Internet Explorer 11 Memory Leaks

Issue

This article describes a known issue specific to Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) as documented on LPS-73892.

Liferay has discovered a memory leak occurring in IE11 and Edge.  As the browser memory usage of the application increases, a page may render with mobile styling.  After this symptom exhibits, the browser may run out of memory and crash.  The browser may also unexpectedly crash without displaying these symptoms.

After research, Liferay found the root cause of the issue to be within IE11.  This memory leak is also reproducible on third party websites (i.e. http://yahoo.com and http://youtube.com).

As of August 4th, 2017, LPS-73892 is still reproducible using IE version 11.483.15063.0 (KB4025252 or KB4025339 - July 11, 2017 Cumulative security update for Internet Explorer).

Resolution

Status: Workaround Available

Anyone regularly experiencing this issue would benefit from the use of another browser, such as Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, as neither of these other browsers manifest the same memory leak issue. 

If this is not possible, please update to the latest stable version of IE11.  Since this issue is resolved and slated for release, it is possible that the fix has been released in the latest version of IE.

If it is not possible to use a different browser, or update IE11, then there is a Liferay specific workaround which minimizes the likelihood of the issue occurring by reducing browser memory consumption during a single user session.  This workaround does not resolve the issue since the root cause lies ultimately with IE11. 

The workaround is as follows: In the portal-ext.properties set: javascript.single.page.application.enabled=false

LPS-102605 introduces the possibility to disable single page application (SPA) on Internet Explorer browsers and/or Internet Explorer 11 only. The feature is available on the below patching levels:

And it can be activated through:

  • Liferay DXP 7.3, DXP 7.2 and DXP 7.1: Control Panel > Configuration > System Settings > Platform > Infrastructure > Frontend SPA Infrastructure
  • Liferay 7.0 DXP: Control Panel > Configuration > System Settings > Foundation > Frontend SPA Infrastructure

Even with SPA disabled, it is still possible to experience this known issue during long user sessions.  Disabling SPA will negatively impact page load times and user experience.  For more information on SPA and its benefits please see the Senna.js documentation.

Additional Information

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