Excessive CPU usage Firefox 3

[scrambled_egg]

Hi All,

This might be a little off topic but since I've upgraded to VL5.9 Standard Gold I've noticed that when running Firefox 3.0.5 on some Java Script pages that total CPU usage is locked at 100% and mouse operation is jerky, menus are slow to respond etc.  In all other respects the machine is as responsive as ever.  What makes me post here is that I don't recall this problem prior to using VL5.9.  The page that brought this to my attention is: http://mirror.bom.gov.au/products/IDR213.loop.shtml which is my local weather radar.  I look at this page very frequently and would have noticed the slow down before.  I've done some experiments with different versions of Firefox and Opera with results as below:

Browser           CPU Usage
Firefox 3.1b2     100%
Firefox 3.0.1     100%
Firefox 3.0.4     100%
Firefox 3.0.5     100%
Firefox 2.0.20     17%
Opera 9.63          6%

I did revert back to the 2.6.18.5 kernel used in VL5.8 but there was no real difference.  The crucial ingredient seems to be Firefox 3 but why didn't it happen with VL5.8?  At the moment nothing is making any sense.  For the record my hardware is:  PIII running at 1.05GHz 384MB RAM.

I'd be interested if others could post their results for this particular web page as something is wrong somewhere when such a simple image sequence comsumes so much CPU resource.

Thanks

[GrannyGeek]

With VL 5.9 Standard and Firefox 3.0.5 viewing that page, htop reports CPU usage at 11% on one processor and 14% on the other (viewing with the Turion laptop--specs in my sig). No mouse slowdown problems.

CPU usage percentage is similar but slightly higher if I view the page with Opera 9.63.
--GrannyGeek

[caitlyn]

What you are seeing is *NORMAL* for Firefox 3.  It really does do that on my 1GHz Celeron Toshiba laptop as well.  Firefox 2 was much better in this respect.  Blame the upstream developers who write bloated apps.  Opera will do much better for you. 

BTW, it doesn't take a whole lot more processor to get much improved results.  My Sylvania g netbook has a 1.2GHz Via C7-M processor which does do a little better on benchmarks than the 1GHz Celeron.  That little bit is just enough to keep me from pegging the processor.  The jerkiness is probably also due to your relatively small amount of memory.  Going from 512MB (Toshiba) to 1GB (Sylvania) has made a huge difference as well on video of all sorts.

GrannyGeek:  You have may times the processing power, hence your better results.

[The Headacher]

I have to say, that for a little while with firefox 1.5 or perhaps 2 browsing on Linux was great, but after that it all went downhill for some reason.

Has anyone else noticed how Firefox looks crappy on Linux when compared with Windows ( I know, it's superficial ), and how bookmarks are no longer updated to the name of the page like it did in ff2, but instead just read the url?

My brandnew laptop is occasionally brought to it's knees by FF3 as well, though I can't say for sure what causes it. If it happens again I'll try to remember this thread and have a look at CPU and memory usage.

[kidd]

If it wasn't for a very specific plugin I use (only available for firefox), I'd seriously think of using opera.  It's the fastest lightest browser of it's quality.

Much faster than firefox for sure.

[caitlyn]

I'm in the same place as kidd.  If it weren't for a couple of plugins or occasionally seeing how a web page I modified looks in Firefox I'd move to Opera.  I've even been known to use hv3 on occasions where I know the page I want to look at is simple enough to use that browser.

[lagagnon]

Somewhere, someplace on another forum, in another galaxy at the end of the universe I read that to get rid of the bad CPU usage of FF3 you might need to shut off the "attack site" and "forgery" settings in the Security Options. Also disable "pre-caching" and see if that works.