Firefox: Heat and the CPU usage problem

Firefox has a CPU usage issue and, consequently, can cause overheating problems in some laptops, particularly ultraportables. That's what I've found over the last couple of years.

But don't take my word for it. This is documented on a Mozilla support page entitled "Firefox consumes a lot of CPU resources." The page states: "At times, Firefox may require significant CPU [central processing unit] resources in order to download, process, and display Web content." And forum postings like this one about a Dell Netbook are not uncommon: "Mini9 would get way too hot."

The Mozilla support page goes on to say that "you can review and monitor CPU usage through specific tools" and describes ways to limit CPU usage, such as: "A Firefox add-on, called Flashblock, allows you to selectively enable and disable Flash content on Web sites."

Let me describe my experience. I find that tab for tab, Firefox uses decidedly more resources than other browsers--Safari, for example. And in the past (when I was actively using a Windows Vista-based machine) Firefox also compared unfavorably with Microsoft's Internet Explorer for CPU usage.

More specifically, here's the behavior as I see it. When I'm accessing sites with multimedia content such as the CNET front door, Firefox CPU usage will bounce around between 30 and 60 percent, and sometimes spike higher (80 percent and above), as indicated by the Mac OS 10.6.2 Activity Monitor.

On the other hand, the Safari CPU usage with the same pages open is much lower--typically between 2 percent and 10 percent.

My theory is that most users don't notice this because in mainstream laptops, this isn't an issue. But it can become an issue in ultraportables--typically under an inch thick--which are more sensitive to heat because of the design constraints. The ultrathin Apple MacBook Air, which I use as my main machine, is a good example.

The fan is usually an audible indicator of CPU usage issues. When I'm using Firefox and I have tabs open on multimedia-rich sites (which is par for the course these days), the Air's fan will almost invariably kick on and stay on until I close the tabs. As I write this, the fan has finally shut down after I closed the Firefox tabs (e.g, CNET front door). Those same tabs in Safari are still open and not causing any significant spike in CPU usage or fan activity.

When I contacted Mozilla, a technical support person guessed that Safari is possibly better at optimizing Flash-based sites compared to Firefox. And that may be true. However, I had similar issues before when I was using a Hewlett-Packard business ultraportable (also very thin like the Air) that were not necessarily tied to Flash usage. In short, Firefox was less efficient with CPU usage compared to Microsoft's IE 8. And the behavior was similar. The HP laptop would quickly heat up and the fan would kick on.

Finally, let me reemphasize that I'm guessing that most users don't notice this because heat dissipation is not a big issue for mainstream laptops that are not necessarily thermally-challenged when accessing multimedia-rich Web pages. That said, this has been a steady problem for me because I use ultraportables almost exclusively and has forced me to limit my use of Firefox.

[TheGridOne]

Different situation for me!<br /><br />I use firstly a first-generation Linux based eeePC. And yes Firefox is VERY slow. But I don't care since the Asus Xandros OS has a fine-tuned kernel with a thread scheduler optimized in order not to have the whole netbook hangs while a single app hangs. So Firefox can require a lot of time in order to load the session-restored tabs, but the machine is still usable for something else. And I don't have any fan concern.<br /><br />And secondly, my main machine is a water-cooled quad-core PC. And on this machine, it's just a pity to load 60 session-restored tabs and have Firefox start-up and use only one core. The problem was the very same on a "just" dual-core machine.<br /><br />So, as far as I'm concerned, I'd like Firefox to use more efficiently my cores, i.e. use more power :)

[ClaBR]

There was a review comparing browsers done by Daily Tech a while ago if I recall. Their conclusions were the FF, Safari and Chrome were much more CPU intensive than Internet Explorer, while the latest was the more memory hungry of the bunch. Apparently the Gecko and Webkit based browsers are more CPU hungry. <br /><br />Also, there was a comparisong between battery life in a Windows Notebook FF vs IE8 and IE8 ended up giving a longer battery life.

