I'm having a problem with Firefox on my MacBook that I thought I would never see again, after having had the same problem for years with IE on Windows.

Just recently, FF started "loading up" active and virtual memory, to the point that after 30-45 minutes of surfing, the whole machine slows down to a crawl, as 50-75% of active memory is dedicated to Firefox.

I remember this problem with IE, and it was "unsolvable" until Mister Softee finally released a usable version of Explorer. This was like 5 years ago, mind you. To have this problem on a Mac is shocking, just SHOCKING I tell you.

I'm 99% certain that the problem is with FF, not the OS. I have the latest version of FF, but only OS X 10.4 (though this should not matter).

Any ideas on how to solve this? Should I patiently wait until mozilla releases an u/g?

As it is right now, I have to restart my browser once an hour. For someone who works online, this is a major pain.

Any suggestions will be most appreciated. :-:

What version? What plugins do you have? 3.5 is actually pretty good about memory on all platforms, however there are some ugly plugins floating around.

Here's the full version info:


The only plugins that I have are greasemonkey and flash.

Could it be a script running in conjunction with greasemonkey? It seems like that would cease once I navigate away from the page containing the script...

Disable both extensions and try it again.

Any reason you are not running Leopard (or snow leopard) ?
I'm not sure if FF 3.5 is optimised for 10.4.

But would try disabling extensions first as already mentioned. Good luck.

Use Safari.

Not the most constructive suggestion. There is a multitude of reasons that the OP may want / need to use FF instead. Not least the broad swathes of the Internet that are un-viewable on Safari.

actually, very few. safari also gets 100% on the acid3 test, while firefox does not.

Care to name a few sites?

Most recent one I noticed (last week) was Barclays intl. online banking. Random buttons that are essential to its use are missing on Safari, fine on FF.

This was my most recent attempt at "trying" Safari - and with the same result. Delete. I've probably tried it on 20-30 separate occasions and found the same type of issues - the exact sites don't spring to mind. Even FF is only now at the point where the vast majority of sites work, but I have used it consistently for 3 years because it is light years ahead of any version of IE.

So Safari and Chrome stay in the bin for now. Just not compatible enough. Maybe some day. Acid3 tests just don't do it for me