Firefox 15 Released: Silent Updates, Compressed Textures, Add-on Memory Leak Fix 393
Mozilla released Firefox 15 today, and it brings a number of interesting changes. First, the browser is finally switching to a "silent" update model, like Chrome. (No doubt in answer to endless complaints about their rapid release cycle.) In addition, Mozilla says they have "now plugged the main cause of memory leaks in Firefox add-ons." Add-ons commonly hold extra copies of sites in memory when they don't need to, and the browser now has a mechanism to detect this and reclaim the memory. Another significant improvement is the addition of native support for compressed textures in WebGL, which is a boost for high-res 3D gaming. Here are release notes for the desktop and mobile versions.
ESR Releases (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/ [mozilla.org]
Re:SILENT updates? (Score:5, Informative)
You know you can disable that on Chrome, right? It's not even complicated. Here is a guide [chromium.org] for the administrators.
I'm sure you can also disable it on Firefox as well.
There's no need to put them in the bin at all, at least not for that reason.
Re:SILENT updates? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:SILENT updates? (Score:4, Informative)
Just turn them off. Same thing we do with Window Servers. Download updated but let me choose when to install them.
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/disable-silent-updates-in-firefox/ [bleepingcomputer.com]
Re:SILENT updates? (Score:4, Informative)
And that is why you should download and install the Firefox Extended Support Release: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html [mozilla.org] instead of their version-of-the-month.
Hopefully future ESR releases will remain able to manage updates.
Re:Flash freezing (Score:5, Informative)
Flashblock fixes the problem with Flash freezing. If I could marry it, I would.
Re:Old story, or something new? (Score:5, Informative)
I do. Daily. 100+ tabs open is not uncommon. Firefox hasn't crashed for years. The rest of your comment is OffTopic.
Re:Memory leaks (Score:3, Informative)
Mozilla says they have "now plugged the main cause of memory leaks in Firefox add-ons."
Er, the same memory leaks they assured us weren't happening or weren't their fault?
I just RTFA so I'll answer that for you: "weren't their fault". In TFA they say the memory leaks aren't Mozilla's fault, but it is their problem. The plugins create the memory leaks and there's not much Mozilla can do about that. They've tried working with lots of plugin writers to clean it up and they've got them to make progress, but they can't force every developer to cooperate, and they can't force those that do cooperate to fix it 100%. So instead, they've figured out a way to forcefull rip the memory out of the hands of the plugins so they can free it up. Theoretically this could be problematic (if the plugin later wanted to use that now-gone memory), but apparently they've done it in a way that ends up not causing any problems (though we'll see what happens once everyone is using it).
Re:Old story, or something new? (Score:5, Informative)
Having run into memory problems repeatedly for years, Firefox 15 is shockingly better at memory management. They completely change the model they used to help clean up after add-ons that don't clean up after themselves and very few of them have had to be fixed to work with it. Memory usage for me has been cut by more than half.
Mozilla also went out of its way to make the updater service run with as few rights as possible [mozilla.org] with code that revokes rights that it does not need. There were about three dozen permissions explicitly dropped when it was first developed around FF12. That number may have changed slightly but it's still a long list.
Re:Old story, or something new? (Score:5, Informative)
Crash? No. Come to a complete stop for 10 seconds while doing nothing more but scrolling? Yes.
Re:Next... (Score:5, Informative)
Why are you using WinRar when 7zip exists?
Re:Works fine for me (Score:5, Informative)
GP said
Every time Firefox upgrades, it wipes out my login cookies. It forces me to re-login to my sites. Is there a way to turn this dictator off?
I would be very surprised if there were not. Chrome lets you turn it off. I'm sure if you use Iceweasel (the Debian Firefox derivative), this wouldn't be a problem (updates are managed by apt). There are third-party efforts like IceWeasel for Windows [sourceforge.net] and Porting Icecat on Mac Using Fink [sourceforge.net] (IceCat is the GNU port of Firefox, sharing quite a bit (even the name, originally) with Iceweasel), but they're horribly out of date.
You said
I just updated Firefox between my "Flash freezing" post above and this post here, and I didn't have to log into Slashdot again.
Slashdot works because its cookies do not expire with the session. Any cookies that expire with the session will be expired by a browser upgrade. This is because "resuming" a crashed or otherwise saved session isn't actually resuming, it is reopening to the browser's best ability. This does not include session cookies for security reasons.
Re:Old story, or something new? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Old story, or something new? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, exactly! The high memory usage comes from firebug. If you really have so little memory, then you'll be much better off running 2 separate instances of Firefox. In both my own testing and Tom's latest browser Firefox turn out on top with the lowest memory footprint.
http://www.tomshardware.com/gallery/memoryusage3wbgp11,0101-343668-0-2-3-1-png-.html [tomshardware.com]
Best 40 tab - Firefox 794 MB
Worst 40 tab - Chrome 1449 MB
Chrome used almost twice the memory as Firefox.
Re:Where is 64-bit version? (Score:4, Informative)
The biggest issue with the 64-bit versions is that they only run 64-bit plugins, unless you use something like nspluginwrapper (nspluginwrapper.org).
That is out of date information. The 64-bit builds (Waterfox & Pal Moon) are compatible with all standard 32-bit extensions.
Re:SILENT updates? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SILENT updates? (Score:4, Informative)
auto-update of Chrome because while I see it as unnecessary and inconvenient in my usecase, it is not detrimental to security to keep it on.
You might not be aware of this, but like every piece of software ever written-- with the possible exception of Hello World-- Chrome has had numerous security flaws, and has fixed them via updates.
Turning off updates makes you quite vulnerable indeed, and all the more so because those Chrome updates also update Flash and the built in PDF reader which are extensively targetted by malware.
TL;DR- enjoy your botnet.
Re:Old story, or something new? (Score:3, Informative)
If your laptop can't handle more than 2 GB of RAM, it is so old that any $300 notebook that can handle 8 GB or more of RAM (and probably comes with 4 GB) will outperform it in every performance metric. And I just got 8 GB of low voltage DDR3-1600 cas 9 SO-DIMMS from newegg for $48. And if your DEVELOPMENT box isn't making you enough money to justify spending either of those two numbers, get out of the development business, because it should easily be paying for something 4x more expensive.
If you aren't doing development, then don't worry about it.