JSpell IE Memory Leak

[charris]

Our Developers have identified a memory leak caused by JSpell. This leak causes the machine and IE to slow down til it eventually freezes IE all together. We are wondering if JSpell are releasing a new version any time soon to address this problem. Below is a description of the discovered leak as described by the developers:

We have determined that the 3rd party product JSpell is causing a memory leak in Internet Explorer (versions 6 and 7).

We have used the Drip IE memory leak detector to narrow it down to JSpell.

We are using JSpell in conjunction with FCKEditor (rich text editor). For the purposes of isolating the problem, we have created a very simple test page with a single textarea component - note that the memory leak still occurs the same when used in conjunction with FCKEditor.

After initially loading the test page in Drip, you can see that the memory usage is at 7716884.

If the test page is refreshed several times there is a definite increase in memory usage - now at 26324992 (note also how the memory usage climbs after each refresh as seen in the graph bottom right).

Drip also identifies several leaked DOM objects.

Information about the Drip IE memory leak detector:
http://outofhanwell.com/ieleak/index.php?title=Main_Page

Information about fixing IE memory leaks:
http://outofhanwell.com/ieleak/index.php?title=Fixing_Leaks
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/IETechCol/dnwebgen/ie_leak_patterns.asp

[gary.ekins]

I wonder if there's been any follow up to this? I've just spent a couple of hours trying to find the leak in my application only to realise that it is definitely JSpell Evolution.

I've used the Drip tool mentioned above on the JSpell test page (http://localhost/jspellEvolution/test.html) and found the following:

3 references to "myField"
3 references to "myOtherField"
6 references to "j$enGB" (anchor element)
6 references to "j$enUS" (anchor element)
6 references to several other anchor elements with no ID
5 references to various DIV elements with no ID
1 reference to "jA$5" (an iframe)
1 reference to "jA$9" (an iframe)
5 references to a FONT element with no ID

All references are causing memory to leak, with the result that each time a page is refreshed the amount of memory used by Internet Explorer increases, causing the application to crash.

I'd be surprised if an issue as important as this, that was reported 4 months ago [edited by staff], hasn't been fixed. Can you please let me know - via this forum or by email - whether and when an update has been made available to resolve this problem?

Many thanks,
Gary Ekins.

[ddaland]

Has anyone found a solution to this issue yet?

[staff]

Hi we've confirmed that there is a bug in IE which causes memory to leak, gradually, under certain circumstances. We have submitted the issue to Microsoft for analysis and we are attempting to work around the issue. For now, the solution is to restart IE if you are experiencing this issue (which could take hours to affect your system).

The DOM manipulations that JSpell performs are non-trivial and the issue is complex however it is being worked on in conjunction with the browser vendor.

[charris]

I was told months ago JSpell were working on an update to the software which would address the memory leak and other issues and a new version would be available in August this year.

Contratry to the earlier post it does not take hours for the memory leak to slow the browser and our application down - it takes about half an hour (if we are lucky sometimes its faster)

We really want to know what the planned resolution is - we paid a lot of money for this product and right now we are not even using it.:mad:

[staff]

An update is planned for the week of November 10th, next week. It will include many fixes (including memory related) and a few enhancements. We won't send a formal announcement by email but we'll post in the forum once the new uploads are available.

[gary.ekins]

An update is planned for the week of November 10th...

It being the 17th of November now, is there any update on if/when this update will actually happen?

[staff]

The coding is complete. However, we are using a new installation generator and writing the installer scripts is taking longer than planned. However, we will be releasing this week and we will post in the forum as soon as we have uploaded the files.

Attached is a screenshot of Drip running in auto-refresh which shows the memory leak resolved.

http://www.thesolutioncafe.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=7&stc=1&d=1226925135