There is a common misconception that every time a new release of Firefox comes out Mozilla claims “this is the one that fixes the memory consumption problems”.\u00a0 I see this misconception in action all the time.<\/p>\n
Here are some recent examples.<\/p>\n
Reddit example 1:<\/a><\/p>\n NEXT VERSION OF FIREFOX IMPROVES MEMORY USAGE<\/strong><\/p>\n Holy crap!!!<\/em><\/p>\n Oh wait, I feel like I’ve heard this before. Oh yea, with ever<\/em>. single<\/em>. new firefox release in the last 3 years. Every<\/strong> one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Reddit example 2<\/a>:<\/p>\n “Firefox 14 fixes the memory leak problem!”<\/p>\n “Firefox 13 finally addresses the leaky memory issue!”<\/p>\n “Firefox 12 – better on memory. No more leaks!”<\/p>\n “Firefox 11 – finally solving the leaky memory problem.”<\/p>\n etc etc etc<\/p>\n I’ll believe it when I see it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Reddit example 3<\/a>:<\/p>\n Firefox has finally fixed the add-on memory leak for about 10 versions now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Hacker News example 1<\/a>:<\/p>\n I’m not sure when Firefox got so memory-hungry and leaky, but it’s the single reason I keep jumping around to Chromium and Opera. Really, really hoping that this time is for real. It’s not the first time a blog post like this has been posted by Mozilla.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hacker New example 2<\/a>:<\/p>\n How many releases of firefox have we had now that claim to have fixed its memory problems? I make this at least four, which is a few too many for me to believe it this time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ars Technica example<\/a>:<\/p>\n “Firefox 15 introduces a new optimization that can radically reduce the browser\u2019s memory footprint…”<\/p>\n Haven’t they been saying this since Firefox 11?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This drives me crazy, because it’s simply not true.<\/p>\n I looked at the announcements on the official Mozilla Blog<\/a> for all the releases between Firefox 4 (March 2011) to Firefox 15 (today): \u00a04<\/a>, 5<\/a>, 6<\/a>, 7<\/a>, 8<\/a>, 9<\/a>, 10<\/a>, 11<\/a>, 12<\/a>, 13<\/a>, 14<\/a>, 15<\/a>.\u00a0 Only three of them even mentioned the word “memory”.<\/p>\n <\/em>That’s two major mentions of memory consumption, and one minor mention, in twelve release announcements.\u00a0 The major mentions were warranted — Firefox 7 greatly reduced memory consumption for Firefox itself<\/a>, and Firefox 15 greatly reduced memory consumption in many cases for users with add-ons<\/a>.\u00a0 And the claims about improvements are clearly qualified to indicate in which circumstances they will be noticed.<\/p>\n But what about the release notes<\/a>?\u00a0 After all, although they are less prominent than the announcements on the Mozilla Blog, they’re arguably a more official description of the changes in each release.\u00a0 Of the twelve releases since Firefox 4, only four of them had release notes that mentioned the word “memory”.<\/p>\n The Firefox 7 and 15 mentions match the release announcements.\u00a0 The Firefox 5 and 8 mentions are minor.<\/p>\n At this point it should be clear that this really is a misconception, with no basis in fact.<\/p>\n My best guess is that Chris Peterson nailed it with this comment<\/a>.<\/p>\n I think the press (overly) publicized the add-on leak fix as it progressed through Firefox’s 6-week release pipeline (Nightly -> Aurora -> Beta -> Release).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In other words, it’s caused by the combination of Firefox’s rapid release schedule and the current intense interest in browser development in the tech press.<\/p>\n For example, a random tech press reader may have heard about the Firefox 15 add-on leak fix multiple times on different sites:\u00a0 on May 8<\/a> shortly after it first landed, then again on July 19<\/a> when it entered Beta, and then again on August 29<\/a> when it was released.\u00a0 (These articles correspond to increasingly prominent blog posts from Mozilla employees and Mozilla itself, such as Kyle Huey’s personal blog<\/a>, the Mozilla Web Developer Blog<\/a>, and the official Mozilla Blog<\/a>.)\u00a0 If that reader wasn’t paying close attention, it’s easy to see how they could end up with this misconception.<\/p>\n It’s an interesting and difficult problem.\u00a0 I think it’s reasonable for Mozilla employees and Mozilla to announce important changes multiple times, at different stages of development, on different communication channels.\u00a0 I also think it’s reasonable for tech press sites to report important changes at different stages of development (especially when you consider that each individual site might only mention a change once or twice).\u00a0 And I don’t think it’s realistic to expect readers to remember which in-development version of Firefox it was that contained some change that they read about two or three months ago.<\/p>\n My only idea for a solution is ad hoc education.\u00a0 So, if you see someone holding this misconception, please point them at this article!\u00a0 Even better, if you can determine how they came to believe it, please let me know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a common misconception that every time a new release of Firefox comes out Mozilla claims “this is the one that fixes the memory consumption problems”.\u00a0 I see this misconception in action all the time. The Misconception in Action Here are some recent examples. Reddit example 1: NEXT VERSION OF FIREFOX IMPROVES MEMORY USAGE […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,4544,4546],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Debunking the misconception<\/h3>\n
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What Causes the Misconception?<\/h3>\n