ASP.Net AJAX - IE 6/7 Memory Usage?

Question

Hi,

We're carrying out testing of our ASP.Net AJAX application, and are finding memory usage in Internet Explorer 6 & 7 increases by at least 2mb for each page refresh - whether refreshing the same page or navigating to a new one.

This happens on the most basic of maintenance screens, and even on the main page where we've only got the application logo and the menu (uses the ASP.Net Menu control + CSS extenders).

Testers are reporting some slowdown on IE6 as memory usage peaks - none of the memory seems to be being reclaimed when a page is destroyed.

I've been looking around ASP.Net forums/doing some googling and have disabled CSS scripts, javascript includes, script manager control one by one - the scriptmanager seems to be the biggest culprit I've found so far... but it's kinda necessary for an asp.net ajax site!

Current options enabled are caching in web.config, LoadScriptsBeforeUI="false", ScriptMode="Release", and CombineScripts="true" on the script manager.

Any tips to reclaim some this memory and/or stop memory increase when a user refreshes a page/navigates to a new one?

Cheers,

Paul

Answer 1

Have a look at this article - the things explained there apply to all browsers but IE is the worst of all regarding memory leaks. Maybe you can find a pattern you are using in your application very often and just by correcting this will save you the 2 meg.

Answer 2

I used the DRIP utility to track down leaks in IE6 a couple of years ago. I've been using ASP.NET AJAX and JavaScript ever since in both IE6 and IE7 without issue on an intranet site with over 300 concurrent users 24/7.

Make sure your version of IE6 is the latest patch (if you MUST run IE6!).

Other than that, the article suggested by Joscha is your best bet. Most leaks are caused by JavaScript other than ASP.NET AJAX which I haven't found to be buggy.