In the past, memory leaks haven’t posed huge problems for Web developers. Pages were kept relatively simple and navigation between different locations within a site was a great way to clean up any loose memory. If there was a leak, it was most likely small enough to go unnoticed.

New Web applications live up to higher standards. A page might run for hours without being navigated and retrieve updated information dynamically through Web services. Language features are pushed to the breaking point by combining complex event schemes, object-oriented JScript, and closures to produce entire applications. With these and other changes, certain memory leak patterns are becoming more prominent, especially those previously hidden by navigation.

The good news is that memory leak patterns can be easily spotted if you know what to look for. Most of the troublesome patterns you might face have known workarounds requiring only a small amount of extra work on your behalf. While some pages might still fall prey to small memory leaks, the most noticeable ones can be easily removed. 阅读全文 →