[Qtechbg]

Opera anyone? It's disturbing to see that the author did not check Opera at all. After all this was the first browser (in the browser wars era) that actually did improve render speed, CPU load and memory footprint over the competition. <br />For me it's the speed king. With fewer libraries and all-in executable, it loads quite fast even if you have something in background. And another speed advantage is the option to use memory cache only thus avoiding disk access and temporary files at all. <br />I don't care if pages show up slower than in FF - I care that in Opera they scroll smoother and do not overload my CPU...

[Random_Walk]

One thing never mentioned is how it behave on Linux...<br /><br />In Windows, FF usage is actually not perceptibly different than IE or Safari, CPU-wise. <br /><br />On OSX, FF does ramp up the CPU during a heavy flash game, while Safari doesn't (no idea about IE). <br /><br />On Linux, FF isn't any more CPU intensive than Konquerer or any of the other web browsers (except Links, which uses hardly none at all - but it's command-line, so, well, duh...)

[kojacked]

"In Windows, FF usage is actually not perceptibly different than IE or Safari, CPU-wise." <br /> <br />Did you really read the article? <br /> <br />But don't take my word for it. This is documented on a Mozilla support page entitled "Firefox consumes a lot of CPU resources." The page states: "At times, Firefox may require significant CPU [central processing unit] resources in order to download, process, and display Web content." - The web page sited goes on to describe FF on Windows specific issues with CPU usage. <br /> <br />"And in the past (when I was actively using a WINDOWS Vista-based machine) Firefox also compared unfavorably with Microsoft's Internet Explorer for CPU usage." <br /> <br />I'd have to agree with the author on this one. My experience with FF was the same on Windows and is why I use Chrome. <br /> <br />It's funny how you agree with odubtaig below yet you are exactly the kind of guy he speaking of when he says "or magically forget that they've just been involved in a 15-person hate-on against company X when their beloved company Y is under attack and they cry "why doesn't anyone ever criticise Co. X?". Yeah, you know who you are."

[Random_Walk]

"Did you really read the article? "<br /><br />I can read taskmgr.exe easily enough - this isn't exactly rocket science, y'know, and anyone can confirm it for themselves. I checked on Windows 7.

[tech_crunch13]

Wow, somethings wrong with the worlds beloved browser. I know, how about if we blame Microsoft?

[GajaKannan]

I think it is evil Microsoft and Apple showing upward CPU usage when displaying FF... There is nothing wrong with FF... It actually computes out of thin air, that it doesnt even se any CPU...

[MeepMan]

unique scenario, because I can write this from Firefox 3.5.5 without any issues on a Dell Laptop which has a 1.66 GHz Dual-Core while using the same or lower CPU usage as IE8 and IE7. This is in Windows XP using Service Pack 3. Also, Chrome, as far as I've seen, uses less CPU (%) than IE8, IE7 or Firefox 3.5.5 on a Windows XP machine which has a Pentium IV 2.6 HT processor (XP)

[kdouglas10]

Thx for this explanation. I appreciate the speed of Firefox, as well as the ease-of-use. Have used Google Chrome, Safari (on both MBPro and Dell machines(3), and Firefox since Netscape in 1996. Have not migrated past IE 6.0.2900 xxx SP2 from Msoft. As I said, FF is my choice, however, my Dell Inspiron 8500 gets VERY HOT while running FF. Flashblock 1.5.11.2 add-on [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433] pretty much stops the heat and fan from running. Even on my wife's Inspiron 1405, the fan runs on flash rich pages. The FF CPU Utilization probably makes for faster browsing - though flashblock really speeds things up!

[Lerianis3]

Well, if this is coming from flash, don't blame Mozilla..... blame Adobe. Really, there is no reason that Flash (which is very simple compared to say...... Crysis) should be using the same amount of power as that game I mentioned earlier.<br />Just no way it should be doing that.<br /><br />The Flash 10.1 thing fixes some of the problems, but raises others.... like incompatibility with sites ranging from CartoonNetwork Video to 4Kidstv.

[rationalreview]

The article specifically states that Mozilla admits it doesn't handle Flash well. That is a Firefox issue. All of the other browsers have no significant problem with it.<br />[CNET editor's note: Personal attack deleted.]

