[mbert]

I noticed that OmniWeb always starts up with a nice and low memory footprint. However once I've cycled through all tabs in all workspaces (that's what I usually do in the morning) memory usage increases depending on how many pages I have open across all workspaces.

The problem is that once the program has grabbed all that memory it never releases it again unless I close tabs (which is what I don't want, that's what the workspaces are for, aren't they?).

Why not allow it to automatically release memory for workspaces which haven't been in the foreground for a while? I would even sacrifice some runtime performance in allowing it to release memory as soon as I switch workspaces. That would make OmniWeb probably the leanest tabbed browser on earth.

Think about it!

[Brian]

If I remember correctly, we hang onto those pages in case you decide to switch back to the workspace, but after an hour (?) the memory gets released.

[mbert]

Originally Posted by Brian

If I remember correctly, we hang onto those pages in case you decide to switch back to the workspace, but after an hour (?) the memory gets released.

That's interesting. I need to check memory usage when I come back from my lunch break. My impression is that once I've got a memory usage of about 1.4 GB, it will never drop again.

[mbert]

Originally Posted by mbert

That's interesting. I need to check memory usage when I come back from my lunch break. My impression is that once I've got a memory usage of about 1.4 GB, it will never drop again.

OK, tried it. It was down from 1.4 GB to 800 MB. Maybe I wasn't away for an hour, so that some pieces have not been freed. Thus - it seems to work.

But I must admit, I find one hour a bit too long, in particular since I have so many tabs distributed over my workspaces. In an ideal world, I'd like to have this configurable, else a lower timeout, maybe 30min?

[Ken Case]

Originally Posted by mbert

But I must admit, I find one hour a bit too long, in particular since I have so many tabs distributed over my workspaces. In an ideal world, I'd like to have this configurable, else a lower timeout, maybe 30min?

Sure, you can do that! We've provided a WorkspaceExpireTime hidden preference setting (documented on the linked page along with many many other settings), which indicates how long (in seconds) a workspace can remain unused before its resources are reclaimed.

To set your workspaces to expire every 30 minutes, enter this command in a Terminal window and restart OmniWeb:

defaults write com.omnigroup.OmniWeb5 WorkspaceExpireTime 1800

Hope this helps!

[whpalmer4]

There's no way to change those values for a running copy of OmniWeb, is there? Alternatively, being able to specify the WorkspacesExpire property on a workspace-by-workspace basis would be handy. Much of the need would evaporate if you'd just ship that 64-bit version, however :-)

[mbert]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

Hope this helps!

Thank you VERY MUCH! That's great!