Sukhbir Singh

Mozilla Firefox is slowly becoming the de facto web browser – making people finally realize that IE is pathetic. On a personal level, almost all of my sane friends use Firefox (thanks to me!) . This post deals with the memory leak problem in Firefox (what a memory leak is; explained further)

Programmers are familiar with the term memory leak. For others, memory leak is un-intentional memory consumption by the program wherein it fails to release memory no longer needed. Think of it like this – whenever you run a software, a specific amount of memory is allocated to it. Since we are dealing with Firefox, let us concentrate on that. When you open Firefox assuming an empty page, it takes up some amount of memory to load the interface. Next, supposing you open Gmail. The memory consumption increases (cause of Gmail). After that you sign out of Gmail and once again return to an empty page. If Firefox is still consuming the same amount of memory it was when Gmail was open – this is a memory leak. Gmail is no longer loaded but Firefox has failed to release the memory it allocated. This way the leaked-out memory keeps on increasing and hence slows down your computer if you have less RAM. (Programmers: memory leak does not mean that the memory is physically lost, it means that the program logic can’t access the memory due to faulty code)

“To check how much memory Firefox is using:”

Right click on the Taskbar and choose Task Manager. Now choose the Processes tab. Look for firefox.exe And note down the memory usage.

Typically, if you have no open windows or tabs (a blank page; which can also be brought about by typing about:blank in the address bar), Firefox should not consume more than 50 MB of memory. Anything more than this and means memory has already leaked out. (just a sentence!) Time for action.

1. The easiest solution is to restart Firefox. This will bring the memory back to a level it should actually consume.

2. Many a times, the themes and extensions cause a memory problems. The way to check this is to start Firefox in safe mode. To do this, go to Start > Run. Enter:

firefox -safe-mode

Press Enter. This starts Firefox in safe mode. Now check the memory usage after using it for sometime. If memory allocated decreases dramatically, means that the themes or the extensions are causing problems. Using the default theme or updating that extension might help.

3. Clearing the Firefox cache might help. To do this, press Ctrl + Shift + Del in succession.

4. Another method to cure the memory leak problem. Click here. (For advanced users only)

The ironical thing is that the Mozilla guys have done nothing to resolve this issue. For most people the easiest way out is method number one. Restarting Firefox.

Advanced people who know how to mess around with about:config, check the link in point 4.

Firefox rocks. Except the memory problem and loosing bookmarks!

Here is a nice little post on where to get the most common programming language compilers. As has happened in the past, on the request of a friend..

1. C -  GCC {gcc.gnu.org}

2. C++ – Dev C++ {www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html}

3. Assembly – MASM {www.masm32.com}, FASM {flatassembler.net}, NASM {nasm.sourceforge.net}

4. JAVA – JAVA JDK {java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp}

5. Pascal - Free Pascal {www.freepascal.org}

6. Python – {www.python.org}

7. SML - {www.smlnj.org}

8. Visual Basic.NET, ASP.NET, Visual J#, C# – Microsoft Visual Studio {msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio}

9. HTML - No compiler needed. Simply code in Notepad and save as .HTML.

–

A surprising thing I have noted – most of the compilers are programmed in the language they are used for compiling!

This post is for my friend – Faraz, who called me up and asked me about this. So here it is.

Why Partition?

Let us imagine a scenario in which you only one partition (C:\) on your PC. And you have everything on it – all your Mp3s, movies and other documents.

The problems with a single partition are many – your OS can get corrupted, a virus which can’t be removed (yes!), a root-kit or some other problem which is forcing you to format your hard-disk. In such a case, you will lose your all data or you will be forced to backup folder-by-folder to another media – which is a tidy process itself.

This is where partitioning comes in. You have different partitions for everything. One for the OS, the other for the data and someother for your music collection.

In this way, you can safely reinstall your OS – and preserve your data.

How To?

The most common partitioning tool is Partition Magic by Norton, though it is paid (expensive)

I recommend an open source alternative (as usual) called GParted which is based on the Linux kernel. It is fast, easy and FREE.

Go over to http://gparted.sourceforge.net and download the ISO (30 MB, fits on a biz-CD). Burn it to a CD and then boot your PC from the GParted Live CD. It will allow you to create, move or resize your partitions.