[MrKhaki]

It affects desktop computers too. I see FF consuming a lot of server processes at times, especially on javascript laden pages, even when idle.<br /><br />We're not talking about an underpowered desktop machine either. The first core is usually pegged, leading to lagged performance of other apps and even FF.<br /><br />Funny, if this were a Microsoft product, people would be up in arms. Hope FF remedies the problem in an incremental release very soon.

[Lerianis3]

There might not be anything that Firefox can do about this. Personally, I'm more concerned about the 'disk thrash' problem I have on my computers when running Firefox 3.5.5 and higher..... it thrashes the disk and is VERY SLOW for a minute after opening, then it gets it's act together, and it isn't like I keep a whopping heap of stuff in memory... I clear the cache every time I close the browser.

[solitare_pax]

Since Firefox is done mostly by volunteers, as opposed to highly paid professional programmers at Microsoft, I think that people are more forgiving.<br /><br />I also think that perhaps the Firefox developers have not realized that this is an issue - perhaps they will offer a fix in the next update (we can hope).

[odubtaig]

Actually, there are a good many paid developers at the Mozilla foundation that could be working on this problem and there's no way they could possibly not be aware of this.<br /><br />As it is: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Firefox+consumes+a+lot+of+CPU+resources I think they might have an inkling.<br /><br />The only reason MrKhaki isn't seeing people 'up in arms' about this is because he's not paying attention.<br /><br />Bit like some people don't ever seem to remember that I've been massively critical of F/OSS companies as well when they feel their pet is under attack or magically forget that they've just been involved in a 15-person hate-on against company X when their beloved company Y is under attack and they cry "why doesn't anyone ever criticise Co. X?". Yeah, you know who you are.<br /><br />But then what you gonna do when some people seem to think FF is programmed almost entirely by 'volunteers' (trans: half-arsed amateurs) as opposed to all those 'highly paid professionals' at MS. Seriously, don't be so ******* patronising.

[Random_Walk]

@odubtaig:<br /><br />Well said.

[Goodbye Helicopter]

Hmm... well duh?! FF refuses to use native UI widgets where and when it can.<br />They try to reinvent things provided by the APIs of any OS.

[01Phyxius]

They do that to preserve cross-platform looks. If FF used every windows api available, then it would have to be completely rewritten to work on Mac and Linux, and would look extremely different.

[Nicholas Buenk]

And that is one of Firefox's worst problems. It's poor consistency with OS's UI's. On anything other than Windows, Firefox feels like a cheap port.

[kalmness]

previously i can open up more than 20 tabs without issues, but after upgrading to version 3.5 even 2 tabs would bring my cpu usage to 100%, 200mb+ memory usage, and my WinXP SP3 HP with 3Gb RAM laptop to a complete halt. My laptop sounded like it had jet turbines for fans during this situation. closing firefox would solve the issue immediately.<br /><br />mind you, i tried restarting my laptop, making sure nothing is running in the background and after 2 tabs with Yahoo! Mail and Facebook, it would work for a few minutes and then eat up CPU resources like nobody's business. everyday i checked for an update or forums that would solve this issue, which is well documented but never resolved for me. I love firefox and misses all the cool and fancy features, but at least Google Chrome doesn't make my laptop come to a standstill

[retnep]

I was running Ubuntu on my HP Netbook. Because Firefox is the default browser I was running it full time. After about two hours of usage, my netbook would become hot to the touch. The fans would go full blast and my battery life on my netbook was just awful. I recently installed Windows 7 on my netbook and kept IE8 as my default browser. The battery life on my netbook increased by almost 50%. I attributed it to Win 7 but after reading the articles, I really think that the cause might have been Firefox.

[BigAl35540]

I am running Ubuntu Karmic Koala, version 9.10 with 1GB of RAM on a 2.4 Intel Core Duo processor. Using the "extensive" system monitor contained within this operating system, Mozilla FireFox consumes fantastic amounts of resources and in an unbalanced way. It tends to load up one core, it doesn't distribute the load evenly! This flusters Dual Core processors, particularly Intel ones! Part of this is also Adobe's fault. The plugins consume huge resources, much more than they should. This doesn't surprise me since Adobe Systems programs are the highest in resource consumption of any in the world today! I hope you enjoy the unsolicited emails you'll be getting in your email box. That's what happens when you run Google Chrome. They track your every move on the Internet and send the results straight to their advertiser's with your contact information. No thank you Google Chrome! Won't catch me ever running that one!

