Does Firefox 3.0 beta 1 do a better job of handling memory than earlier versions? In a test put Firefox 3.0 beta up against Firefox 2.0.0.9 in a series of tests.

Before I go any further, a few disclaimers and notes. First off, I’ve carried out this test on a single system running Windows Vista Home Premium on which Firefox had not been previously installed. The system has 2GB of RAM. Both Firefox 2.0.0.9 and Firefox 3.0 b 1 were installed fresh using a standard install. For each test I visited the same web pages and did my best to make the browsing the same on both versions.

OK, with that out of the way, on with the tests. I simulated three different browsing scenarios:

Loading a five pages into the browser
Loading a single page and leaving the browser for 10 minutes
Loading 12 pages into the browser and wait 5 minutes

Here are the results:

Also:

Although Firefox 3.0 leaks less memory than its predecessor, Mozilla Corp.'s lead engineer today wouldn't promise that every last hole has been plugged.

Talking the day after the company released the first beta of Firefox 3.0, Mozilla's vice president of engineering, Mike Schroepfer, called the browser's problems "quite complicated" but said he was confident that users will see significant improvements in how it handles memory.

Firefox: On leaky memory and bumping blockers