Any Harm In Keeping Firefox Running While Sleeping?

Amie

Amie

Mac Convert for Life
I often use Firefox. And I often sleep my laptop. Rather than close all FF windows/tabs and quit the app before I sleep my iBook, can I just sleep it and leave FF up and running? That way, when I wake my computer, I can just pick up right where I left off in FF, and I won't need to relaunch the app and re-open all the windows and tabs.

I don't want to do anything that may harm my sweet iBook, so I'm just checking with you guys first...

Thanks. :)
 
symphonix said:
I concur. There is no need to close any application down when sleeping a Mac.
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In general no need to do so. And if the ibook goes into sleep mode it is inactive thus nothing can happen which might cause problems because it is unattended (like spyware and/or virussus trashing your system - although none found for mac).

But pages might be out of date when you reactivate the laptop, so odd things can happen and renew pages might be - in case content is very important - advisable after reactivation.


good luck, kees
 
Sleeping is pretty much just like shutting down, only that your last state while using the laptop is stored in the memory so you go back quickly.
 
Do you mean you previously quit all your open applications in order to put your iBook to sleep?! That's the beauty of sleep: Just pick up where you were before...

That said, browsers tend to be the worst-written applications of all, and sometimes a browser with many tabs and/or windows open can get out of hand, memory-leaks and the like. So if the browser starts to feel sluggish or doesn't react immediately, it can help to quit it and start anew. Once you start keeping the browser open for days and weeks, problems may crop up that you haven't encountered before. But all in all: It's good.
 
I routinely leave both Safari and Firefox loaded for days at a time. I find Safari to be a far worse cluprit than Firefox when it comes to memory leaks, but the Safari 3 beta isn't as bad as previous versions.

It's a good idea to quit your browsers now and then, like Fryke said, but there's no reason to do it when it's not convenient.
 
I usually quit applications after I'm done using them, except for photoshop and I just restart when my computer gets sluggish.
 
Safari gets sluggish after a few weeks of uptime .. so it fails to suddenly deal with java. Cleaning caches hen .. and if that fails, then restarting it.
I think I've had Fusion running for a month without restarting it. :)
 
Wow! I'm certainly glad I posted this question here. I knew you guys would give good, helpful replies. Well, now ... that definitely makes things even MORE simpler! Just closing my laptop and not quitting all my apps (yes, I was doing that before; I thought I was taking better care of my laptop by doing so) and just picking up where I left off the next time I wake it.

Now I love my iBook even more. If that's possible. :)

Thanks, everyone!
 
icemanjc said:
I usually quit applications after I'm done using them, except for photoshop and I just restart when my computer gets sluggish.
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So your maximum uptime time is a couple weeks. We've seen threads here about uptime with some posters having near 1 year uptime. Usually the only time I shut down is after an update (though my last shut-down was battery related, two days ago)

You can accomplish the same refreshing of the system a shut-down gives you by logging out of your profile and logging in - and it is much faster.
 
Amie said:
P.S. What do you guys mean by "memory leaks"?
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A memory leak is a kind of bug in a program, where it keeps holding onto data in memory (e.g. RAM) that it doesn't need. These little bits of "leaked" memory can add up, making the program hog a lot more memory than it really needs, which can eventually reduce performance of the program and even the rest of your system.

Quitting the app will free this leaked memory.

I find that Safari's memory usage slowly increases with use, to the point where it's worth quitting and reloading it every few days. But it's not so bad that you need to be a fanatic about it, and Firefox is better.

Most apps don't leak memory badly.

To monitor a program's memory usage, you can open Activity Monitor (located in Applications/Utilities) and look under the "Real Memory" column.
 
Giaguara said:
Safari gets sluggish after a few weeks of uptime ...
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I get sluggish after a few weeks of uptime and get terrible memory leakage too. I put myself to sleep regularly (sometimes during the daytime) and I wonder whether this is affecting my performance?
 
rhisiart said:
I get sluggish after a few weeks of uptime and get terrible memory leakage too. I put myself to sleep regularly (sometimes during the daytime) and I wonder whether this is affecting my performance?
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LOL :D

Thanks, everyone, for answering all my questions! :)
 
Hello, again! One more quick thing that I forgot to ask previously: Does it hurt to not sign out of certain Web pages? For example, eBay, Hotmail, Yahoo!, this Mac forum, etc. If I don't quit Firefox and just close my laptop, do I still need to sign out of those tabs/windows even though I'm not closing them? I was thinking for security purposes, but I don't even know if that would apply...
 
After I read all the posts last night, I left FF running and slept my laptop. Today, when I resumed, it worked fine for a few minutes. Then nothing would work. No Web pages would reload or open. Just kept going around and around saying "Loading" and "Connecting," but nothing ever happened. I tried several different Web sites. No luck with anything. I quit FF and tried to resume. STILL wouldn't work. I ended up having to reboot altogether. :(

Maybe just a coincidence ... or maybe my iBook didn't like the fact that I didn't quit FF before sleeping it?
 
Amie said:
After I read all the posts last night, I left FF running and slept my laptop. Today, when I resumed, it worked fine for a few minutes. Then nothing would work. No Web pages would reload or open. Just kept going around and around saying "Loading" and "Connecting," but nothing ever happened. I tried several different Web sites. No luck with anything. I quit FF and tried to resume. STILL wouldn't work. I ended up having to reboot altogether. :(

Maybe just a coincidence ... or maybe my iBook didn't like the fact that I didn't quit FF before sleeping it?
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Hi Amie. Check to make sure that when you bring the laptop out of sleep that you're connected to your network (wireless or otherwise). Sometimes the Mac doesn't automagically reconnect to your network when coming out of sleep so you have to check and make sure that it is.
 
nixgeek said:
Hi Amie. Check to make sure that when you bring the laptop out of sleep that you're connected to your network (wireless or otherwise). Sometimes the Mac doesn't automagically reconnect to your network when coming out of sleep so you have to check and make sure that it is.
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I don't think that was the problem because, like I said, it worked fine on the Internet, loading pages, etc. for several minutes after I waked it. And THEN it started giving me all the problems mentioned above. It connected to the network right away upon waking. Maybe it was just a coincidence and had nothing to do with the fact that I left all my FF windows/tabs open and FF running?
 
coincidence. sleep merely pauses the state. sounds more like your isp may have had issues, that were cleared up by the time the reboot was complete. i, and many more, sleep my ibook all the time.
 
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