[kalmness]

previously i can open up more than 20 tabs without issues, but after upgrading to version 3.5 even 2 tabs would bring my cpu usage to 100%, 200mb+ memory usage, and my WinXP SP3 HP with 3Gb RAM laptop to a complete halt. My laptop sounded like it had jet turbines for fans during this situation. closing firefox would solve the issue immediately.<br /><br />mind you, i tried restarting my laptop, making sure nothing is running in the background, disabled all the add-ons and after 2 tabs with Yahoo! Mail and Facebook, it would work for a few minutes and then eat up CPU resources like nobody's business. everyday i checked for an update or forums that would solve this issue, which is well documented but never resolved for me. I love firefox and misses all the cool and fancy features, but at least Google Chrome doesn't make my laptop come to a standstill

[spztoid]

My experience using Firefox 3.5 with several extensions running is smooth as butter. And I use fat extensions, like Firebug which is a hog. Also all-in-one-sidebar extension with Firefox's *fantastic* F-11 shortcut, for fullscreen goodness, (and with my tiny-USB-nubbed wireless mouse, oh my!)<br /><br /> What made a huge difference, akin to getting a _substantial_ hardware upgrade, has been my upgrade from Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 to 9.10. Note I did a fresh install, so my disk is formatted as ext4 by default. It was pretty good before, but now YouTube videos play smoothly in full-screen and there's absolutely nothing but joy to talk about. The graphics drivers are much improved too, I gather.<br /><br />I have documented how I installed UNR, with a fully-encrypted hard disk, here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=7489558&#38;postcount=13.<br /><br />As a bonus tip, try installing Ubuntu One, Dropbox, Spider Oak, or CrashPlan on the netbook and other machines. This way all your files are always available and sync'd everywherewhere, so you can walk away with 'the most appropriate notebook' for the day. Maybe it is just a long battery life'd netbook that fits nicely on a cafe table, making for pleasant reading of documentation perhaps. So long as the entire disk is fully-encrypted, then these services are a real blessing.<br /><br />If you like these tips, and want to tip me back by increasing disk space available to me, then please click this link when you sign up for Dropbox, (but the other services are also very good too!) https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTE2ODQwODk<br /><br />Folks, if you're not getting anything but great performance from your netbook, you're doing it wrong.

[Lerianis3]

Nope..... netbooks are seriously underpowered for what you are getting, even for the 300-400 dollars that they cost!

[streamline35]

Lerianis3 - it's not just about power. Of course you can get a much faster laptop for $500. However, it's going to be a 15 inch laptop with crappy battery life. Part of what you are paying for is the size and battery life. <br /> <br />I'm typing this from my netbook (MSI wind). Its performance is not amazing, but it's more than adequate for web browsing, email, office software, and movies. The only thing it's not good for is streaming HD video in browser (like very large flash videos), photo or video processing (not that I do that anyway), or gaming (though it can handle some older games fine like C&#38;C Red Alert 2). But I've got my nice desktop at home for all that stuff.

[spztoid]

Honestly folks, I can pleasantly run FlashYouTube videos full-screen using FireFox &#38; Flash. I regularly watch videos wirelessly across my LAN, which are stored on my Ubuntu desktop PC's hard disk, over SSH/SFTP. (It is important my wifi is clear though, or I need a cable for this).<br /><br />The performance streamline35 describes, pretty much sums up my own, using Ubuntu 9.04. But upon a fresh install of 9.10 (released only 3 weeks ago, btw), it is clear to me that much netbook optimization at the OS level, and aspects of FF 3.5 have been performed. The GUI rocks too! And I'm just using the Flash plugin that installs automatically. For more on this: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/reviews/2009/11/good-karma-ars-reviews-ubuntu-910.ars/10<br /><br />Note that I use an Asus Eee 1000HE, with an Atom 280 CPU and 2Gb of RAM. I'm running the Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala OS, freshly installed on an ext4 formatted (and encrypted) disk.<br /><br />You can easily install UNR on a USB stick, so why not try it on your own netbook, but note you'll need a real install to appreciate the ext4 file systems speed &#38; reliability. Why run anything else on a netbook at this point? Please note, I'm a Drupal developer, and I LIVE in Firefox, and I demand the best performance, along with the Firebug extension.