Common filesystems :

Windows – FAT,  FAT32 and NTFS

Linux – ext2, swap

BTW, found a very good blog related to daily health problems. I suggest you go over and read it! Health Blog

This post is specially for F Ahmad {www.punjaban.wordpress.com}, a mysterious Punjabi!

A simple and nice explanation on how to embed videos from Youtube.com on your WordPress blog.

First, head over to youtube.com and browse to the video of your choice. Next, copy the URL (the address) {can be found under the 'About Video' column or the address field of your browser}

{For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ii_ewMk5X8}

Then, in your post editor, simple write:

Taking the above example:

That is all! Enjoy!

I had heard about something called Virtualization: to run multiple Operating Systems simultaneously. I had nothing else to do, so decided to give this a shot.

First, as always I went over to Wikipedia and here is what I found.

I decided to try VMware, downloaded a trial version and then I was raring to go.

The host operating system was Windows XP. I installed Windows 98 SE as guest operating system and here I was! Running two Operating Systems side-by-side! It looked way too cool!

Then I installed Ubuntu. So now I am running 3 Operating Systems: at once.

The good thing about virtualization is that the guest operating systems are isolated from the host operating system. The guest OS can be used for software testing and to run software that you doubt about. (The best example: software cracks)

Screenshots:
1. Windows 98SE on Windows XP.

2. Ubuntu Linux on Windows XP.

1. Search Engine – Google is without doubt the best search engine. No matter how much Microsoft (MSN) or Yahoo! try to match up with it, they will never succeed. What Google can ‘crawl’ and hence display; no search engine can. And never will.

2. Mail – Now this one is easy to understand. Gmail offers 2600MB space (and counting), offers free POP access, has a great interface and now has chat. Yahoo! also has 1000MB space; it fails on other things. I don’t even want to talk about Hotmail. It stinks.

3. Blogging – Blogspot is for me the next best alternative to WordPress. Although both serve their purpose; the coolest thing for me on Blogspot is the feature to include AdSense on the site. This is something that WordPress should really offer. I mean, its almost necessary.

4. Desktop Search – The desktop search is not only confined to searching for files, it includes a host of many other features. Copernic Desktop Search is the next alternative, at least for me.

I just noticed that the Google PageRank for my blog has gone up to 4/10! Earlier it was a big zero, but now I think that 4/10 rating is a lot better since even the top blog on WordPress has got 7/10. And I am nowhere even near the fastest growing blogs. How Google PageRank works is of course something that I am not aware about, yet it is good for me!

Microsoft.com has a PageRank of 9/10 while Macromedia.com has got a 10/10. Wow!

What does this PageRank indicate? I am not sure. It is way too much complex.

For all those who are still using WinZip (whether you paid for it or whether you are using a pirated version; that is a different story), there is a better alternative that supports more formats and is absolutely free.

7-Zip is the software and it supports the RAR format (WinZip doesn’t) It is free and distribution is under GNU License.

Download and see for yourself: www.7-zip.org

Also: TugZip (www.tugzip.com) and WinACE (www.winace.com)

Here is how to open multiple websites (tabular form) automatically when Firefox starts up. I think it is pretty useful.
Procedure:

1. Start Firefox and click on Tools menu and then choose Options.
2. Click on the General tab.
3. Click on the text box in front of the Homepage – Location(s) group. (screenshot)

[CLICK HERE TO VIEW SCREENSHOT] {opens in new window}

4. Type the address of the webpage you want to load when Firefox startups. To enter multiple webpages, seperate them using the vertical bar | (SHIFT+\) Add as many webpages as you want.

EXAMPLE: To open Google.com and Gmail.com on startup, type:

www.google.com | www.gmail.com

(see screenshot)
Alternative (Better):

Load all the favourite pages in seperate tabs. Then choose:

Tools> Options> General Tab> Homepage – Locations(s) > Use Current Page

Using this, Firefox will load all the current open pages on startup.

UPDATED (Thanks to Aqeel):

You can also use SessionSaver, a Firefox extension that takes care of a lot of other things also. Highly recommended.

Seems impossible? Well, it is true.

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