Ever since installing Firefox version 2, I’ve noticed a steady deterioration in my computer’s performance, but I haven’t been able to put my finger on it. Since installing the 2.0.0.1 update, it’s been even worse. For some reason, I decided to try and figure it out yesterday, and I think I’ve managed to stumble on the reason. Please note that isn’t to say that I’ve fixed the problem – only that I know the cause.
I typically keep 10-12 tabs open in Firefox. Perhaps I shouldn’t, but I do. It’s just the way that I use it. I almost constantly keep Firefox running. I just have little reason to close it, and with 1GB of memory, it’s usually not a problem. Even when Firefox gets up to a couple hundred MB of memory, it’s rarely an issue. If it is, I simply close the window and restart it with the tabs intact. I maybe do this every week or so and life goes on. But still, the performance was getting worse.
I mean it was really bad. I couldn’t even operate the browser. I would click on a field and start typing and it would be seconds before the text would appear. Or I would highlight text and it would take a while for it to appear. Or I would click on a field and start typing and by the time it started, the text would appear in an entirely different field (or on a completely different tab because it clicked elsewhere on the screen). Performance was horrible. The CPU load wasn’t generally bad, but every once in a while, I would notice it burst to a high level.
Often, those 10-12 tabs I keep open are the same, and there isn’t anything fancy on them. A lot of times there isn’t even much scripting on them. Simple pages. So there isn’t a lot going on there. But there was one page that had all sorts of action on it. So I decided to close it down, restart the browser and see what happened. Once I did, performance returned to normal immediately. The page? Google Reader.
If you’ve been reading for a while, you know I left Bloglines for the Google Reader a while back. I’ve been happy with the change. But most days I’m on the computer for hours at a time, and a lot of what I do is in the browser, so I just couldn’t deal with this sort of performance hit. So after a couple days of testing, I have to say that I’m pretty sure it’s the Google Reader (combined with Firefox 2) causing the problem.
The solution at the moment is that I’ve got a window running IE7 that contains only the Google Reader, and my Firefox window that runs everything else, and it seems to be running fine to this point. I’ll see how that goes. I don’t like it, but at least it doesn’t slow down the rest of my operations. Anyone else having this sort of problem with Google Reader and Firefox?
Comments
30 responses to “Firefox CPU Usage and Google Reader”
I have a very similar problem, and I’m glad I came across yr blog, because I’ve just sorted out my problem, or at least paused it for the time being.
I use Google Reader, but I can’t say that I’ve experienced serious issues on Google Reader. But what I have done is install the Google Extensions for FireFox. I’m running FF 2.0.0.4 now, and I just disabled both the Google Reader extention and the Google Browser Sync extension, and restarted.
My initial thought on this was the fact that I access some Java Applets. I was under the impression that it was the Java Apps. Being a Java Developer, I know how heavy these applet can be, so I didn’t think twice about it. But I’ve got three tabs open, all with the Java applets which I thought was causing the issue…. FireFox is running smoother than it’s run in a long time. Plus… lately, it’s been running at over 250MB of RAM with only 7 or 8 tabs open. Right now I only have 5 tabs open, but with the 3 tabs running my applets FF is running at 167MB… no delays in switching tabs, and processor running smoothly.
FF crashes on me on a daily basis. I suspect it won’t anymore. I will have to wait and see though. I kinda got used to it because I didn’t think it was my extensions.
So… it would appear as if my issue is solved. Thanx for that, and Google Guy… I love your extensions… so if you can find your leak, that would be great… for the time being… I won’t be enabling them for a while
I think there should be some kind of CPU load analysis within Firefox to show which extension or part of Firefox that is causing the high load.
I have the same problem with Firefox 2.0.0.3, even with no extensions enabled.
As soon as I open Google Reader *or* Gmail the CPU starts spinning and memory usage starts to skyrocket. I have 2 Gb of RAM but it gets so bad that other applications run out of memory. Closing tabs doesn’t help. Restarting Firefox doesn’t help. All I can do is reboot! Something is very wrong.
I’m frustrated that I’ve found reports of these memory leaks doing back 2 years but it still hasn’t been fixed. I love Firefox but it’s rendering my machine unusable. I’ve mostly quit using Gmail – actually finding I prefer Yahoo anyway – but that doesn’t make it OK for Firefox to run amok!
Same observation here. It definetely has to do with Google Reader. It’s sufficient to press reload in that tab and CPU goes down.
I’m not convinced that the issue is Google Reader. I’m having these “halting” issues with Firefox also, where I begin typing in an edit box and the text doesn’t show up for a while, and where it takes seconds for Firefox to respond to mouse events. This only seems to happen on my quad-processor computer; my other single and dual core computers don’t exhibit this issue. I tried disabling addons, but that didn’t fix it either.
I strongly suspect it’s related in some way to either the form spell checker or the dropdown form memory boxes.
I have cpu usage spikes in firefox (since somewhere mid v1.5), they occur every 25 seconds (that’s nearly 30 secs, coincidence?) and from initial run they increase in intensity to the point where everything freezes. I dont use many extensions (though some people here mentioned firebug which is installed)
I’ve turned off the page buffering to reduce the memory footprint, but it still eats 300 mb with 17 tabs open (I dont think 17 tabs is too many, what are tabs for if not to be used?). Pages with flash tend to make this balloon to over half a gig, and eventually flash movies will stop playing properly (in any browser) and i have to reboot(!) coz closing everything wont cut it. Closing the tabs does not normally free the memory, can you say memory haemorrhage?
Funny though, this is on my win 2k athlon XP 1gb mem at work and the cpu thing doesnt happen on my Core 2 duo 2gb XP machine at home…instead it just eats about 500mb after the first couple of tabs!
I’ve supported Firefox from the beginning, it’s a better browser than all the others for so many reasons and I dont touch ie except for testing…but I suspect it’s either really badly written, or trying to be too clever to the point of unusability.
On other forums people say “every release of FF gets better”, I disagree, it’s more like every release fixes a quirk or two but adds some others that you “just have to put up with” because it’s “a better browser than ie”..hah
Sorry that felt like a rant, I’m just sharing my experience 😉
I had this same problem and was eyeing Google Reader as well – not sure if it is really at fault though … Iinstalled FlashBlock 2 days ago ( and left Google Reader open the same as I always do ). Haven’t experienced the problem since. Prior to installing Flashblock, this machine’s CPU would’ve been pegged at 90% by early afternoon …
I have the same problem with Google Reader and Firebug and having only 512 megs of memory it doesn’t take long for the CPU to start hitting 90% and 100%. If it wouldn’t have been for the original post I would not even have realized what was going on. I always have Firefox open with Google Reader in one tab, but from now on I guess that I will have to use the IE7 solution. Thank you for posting this!
I recently upgraded my computer, and I’m now running a dual-core as my primary system.
I have to say that, though I don’t keep Google Reader open, I rarely see the CPU usage get above a couple of percentage points (I’m running the VIsta Multi Meter Gadget that shows both cores).
This system does have 2GB of RAM, which is often at least half used (1GB), so it’s quite possible that the prior problem was related to the need to swap – it had 1GB of (physical) RAM, so it may have needed to swap, leading to increased CPU utilization. Just a thought.
I forgot to mention before that I don’t use Google Reader or FireBug but I do have Adblock. I also rarely close my Firefox instance unless I need to either reboot or it’s using too much CPU.