Firefox slow or freezing when playing flash videos and games.

I play flash games on facebook and sometimes review browser-based web games.  I watch Hulu.  Primarily I have been using these flash apps within the Firefox browser.

I noticed a few months back (and consistently thereafter) that the performance of these flash applications was unruly — as in they would slow to a crawl, animations would studder, sometimes the browser would just lock up and become unusable.  Really annoying to have Firefox lock up like that.  To have it become frozen and lose twelve tabs worth of half-read web pages?

Usually they would recover but the waiting is a pain.

In the task manager was an entry for “plugin-container.exe” — where I’m assuming Firefox dumps flash application data and cache while it is processing the flash app.  The memory load for firefox.exe would be 300-500 meg while the plugin-container was around 20-35 meg.  A case of inefficient memory swapping?  Possibly.

I can’t say if that plugin container or the memory management in firefox is specifically to blame.  It could be that the Firefox crew didn’t reserve enough room for the more robust uses of flash these days, or it could be more of a matter of the number of plugins I have installed in Firefox in order to assist with web development.  JQuery or heavily use of Javascript like Google Docs and facebook might not have helped either.

In any case, the sure fire workaround was to let Google Chrome have a shot at the workload.

It’s been working like a charm.  No browser hang-ups.  Chrome is not only fast as they say, but it is handling the flash apps like a hero.

But lose firebug and all those handy apps?  No way.  Firefox is still open in my system tray, and ready to help me with all those awesome plugins.