Memory Tools for Web 2.0 Development

One of the tricky parts of developing Web 2.0 applications in JavaScript is optimizing performance.  For Web 2.0 development, there are many factors that contribute to performance, including javaScript toolkit loading times, the responsiveness of backend services, the amount of data being transferred, and the memory footprint of the application within the browser.

Tools like YSlow, Charles (excellent debugging proxy), and Firebug go a long way toward addressing many of the aforementioned issues related to doing “real” development in JavaScript, but they don’t really address the issue of optimizing an application’s memory footprint.  Developers can use operating system tools to check the browser’s footprint, but that doesn’t really help much when you’re trying to figure out details of memory usage within your specific application.

This issue has been recognized and now there are tools emerging to help remedy the situation.

Google’s Chrome browser took the first steps down this path with the ‘Developer -> Task manager’ tool.  This tool gives a view of how much memory is being consumed by each tab of the browser.  Now, Mozilla is trying to take this a (big) step further by beginning development of A New Memory Tool for the Web.  This tool finally promises to help developers find memory leaks in JavaScript apps and assist them in making more memory-efficient applications.

I’m looking forward to seeing how these tools develop over time.  Now if we can just get versions for all the major browsers…