in tabs” and enjoy your sports fix!

Early beta builds of Firefox 3 shipped with six default Smart Bookmarks, but they’ve been whittled down to three in Beta 5 and just one in the final release version. To restore the old Smart Bookmarks, go to about:config and search forbrowser.places.smartBookmarksVersion. Set it to 0 and restart Firefox. Presto! More Smart Bookmarks.

It’s possible to make even more nuanced Smart Bookmarks that take into account specific parameters of your choosing, such as sites visited that include the word “linux,” but you’ve got your work cut out for you. As of Beta 5, you’ll have to resort to manually creating more complicated bookmarks. You’ll need to go to Add Bookmarks, create a name, and then create a query string in the location bar (for example, the string for the “Most Visited” Smart Bookmark is
place:queryType=0&sort=8&maxResults=10). Hopefully, Mozilla or a third-party developer will create an easy Smart Bookmarks extension now that Firefox 3 has been officially released, but until then you’ll have to rely on sites like MozillaZine (http://tinyurl.com/6dluoq) for help.

Make the AwesomeBar More Awesome

First, the scoop on the AwesomeBar algorithm: The “frecency” algorithm weighs results based on a combination of frequency and recency, as mentioned before. But how exactly are they weighted? In short: Typed URLs are valued the highest, followed by bookmarks, then links you’ve manually clicked. After this, results are weighted by the “frecency” of your site visits. A site you’ve visited 10 times this week is weighted higher than a site you visited 10 times last week, for example. So the more often and the more recently you’ve been there, the higher “frecency” it has and the higher it’s rated.
We think the Awesome Bar rocks as-is. But if you want to tweak it more to your liking, we’ve got you covered.

• Change the maximum number of results the AwesomeBar returns: Go to the almighty about:config page. Use the box at the top to navigate to browser.url.maxRichResults. The default is 12; we prefer 6, so we don’t have to scroll within the drop-down menu.
• Only return results for URLs you’ve actually typed: Go to about:config again and search for browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped. Set it to “true” to limit results to those you’ve actually typed—find the pages you want without sifting through cruft.

If you just don’t like the AwesomeBar, we have good news and bad news. The bad news is that Mozilla scrapped the old location bar code. The good news is that there’s an Add-on (of course) called Oldbar that emulates FF2’s location bar. Find it at http://tinyurl.com/2ba79x. 

Force Old Extensions

Tired of waiting for someone to update your favorite extension for Firefox 3? Good news: Many older extensions work fine in Firefox 3. You just have to disable the compatibility check. Point your browser to about:config, then create a new entry. Call it extensions.checkCompatibility and set its value to “false.” Then restart Firefox. Presto! Your old extensions are back! Proceed with caution, though—some extensions (mainly bookmark extensions like Foxmarks, extensions related to the Firefox 2 location bar, and tab-related extensions like ChromaTabs) genuinely aren’t compatible due to changes in Firefox 3, so if you find Firefox is acting wonky, change this value back to “true” and hope your favorite extension developer gets up to speed. 

What's Your Firefox Persona?

Want to add a little flavor to your Firefox toolbars without messing around with themes? Try Personas (http://
tinyurl.com/4dwpc2). This easy-to-use Add-On from Mozilla Labs lets you add custom graphics to your Firefox header and footer—just click the little fox-head logo in the lower left-hand corner and pick one of the available themes. If none of them catches your eye, make your own! Create a 3000x200 image for the header and a 3000x100 one for the footer, then point to them using the Preferences menu!