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jay3ld · Jan 14, 2006, 03:29 PM

I use firefox and today i went into Activity monitor to stop MUmenu from running because it wasn't responding. i noticed that firefox is taking so much of my cpu

Is this normal on firefox to use that much cpu? or what can be done to lower that down a little?

albook · Jan 14, 2006, 05:00 PM

Thats not normal. At least if its not displaying any processor intensive content (like flash movies).
My Firefox is currently using 0.70%

You should provide some more information:
* Which Firefox version?
* Which Mac OS version?
* What kind of hardware do you run it on?
* Do you experience this 50%+ cpu usage all the time on every website?
* Anything you feel is important to tell us...

jay3ld · 05:44 PM

Firefox 1.5
Mac os X 10.3.9
90% of the time its over 50% otherwise its above 20%
and very few times but it reaches 100% - 110%.
watching it while im posting its sitting at about 95%!!!

could it be any of the extensions of themes i have isntalled?

edit
i just uninstalled some extensions and it droped low...
i guess ill work out which one and install them back slowly.

Tomchu · Jan 14, 2006, 07:15 PM

Firefox is like that. It eats RAM, it eats CPU, and it takes ages to start.

Just use Safari.

jay3ld · Jan 14, 2006, 07:32 PM

Originally Posted by Tomchu

Firefox is like that. It eats RAM, it eats CPU, and it takes ages to start.

Just use Safari.

right now since i dont got panther i don't like safari. it doesn't have some of the cool features...

but now its back up to 50%... ugh.. but it isn't going any higher than 75% though so thats good.

wataru · Jan 15, 2006, 03:55 AM

Originally Posted by Tomchu

Firefox is like that. It eats RAM, it eats CPU, and it takes ages to start.

Just use Safari.

Wrong. The behavior he described is not normal. Firefox usually idles at less than 1% on my 800MHz G4.

angelmb · Jan 15, 2006, 05:48 AM

albook's signature is a cool option

gradient · Jan 15, 2006, 07:19 AM

I've had similar problems with firefox 1.5 since it came out, especially after I upgraded to 10.4.4. Every now and then, Firefoxs cpu usage will shoot right up, sometimes to 100% which obviously bogs my system down to a near halt. I'd suggest sending in a report to them about it as I've done and hopefully it'll be fixed in the next release.

Camino is great if only there were a selection of themes and extensions for it that I love for Firefox. Heck, if they would even just include the search-as-you-type feature in Camino it might be enough to make me switch because it really is a lean and mean browser.

albook · Jan 15, 2006, 12:32 PM

@gradient. Camino have FAYT (Find As You Type) support.
Just press "/", then type your search string...

P · Jan 15, 2006, 04:24 PM

Tried updating any extensions/plug-ins you have installed to the latest version? In particular the Flas plug-in can cause high idling CPU - best way around that is to update it, and then preferably install Flashblock.

gradient · Jan 15, 2006, 09:02 PM

Originally Posted by albook

@gradient. Camino have FAYT (Find As You Type) support.
Just press "/", then type your search string...

No kidding, that rocks. I just tried it though, and an annoying but with it though (maybe intentional) is that the search doesn't recognize spaces in the search string. Now to add themes....... hehe.

flabasha · Jan 15, 2006, 09:13 PM

I've had the same CPU-eating behavior with Firefox 1.5 on my TiBook. Just opening one window takes 50% of my processor. Guess it's time to go back to Safari...

angelmb · Jan 16, 2006, 05:03 AM

Originally Posted by gradient

No kidding, that rocks. I just tried it though, and an annoying but with it though (maybe intentional) is that the search doesn't recognize spaces in the search string. Now to add themes....... hehe.

Do you like OmniWeb look?, if so try the OmniAqua theme you can find here:

http://www.fiberoptikz.tk/~slowmo/Camino.html

you know, press / and type 'omni'