[Seaspray0]

@lerians3. It's a matter of perspective. The netbook of today is considerably more powerful than the computers built 7 years ago (even desktops). The internet was around then as well, and people didn't have a problem browsing the web. By today's standard, it is not as powerful... but underpowered for browsing the web? No. It's already been done with alot less.

[Lerianis3]

Ah, but the problem is that once people just 'surf the web', they see OTHER THINGS that they would like to do online and.... oh, wait a minute.... my netbook can't do any of these! I GOT RIPPED!<br /><br />That's the conclusion that a lot of people who bought netbooks are coming to once they see what is on the internet and realize that their netbooks can't do 90% of the stuff out there. And really... how many people are going to be away from a plugin point for THAT LONG that they cannot live with the battery life of the notebook? Answer: Not many.

[zyxxy]

@Lerianis3: For 'most' people, you may be correct. But then there are those of us that find a netbook very compelling. I used to carry a 'steno' pad and pen with me all day. Now I carry a netbook. It wakes from sleep mode in a hurry, after developing software for thirty years I can type faster and more legibly than I can write, and the netbook is far more functional than the steno pad. Most of the time, the radio is off, I am just editing static documents, and I sync with my desktop a couple of times each day. A full laptop is too large to carry all day, and too visibly intrusive in meetings. The netbook, for that usage model, just works better. I still carry a steno pad and pen, old habits die hard, but they last a lot longer now.<br /><br />Oh, and since when does anybody pay $400 for a netbook?<br /><br />@Seaspray0: My last full laptop was a Intel Pentium Mobile 1.3Ghz. And you are right, a current Atom at 1.6Ghz is just as fast. That is helped by faster DRAM, disk and video.

[zyxxy]

@Lerianis3: Oh yes, what are the 'other things' of which you speak? Mind you, I have a netbook running XP. Full support for FLASH, PDF, QuickTime, iTunes, Javascript, Java. What exactly am I missing out on?

[sharmajunior]

I have been saying this for years......Firefox on my work computer takes 8 seconds to load, whereas IE8 is open in 3-4 seconds. Which one is faster...I guess it depends on the type of computer. IE on Windows Server 2003 takes 0.8 seconds...yes its that fast.

[ballmerisanape]

Yes... the first time you open FF (Windows) it takes forever to load.

[tektaktyks]

Wow what a total bs,my cpu meter goes up to 26% with firefox where one tab is a personalize google page and the other is cnet home page,in safari with the same 2 tabs it goes to 35%...<br />got a new free macbook?

[tektaktyks]

forgot to add that i have 15 add-ons in ff and none is crapari

[jumpjetta]

What a chestnut... "crapari"... bet it took you all night and half a four-pack of wine coolers to come up with that one.

[tektaktyks]

"bet it took you all night and half a four-pack of wine coolers to come up with that one" -thats what it took your parents to come up with you...

[zyxxy]

Ohhhh..... *SLAP*

[shycelticwitch]

LOL @ tektaktyks... every time your fingers hit the keyboard they churn out FUD. How about some screen shots to prove those statements?

[tektaktyks]

how about a bet shycelticwitch,i will post a vid on youtube but if i prove what i said above you will paypal 100 bucks to my account?you in ?

[Proud_Geek]

@tektaktyks <br /> <br />Oh SNAP!!

[KHannemann]

Firefox = CPU hog.<br />Safari = Memory hog.<br />Late 2006 MacBook = serious heat problems (yes, it's completely updated).<br />Dang.

[rklrkl]

Adobe's Flash on Linux is appallingly CPU-intensive on *any* Linux-based browser, not just Firefox. It doesn't tend to do much if anything w.r.t. hardware acceleration (that's coming in Flash 10.1, about 5 years after it should have done) and its fullscreen performance is laughable even on quad core desktop PCs. It's taught me very quickly that Flashblock is an *essential* install on any Linux browser and if a browser can't selectively block Flash on Linux, then I simply won't use it.<br /><br />I use a Dell Mini 9 with Fedora Linux, Firefox and Flashblock and have never had an issue with overheating. That comes from the Runcore 32GB SSD I put in it, which is much faster/high capacity than the stock STEC. Basically, Adobe are a pathetic company when it comes to Linux support (64-bit Flash anyone? Still in beta I see, again 5 years too late. Never had a Linux port of Shockwave, Photoshop etc. etc. either) and their Flash releases on the platform have often got worse with each new version.

[Lerianis3]

Yeah, most of the 'slow startup' with Firefox is because of flash on ANY OS. I removed Flash for a moment while surfing to download Flash 10.1 Beta...... it was amazing the difference. When I installed Flash 10.1.... the speed decreased, but it was still faster than with 10.0 installed on the machine.

[BigAl35540]

Photography has been "polluted" by "PhotoShop this, PhotoShop that". It also gulps resources by 4-times doing the same operation in "The Gimp" takes! So the fact that Flash runs inefficiently in Linux doesn't surprise me! Yeah, Adobe Systems Greed Corporation hates Linux...it's free! Why not write and propagate a crappy plugin for Linux, that way you keep people on expensive inferior operating system that Adobe can charge for everything.

[llungster]

Resource hogging happens on the desktop as well. It may not manifest itself as a heat issue but from a usability point of view, it still sucks up cpu cycles; not to mention the disk churning (especially at startup and load time). Also since 3.5 (or thereabouts), window scrolling response has slowed considerably. I'm referring to the wheel on the mouse. I can still scroll ok from the scroll bar but the use of the mouse wheel to scroll a window has slowed down a lot and is now very clunky.

[Lerianis3]

So you noticed the 'disk churning' as well. I solved that (temporarily) by manually deleting the cache and some other files... but it came back after I used it for more than 10 minutes surfing websites that I know don't have any malware on them, because I am running NoScript for one and have Norton Internet Securities 'Site Advisor' installed in Firefox.

[zyxxy]

Try dropping your cache size settings to a much smaller setting. Particularly if you have fast broadband access.<br /><br />Tools -&gt; Options -&gt; Advanced -&gt; Network<br /><br />Anything more than 50MB is too much, unless you have really slow access.

[john55440]

"In short, Firefox was less efficient with CPU usage compared to Microsoft's IE 8." <br /> <br />I really like the design, interface, and features of IE8.

[Seaspray0]

Rumor is that IE9 will be extremely efficient with the cpu and gpu. I think that's good, but I doubt it would have happened had firefox not emerged as serious competition in the first place. Competition is a driving force of inovation.

[odubtaig]

Rumour? There was an article on here a couple of days ago with MS themselves stating that this would be the case.<br /><br />http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10400638-264.html

[Random_Walk]

It's easy to be efficient with a browser app that's fully embedded into the OS, where the rest of the CPU load went. ;)

[zyxxy]

Come on Random, if the total system CPU load is less while providing the same functionality, does the end user care what the cycle distribution model is?

[BigAl35540]

It's way better than FireFox 3.5! I have to run 3.5 in Linux because it's the most supported browser. I would run IE8 if I could, it's a way better browser! My experience with it is it's stable, flash video is on a par with no other and IE8 is finally secure. Mozilla fireFox 3.5 seems a step backwards in comparison. Oh well, gotta run it!

[wayneb22]

I had this problem since version 3.5.5 on a custom gaming "Desktop" i built that is powered by a core 2 Duo 7600 (3.06 GHZ) wolf dale processor and ATI 4890x2 GPU's, I have CPU monitoring software &#38; FF would routinely max (100% usage ) out both cores on a machine that runs crises,COD4 and any other game i throw at w/o and probs. I contacted Mozilla once or twice &#38; they gave me the whole flash issue thing..... Finally i uninstalled it and run Chrome &#38; Safari happily!

[streamline35]

Those are both pretty poor browsers - I would recommend Opera. It's my favorite alternative to firefox. I use FF on my desktop (It has never used an unreasonable amount of my processor like it did with you), but I use opera on my netbook, because it uses less CPU power than firefox, and is arguably a better browser (it has alot of great features). IE, Safari, and Chrome don't compare to firefox and opera.

