Firefox 15 beta takes on memory leaks

The beta version of Firefox 15 aims to tackle memory management

Jeremy Proome

July 23, 2012

Mozilla has released a beta version of Firefox 15, which is focussing on better memory management and improved speeds.

“Firefox 15 prevents most memory leaks caused by add-ons, including Firebug,” Nicholas Nethercote writes in a Mozilla blog. Firebug is a Firefox add-on for debugging web pages.

“For many users with add-ons installed, this will significantly reduce Firefox’s memory consumption, without requiring upgrades to those add-ons,” he adds. “For those users, Firefox 15 is likely to be faster (sometimes drastically so) and less likely to crash, especially if they have multiple add-ons installed and/or keep Firefox running for a long time between restarts.”

Neithercote explained that memory leaks are caused by “zombie compartments”, which are portions of web page information that are stored after you close a window.

Firefox 15 is said to clean out these compartments, making the new version much more efficient in memory management.