I'd happily accept a bigger memory consumption in exchange for threaded/multi-process tabs. Does anyone know how the current state of that project is? The main reason that keeps me with Chrome is that in Chrome a single tab's JavaScript going mad doesn't affect any other part of the browser, while Firefox still completely freezes.
Mozilla's multi-processing project is called Electrolysis[1], and the process-per-tab variant is used in mobile versions of Firefox. I think it's pretty far off for the desktop version, and as long as blue sky ideas go, I'd prefer to get the security advantages without the increased memory consumption (maybe with shared heaps within a privilege level, whether or not multiple processes are used).
As far as increased responsiveness, that's addressed by the Snappy effort, which you can follow here[2] as a sort of sister-blog to Nicholas' MemShrink reports.
The multi-threading is proceeding on a few fronts. The project to run chrome and content on separate threads, "super-snappy", is going to have nightly builds soon. The bug is here:
Off main thread compositing and image decoding are in progress too. After those are done the "electrolysis" project to have separate process for tabs and addons will probably resume.
You really should try running Firefox in safe mode; as others have said, it's not the number of add-ons you're running which is significant, but rather whether any one of them leaks the world.
I appreciate all the work you and all the Mozilla devs are doing. Even if chrome is better(it isn't) I would still use Firefox because of your stance on privacy. I'm on the beta channel now but I will checkout the alpha.
What percentage of the devs are Mac developers at Mozilla? What's the best way to contribute to Firefox for a mac developer with no experience on the Firefox code base? or to put it differently what area needs the most help?
Tons of Mozilla developers use Macs. IIRC, within the company it's something like 70%. The number is too high really, it would be better if more developers were on Windows.
I'm short on time now and typing on my phone but I own Mozilla's Mac OS X code and would be happy to help you get involved. Email me at josh at mozilla dot com.
The one that fixes the Addon leaks is in version 15, which is only in Aurora/Alpha at the moment. It'll be in Beta in July, and released at the end of August.
I switched to it because I was having the same issues as you, and it's made a massive difference.
You can always switch to either beta,alpha or trunk version. They have massive amount of improvements and for me it was more important than a rare(very) instability.
With nearly 200 tabs open, my Firefox is only using 1.5GB, which I find very impressive. This is on linux though, and there are so many conditions that could effect usage, especially across operating systems. The only real problem is it starts to act quite slow with this many tabs. Chrome doesn't have this behaviour, but has a lot more memory usage due to multiple processes.
Unfortunately one misbehaving extension is enough to break Firefox' memory usage. I ran a fresh profile without any extensions for a few days recently and it was a marvel: Firefox kept releasing all memory immediately once I closed tabs.