[UrmiRaj]

Even though I have a slower processor (core 2 solo SU3500 1.4 ghz 800 mhz fsb), there are times when i can have 20 tabs open at the same time and the cpu usage remains at below 20%. On the other hand, the browser zooms up to 100% cpu usage with only 5-6 tabs open (and those don't have any embedded videos). I am still using version 3.0.15 on windows 7 (home premium). Overall I'm happy with my new laptop/OS and such, but I'm still going to go ahead and try out that Flash Block addon. <br /><br />Oh, and I have fewer heating problems (sides and the keyboard), which naturally I'm thankful for.

[Lerianis3]

If it is some specific websites that this is appearing on, I am thinking that there is some 'coding' on there that is making the thing zoom up the memory usage and CPU usage.<br />I've noticed also that it (amazingly) is NOT on Flash intensive or embedded video websites that this is most a problem, but on websites with lots of static pictures.

[HookerJay]

In my experience, Firefox has been a resource hog for years eating more RAM and CPU cycles than Internet Explorer ... however, the latter crashes with Flash and Java content more often that Firefox. <br /><br />One my own guilty pleasures is playing some Flash based games on Facebook such as Zynga Poker, Farmville, and Farm Town, and I absolutely must use Firefox for them because Internet Explorer will page fault citing an OCX file of Adobe Flash, and crash every single time. Firefox on the other hand *NEVER* crashes. I can't even make it crash! It is far more stable with those games despite eating CPU cycles and RAM like no tomorrow. <br /><br />Another abomination with Firefox is when Flash web ads make it throttle the CPU at 100%, closing Firefox sometimes doesn't cure the problem, and I often find myself using the ol' "3 Finger Salute" to manually terminate the "firefox.exe" process so that it'll give me my processor back.

[streamline35]

Try opera. I do like firefox alot, but I can't deny that Opera has better performance (which is why it's my primary netbook browser) while still retaining most of FF's features (plus many it doesn't have)

[BigAl35540]

I had FireFox 3.5 self terminate on a site that ran a flash video automatically once you loaded the page. It did this repeatedly! It did this running Linux, not the resource hogging Windows &#38; Mac operating systems! TYhat is how bad the problem is! It's not just Mozilla, but Adobe systems as well. adobe has and never will understand efficient resource usage.

[Francois_in_TO]

I have the same problem with Chrome, for instance, on a news Web site (http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles) that has a very simple news ticker at the top. When I go to that page, Chrome's CPU usage jumps to 50%, and immediately drops when I go to another page. Opera and IE don't have that problem. It makes my laptop fan go to full blast in a matter of seconds.

[Lerianis3]

Sounds like a programming hole in the software.... report it to Google and they will try to fix it.

[oh4real]

Thank you for finally noting this. I've been PO'd about this for years. FF is indeed a memory hog (try leaving iGoogle on for overnight and watch FF RAM run up to 1GB easy!!!), but CPU heat is not unique to FF.<br /><br />My laptops' fans run constantly when FF is on and this drains battery life. Since Chrome is similar - I speculated it was a Flash issue. I started using FlashBlock on FF and it helps alot, but so many sites have flashblock workarounds that it is becoming worthless ( economist.com as an example) - and Hulu doesn't like flashblock - at all. <br /><br />Unfortunately a recent Chrome update disabled my flashblock and I haven't gotten the energy to repeat that extension enabling procedure - I'll wait for a real interface.<br /><br />Anyway, it strikes me it is definitely a Flash issue - maybe Adobe should some of their people to Flash instead of laying them off.

[Williame789]

Brooke Crothers you should use Google Chrome.

[BigAl35540]

Oh and then you can get all these unsolicited emails in your email box thanks to Chrome reporting everything you do to it's third party vendors. They claim it's their right to do so! Only idiolts that haven't any mind for security and their own privacy run Chrome! Whatever you do, HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH GOOGLE CHROME! thank you very much!

[njwxgirl]

I was watching streaming video from fancast last evening using firefox on my macbook pro (2.53Ghz dual Core w/4Gb ram) and checked the activity monitor to find firefox reportedly using over 100% of the CPU. ***. I am going to use Safari from now on.