Firefox use maximum power of the CPU

Hello,

I have experienced some problems with Firefox ver 1.0.4
on two different apple mac
one is G4 800mhz with 10.3 osX
second one is 2xg5 2000ghz with 10.4 osX
from time to time, Firefox is using maximum of CPU power and I can't
operate it.
Sometimes it helps to leave Firefox running for few minutes (approx
5min)
and I can operate it again. Or I have to force to quit application and
start it again.

Do you have any idea why this is happening?

with best regards

siaraX

wrote:
 > Hello,
 >
 > I have experienced some problems with Firefox ver 1.0.4
 > on two different apple mac
 > one is G4 800mhz with 10.3 osX
 > second one is 2xg5 2000ghz with 10.4 osX
 > from time to time, Firefox is using maximum of CPU power and I can't
 > operate it.
 > Sometimes it helps to leave Firefox running for few minutes (approx
 > 5min)
 > and I can operate it again. Or I have to force to quit application and
 > start it again.
 >
 > Do you have any idea why this is happening?
 >
 > with best regards
 >
 > siaraX
 >

whats the problem with a program using all available cpu cycles if the
page you are asking it to display requires such?
If say a page requires 50,000 cpu cycles to compute everything needed to
display it, it will take 50,000 cpu cycles.
If the processor is only capable of 10,000 cpu cycles per second, and
the program uses all of it, then it would take 5 seconds.
If you restrict that to a lower number (say only 50%) then the page
would take 10 seconds or more to display.
This is for any function you have asked the program to perform.

Modern memory management systems, such as built in to Mac OS X, assign
available cpu cycles based on the demands of the programs running at the
time. If you are running several programs at once, then the time for
each program to complete a task will be longer as the managment system
gives each program the cpu cycles it requires.

A lot depends on just what you are doing at the time. If you are loading
a graphics rich page for example, then of course it will take longer to
display than a pure text page, there are simply more cpu cycles required
to do the computations.
If you have asked Firefox (or another program) to do a 'search' quite a
lot of the time taken for that search depends on the amount of data to
be searched. It usually takes a lot less time to search your entire
hard drive for example, than it does to search the web, simply because
there is more to search.

So, just what are you doing when Firefox is using all, or most, of the
cpu cycles? What page are you going to, or what function are you using?