Firefox and Memory Usage

Firefox can be a memory hog, but is the browser really to blame...? I am currently waiting for my second gig of memory at my new job, and I've had to do a few tweaks to keep this baby humming along with it's single gig. I've noticed that Firefox has been quite the memory hog lately with an average memory usage around 170 megs. I did a bit of research and found a couple of things that seem to help.

Add-Ons

Not all add-ons are created equal...! I use a few Firefox add-ons every day at work, and never really thought that they might be causing problems. Some add-ons straight up contain memory leaks (cybernetnews) that will eat up your available memory when using them in Firefox. Just having a few add-ons "enabled" in Firefox is enough to bloat your memory usage, even if they are only used every once in a while. You might want to play around with enabling and disabling your favorite (or not so favorite) add-ons to see which might be causing the bulk of your Firefox related memory issues.

Config

I also found a helpful tip (here) that allows you to specify that Firefox should not be loaded into memory when minimized. Just by minimizing firefox, you can clear up a lot of the lost memory (look at firefoxes memory usage before and after a minimize.)

1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter config.trim_on_minimize. Press Enter.
4. Now select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox.

Firefox might maximize a bit slower with this fix because the browser will be moved from memory to your HD but I haven't noticed any difference.

I have a friend that constantly has at least three firefox windows open with about 10million tabs open in each. I'd imagine that a fix like this might help out a bit on his firefox memory usage. =) I'm not nearly that bad, and it's already helped a ton...