How to Keep Firebug From Eating Memory

Do you use Firebug, the excellent web page debugging plugin for Firefox? Do you use GMail or any other dynamic web application? Have you noticed that your computer gets sluggish if you leave your GMail window open for an extended period of time?

Firebug can log (remember a list of) network activity between Firefox and a web site, and typically these features are on by default. If you have Firebug active on a dynamic web site like GMail, which makes frequent use of the network without reloading the page. Since Firebug won't clear its log until the page gets reloaded, network monitoring GMail can eat up memory without you noticing.

The easy fix is to disable Firebug until you need it (open Firebug, click the bug icon to bring up the Firebug menu, then select "Disable Firebug"), but you can also just disable the network monitoring part and leave the rest active.

To disable network monitoring, open Firebug, select the Net tab, click Options..., then make sure "Disable Network Monitoring" is checked.

Also make sure that XMLHttpRequests are not being logged to the console. Select the Console tab, click Options..., then make sure "Show XMLHttpRequests" is not checked.