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Certain Sites Make Firefox 28 Slow Down

  • 7 replies
  • 53 have this problem
  • 5 views
  • Last reply by spandrel

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I think that certain sites that rely on a lot of JavaScript make the entire Firefox browser slow down after a short period of time, but I'm not certain if it's because of JavaScript. Only certain sites cause the browser to slow down. If I browse a site using a lot of JavaScript, Firefox takes more and more ram and slows down to a crawl. Opening up a new tab lags, and clicking on links on _any_ site lags. I've tried doing a garbage and cycle collection which did absolutely nothing. The only way to fix the problem that I've found is to close and restart the browser, which is not an acceptable workaround. It seems as though Firefox is getting worse and worse with every concurrent version. Just before version 28, the browser took over 3 GB of memory in a short period of time -- absolutely ridiculous!

The only add-ons I'm using are Disconnect and Adblock plus. I've restarted Firefox with both of these disabled, and the same thing happens. This system is running openSUSE 13.1 x64, and has a fast processor and 8 GB of ram. There is nothing wrong with the computer or the software installed; this is a problem solely related to Firefox.

I think that certain sites that rely on a lot of JavaScript make the entire Firefox browser slow down after a short period of time, but I'm not certain if it's because of JavaScript. Only certain sites cause the browser to slow down. If I browse a site using a lot of JavaScript, Firefox takes more and more ram and slows down to a crawl. Opening up a new tab lags, and clicking on links on _any_ site lags. I've tried doing a garbage and cycle collection which did absolutely nothing. The only way to fix the problem that I've found is to close and restart the browser, which is not an acceptable workaround. It seems as though Firefox is getting worse and worse with every concurrent version. Just before version 28, the browser took over 3 GB of memory in a short period of time -- absolutely ridiculous! The only add-ons I'm using are Disconnect and Adblock plus. I've restarted Firefox with both of these disabled, and the same thing happens. This system is running openSUSE 13.1 x64, and has a fast processor and 8 GB of ram. There is nothing wrong with the computer or the software installed; this is a problem solely related to Firefox.

All Replies (7)

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Hello,

The Reset Firefox feature can fix many issues by restoring Firefox to its factory default state while saving your essential information.
Note: This will cause you to lose any Extensions and some Preferences.

  • Open websites will not be saved in Firefox versions lower than 25.

To Reset Firefox do the following:

  1. Go to Firefox > Help > Troubleshooting Information.
  2. Click the "Reset Firefox" button.
  3. Firefox will close and reset. After Firefox is done, it will show a window with the information that is imported. Click Finish.
  4. Firefox will open with all factory defaults applied.

Further information can be found in the Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings article.

Did this fix your problems? Please report back to us!

Thank you.

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That is not the answer to the problem, nor did that fix the problem I'm talking about.

Modified by pirithous

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Do these pages use plugins? A page with several plugin items that are not being blocked can take much more time to load.

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Did you even read my post? I didn't talk about a page taking a long time to load. It has nothing to do with plugins. I talked about certain sites using JavaScript eventually slow down the entire browser. There is a bug somewhere in the code of the FF source, and it needs to be fixed. It's not my computer, and it's not anything I am doing. It's FF's problem and it exists.

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Did you try Safe Mode?

In Firefox Safe mode these changes are effective:

  • all extensions are disabled (about:addons)
  • default theme is used (no persona)
  • userChrome.css and userContent.css are ignored (chrome folder)
  • default toolbar layout is used (file: localstore-safe.rdf)
  • Javascript JIT compilers are disabled (prefs: javascript.options.*jit)
  • hardware acceleration is disabled (Options > Advanced > General)
  • plugins are not affected
  • preferences are not affected
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Don't know if this will help you any. I've had the same issues with FF simply bogging down over time and on certain websites. Amazon.com will just about kill Firefox if I've been up and running the browser for awhile and then decide to poke around Amazon.

I found this:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/firefox-unbearably-slow/

While it doesn't give you the specific answer you're looking for with regards to Java it does provide some add-ons to help mitigate the sluggishness of the browser over time.

The first add-on lets you keep track of how much RAM Firefox is consuming ...and it apparently continues to consume RAM until such point things come to a grinding halt ...usually for me when I poke into Amazon. Since I've been writing this, the amount of RAM Firefox is using has gone from 375MB to 530MB with nothing going on other than the page for the link being tabbed. I just closed it. RAM usage when up to 533MB. Go figure.

Firefox is apparently a memory pig and the longer you have it running the more RAM it consumes. I'm not a computer wizard but I know enough to know that programs consuming larger quantities of RAM will eventually run slower.

Try the Memory Reset add-on. I just started using it and it works great. Firefox came back to life and I could browse the likes of Amazon with no issues ...that is until Firefox's memory consumption brings it to a grinding halt. Right now it's up to 542MB ...

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