I love Firefox, but lately I’ve noticed a few showstopper issues.
On Windows, Firefox leaks quite a lot after a day’s use. I start noticing the performance issues when it gets to be about a 500 meg image in the process list. Why does a browser need so much memory? They really need to solve the memory issue.
On a Mac, the browser eventually gets to a point where the event loop hangs every 10-15 seconds. When you try to drag the window, it will stall for a few seconds with the wait cursor and then suddenly start moving again. I’m running on a Dual G5 PowerMac with a ton of memory and the latest OS updates. This should not be happening. A recruiter at Mozilla contacted me over a year ago to see if I would be interested in working on the Mac port of Firefox. He mentioned they had a few issues that really needed some attention. No kidding.
Again, all of this is on the latest 2.0 of Firefox with really nice hardware. If the right engineer was given the right tools, I bet both issues could be solvable in 1 month.
