Firefox 3.0 alpha Minefield and Gran Paradiso

For the last week or so I've been using Firefox 3.0 alpha 1 release (codename Minefield) - while it seems to render pages a lot faster (perhaps in part due to the fact I can't find a single add-on or extension that works on this version!), it is a bit of a memory hog. But that's going to change. I highly recommend upgrading for fun, it seems stable enough to use for home-use, but probably not for mission-critical uses. Lots of fun.



Well, Firefox 3.0 alpha 2 has just been released - codename Gran Paradiso.

The release notes indicate that the memory leaks are due to a new 'garbage collection system which promises an improved memory footprint'. Bugs will be fixed before release - the release notes say:

In order to better handle memory issues, a new garbage collection system has been implemented. However, as the process of integrating Gecko into this system is still ongoing, there are some known leaks that result in large memory usage when the browser is used for a long period of time. A restart should resolve the problem, which will be fixed in Alpha 3.

Of course, this is the kind of thing that happens if you aren't using Firefox 2.0 or I.E.: