Firefox - Too much fire burnt the Fox?
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I remember, not so long ago my tryst with a new browser began. It was fast, lightweight and claimed to be more secure than the browser god at that time - IE6. No points for guessing, the new kid on the block is called Firefox. Fast forward to a year later... The new kid has earned quite a reputation and is starting to raise attention as the IE killer. With hundreds of addons and more pouring in day by day, the kid is really going places. It still remains fast, lightweight and secure. I even read an article that says the Facebook is urging it's users to switch from IE to FF. Fast forward to present day... The kid has transcended into adulthood. Has become a major player and released version 3.5! As with every adult losing some of his agility with age, this adult was no exception. The browser has become bloated (too much fries?), takes 2-3 minutes to startup and claims to have become faster and secure! So there are talks about 'increased randomness', 'scanning temp folders for getting the ever eluding purely random number' and how they cause the slow startup. Addons like Vacuum Places are topping the charts and blogs/bug reports to fix the slow startup are probably getting more hits than 'Get Firefox'. So I follow all that, even start with a clean install with a clean profile. The kid is now becoming god like - refusing to load any faster (sometimes even slower than the real god). So I bite the bullet, click on Firefox icon and take walk to get my coffee. When I come back, it's loaded and there - what an absolute delight! So I launch a barrage of activites (like browing social network sites, checking on deals and stuff) which I'm so used to getting done in few minutes. To my absolute amazement, Facebook load takes an awful amount of time, as does running any rich app like Mafia wars for example. It now eats up 200 - 500 mb or more of RAM (on Windows 7 PC) and is a CPU hog when 4 or more tabs are open. Unwilingly, I like at the new new kid on block - Google Chrome. Despite despising it for its lack of features/addons, the new kid is really really fast. So its fast, lightweight and claims to be secure. Everything runs great and having multiple tabs is no problem at all. Conspiracy theory - MS planted someone at FF to come up with a real idea to slow down the browser and its working! The death pill has been injected. If Mozilla team is off doing new things, then this adult is fast going to die a silent death - one less user at a time (count me in). At the time of writing th
Something I wrote a few years back that you might find relevant (or at least entertaining) in this regard. Pro Developer: Feature Creature[^] Sometimes the best thing you can do for your app is know when to quit.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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Every time I think FF is getting too slow, I load up IE8 and use that for a bit... Start-up time hardly matters when it takes longer to initialize each new tab than it took the program to load in the first place. Chrome is nice and speedy, but a real pig when I have a lot of tabs open. Lack of FlashBlock doesn't help there either. So for now, Chrome is my "apps" browser and FF is my "reading list" browser.
Shog9 wrote:
Every time I think FF is getting too slow, I load up IE8 and use that for a bit
ergo my reply - speed is relative :)
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IE is my default browser so that I don't lose touch in my web work with the one that has the largest market share. It has all the normal stuff loaded (adobe reader, flash, etc.). FF is my "clean" browser which I use when poking around the web via Google & not knowing what neighborhood I'm likely to land it. Also handy to avoid all the pesky distractions people load their sites up with, i.e. flash, etc. Chrome and Safari are installed for when I need to do compatibility testing. I don't care about Opera compatibility and wouldn't care about Safari were Apple not a religion. I spent ages developing native Windows applications. With all the horsepower, responsiveness and UI capabilities that come with that environment, I have a really hard time getting excited about any brand of web browser. Installation / deployment benefits aside (and they are considerable), it's a huge step backwards for software development and feels doing brain surgery wearing mittens. IE, FF, Chrome... blech. It's like asking me which brand of rotten eggs I prefer. Who cares?
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
Christopher Duncan wrote:
Who cares?
Most users don't but lots of techies do. I care because if a browser has features that make my browsing more usable or productive then I will use that browser in preference to others. But unless you know what those features are, and find them valuable, then you will see browsers as much of a muchness.
Kevin
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Kevin McFarlane wrote:
I run about 25 active extensions. The only negatives I experience are slow start-up
People claim or rather blame addons for slowness. However, for me, a fresh clean installation is still slow in starting up and executing web pages.
Kevin McFarlane wrote:
memory usage (I have a config trick to tame that).
Reminds me of IE registry hacks! This itself is a reminder that FF by default is bloated. They just have a lifesaver in that setting. Even that setting, while taming/capping memory usage, doesn't make it any faster. The whole point here is that does every good software, after a while, goes the MS way - i.e. becomes bloated and less useful?
mrchief_2000 wrote:
People claim or rather blame addons for slowness
They do affect load time. If you disable them all start-up time is significantly faster. It may still be slow from your perspective though.
mrchief_2000 wrote:
still slow in starting up and executing web pages.
I never notice a difference.
mrchief_2000 wrote:
Reminds me of IE registry hacks! This itself is a reminder that FF by default is bloated
It's Firefox's about:config entry. I agree the memory and start-up issues are problems. It's just that they're not severe enough for me to trump usability and functionality. So Firefox wins hands down for now. Back in 2000-2001 IE 6 won hands down. I've learnt however that it's virtually impossible for someone else to change people's browser preferences. hey have to change on their own. :)
mrchief_2000 wrote:
The whole point here is that does every good software, after a while, goes the MS way - i.e. becomes bloated and less useful?
Yes. I expect the same will happen to Chrome too. Then someone will release another fast and lean browser and users will complain of lack of functionality. Look at the Chrome forums to see what I mean. :laugh:
Kevin
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Something I wrote a few years back that you might find relevant (or at least entertaining) in this regard. Pro Developer: Feature Creature[^] Sometimes the best thing you can do for your app is know when to quit.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
Preettty good! Enjoyed it!
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mrchief_2000 wrote:
People claim or rather blame addons for slowness
They do affect load time. If you disable them all start-up time is significantly faster. It may still be slow from your perspective though.
mrchief_2000 wrote:
still slow in starting up and executing web pages.
I never notice a difference.
mrchief_2000 wrote:
Reminds me of IE registry hacks! This itself is a reminder that FF by default is bloated
It's Firefox's about:config entry. I agree the memory and start-up issues are problems. It's just that they're not severe enough for me to trump usability and functionality. So Firefox wins hands down for now. Back in 2000-2001 IE 6 won hands down. I've learnt however that it's virtually impossible for someone else to change people's browser preferences. hey have to change on their own. :)
mrchief_2000 wrote:
The whole point here is that does every good software, after a while, goes the MS way - i.e. becomes bloated and less useful?
Yes. I expect the same will happen to Chrome too. Then someone will release another fast and lean browser and users will complain of lack of functionality. Look at the Chrome forums to see what I mean. :laugh:
Kevin
Kevin McFarlane wrote:
I've learnt however that it's virtually impossible for someone else to change people's browser preferences. hey have to change on their own.
Only the makers can do it :)
Kevin McFarlane wrote:
Yes. I expect the same will happen to Chrome too. Then someone will release another fast and lean browser and users will complain of lack of functionality.
I know! I hope that comes at least after few years (Feel like starting my own Moogle or Goozilla)!
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IE is my default browser so that I don't lose touch in my web work with the one that has the largest market share. It has all the normal stuff loaded (adobe reader, flash, etc.). FF is my "clean" browser which I use when poking around the web via Google & not knowing what neighborhood I'm likely to land it. Also handy to avoid all the pesky distractions people load their sites up with, i.e. flash, etc. Chrome and Safari are installed for when I need to do compatibility testing. I don't care about Opera compatibility and wouldn't care about Safari were Apple not a religion. I spent ages developing native Windows applications. With all the horsepower, responsiveness and UI capabilities that come with that environment, I have a really hard time getting excited about any brand of web browser. Installation / deployment benefits aside (and they are considerable), it's a huge step backwards for software development and feels doing brain surgery wearing mittens. IE, FF, Chrome... blech. It's like asking me which brand of rotten eggs I prefer. Who cares?
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
Christopher Duncan wrote:
Chrome and Safari are installed for when I need to do compatibility testing. I don't care about Opera compatibility and wouldn't care about Safari were Apple not a religion.
//fanboy Apple rant
if (!AppleLovePost)
{
post.FanBoyAlmostReligiousZealotRant(user);
post.SoundDumb(me);
}
else
{
post.AgreeCauseTheyAreObviouslySmart(user);
}Chrome finally caught up with Safari. Considering they are both web kit, it isn't like you will see much in the way of problems on one that aren't on the other. And yea, Opera is sorta just zombie shuffling along, not quite dead but not living in any real sense of the word. It is nice that we are finally seeing more than 1 or 2 browsers. While we may not care much, and it sucks checking against 2-3 browsers to make sure everything works, that is still better than having to rely on 1 company and hoping they get something right that they refuse to admit is an issue.
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I remember, not so long ago my tryst with a new browser began. It was fast, lightweight and claimed to be more secure than the browser god at that time - IE6. No points for guessing, the new kid on the block is called Firefox. Fast forward to a year later... The new kid has earned quite a reputation and is starting to raise attention as the IE killer. With hundreds of addons and more pouring in day by day, the kid is really going places. It still remains fast, lightweight and secure. I even read an article that says the Facebook is urging it's users to switch from IE to FF. Fast forward to present day... The kid has transcended into adulthood. Has become a major player and released version 3.5! As with every adult losing some of his agility with age, this adult was no exception. The browser has become bloated (too much fries?), takes 2-3 minutes to startup and claims to have become faster and secure! So there are talks about 'increased randomness', 'scanning temp folders for getting the ever eluding purely random number' and how they cause the slow startup. Addons like Vacuum Places are topping the charts and blogs/bug reports to fix the slow startup are probably getting more hits than 'Get Firefox'. So I follow all that, even start with a clean install with a clean profile. The kid is now becoming god like - refusing to load any faster (sometimes even slower than the real god). So I bite the bullet, click on Firefox icon and take walk to get my coffee. When I come back, it's loaded and there - what an absolute delight! So I launch a barrage of activites (like browing social network sites, checking on deals and stuff) which I'm so used to getting done in few minutes. To my absolute amazement, Facebook load takes an awful amount of time, as does running any rich app like Mafia wars for example. It now eats up 200 - 500 mb or more of RAM (on Windows 7 PC) and is a CPU hog when 4 or more tabs are open. Unwilingly, I like at the new new kid on block - Google Chrome. Despite despising it for its lack of features/addons, the new kid is really really fast. So its fast, lightweight and claims to be secure. Everything runs great and having multiple tabs is no problem at all. Conspiracy theory - MS planted someone at FF to come up with a real idea to slow down the browser and its working! The death pill has been injected. If Mozilla team is off doing new things, then this adult is fast going to die a silent death - one less user at a time (count me in). At the time of writing th
Firefox starts up in 1.5 seconds for me...better check your addons or look for javascript malware.
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mrchief_2000 wrote:
I'm now an avid Chrome user.
Me too.......tried FF didn't like it, wait a while....a long while...tried it again...still didn't like it. Binned. I now use Chrome for 99% of my browsing. The only thing I really stick to IE for is Microsoft Outlook Web Access for my work. It is more feature rich in IE than it is in Chrome.
Dave GoogleWave: dave.m.auld[at]googlewave.com Who am I?: Web|Facebook|Twitter|LinkedIn|Bebo
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You should try installing the Chrome extension IE Tab which lets you display IE pages within a chrome tab.
I could, but whats the point, just click IE in my toolbar and i'm there with the real deal. No point adding layers of complexity unless you really have no option. Same as why use the chrome plugin for IE (the one that you are prompted to install if you try and access googlewave in IE), just use chrome!
Dave GoogleWave: dave.m.auld[at]googlewave.com Who am I?: Web|Facebook|Twitter|LinkedIn|Bebo
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Firefox starts up in 1.5 seconds for me...better check your addons or look for javascript malware.
Scott Serl wrote:
Firefox starts up in 1.5 seconds for me
Don't jinx it ;) You know, I have seen numerous people claiming ~5 seconds startup time. To me, that's a serious bug in the sense that whatever feature they added, is not behaving consistently.
Scott Serl wrote:
better check your addons or look for javascript malware.
I've tried with fresh clean installs too. I've tried on a newly formatted machine too. Never been able to get ~5 seconds startup, not with v3.5 and above.
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peterchen wrote:
"Microsoft is so stupid, they can't even make a fast browser".
Speed is relative. FF is was faster than IE6. Chrome is faster than FF and IE. Without IE or FF (for the sake of argument let's forget all those other wonderful browsers out there) Chrome would just be Chrome - not slow or fast. So in this case, by making FF slow, IE automatically becomes faster. ;P
heh - speedup by competition! :D Actually, I think we can put fixed numbers on performance, wihtout product comparison. The baseline is set by human reaction, what is perceived as "instant", and the maximum delays "ignored" by muscle memory. Throw some te,poral perception studies, and there you go. Of course, without humans, Chrome would be just Chrome. Or maybe not!
Personally, I love the idea that Raymond spends his nights posting bad regexs to mailing lists under the pseudonym of Jane Smith. He'd be like a super hero, only more nerdy and less useful. [Trevel]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | µLaunch - program launcher for server core and hyper-v server -
heh - speedup by competition! :D Actually, I think we can put fixed numbers on performance, wihtout product comparison. The baseline is set by human reaction, what is perceived as "instant", and the maximum delays "ignored" by muscle memory. Throw some te,poral perception studies, and there you go. Of course, without humans, Chrome would be just Chrome. Or maybe not!
Personally, I love the idea that Raymond spends his nights posting bad regexs to mailing lists under the pseudonym of Jane Smith. He'd be like a super hero, only more nerdy and less useful. [Trevel]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | µLaunch - program launcher for server core and hyper-v serverpeterchen wrote:
Of course, without humans, Chrome would be just Chrome. Or maybe not!
Without humans, there would be no Google, no MS, no FF. heck no CP lounge for that matter. :-D
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IE is my default browser so that I don't lose touch in my web work with the one that has the largest market share. It has all the normal stuff loaded (adobe reader, flash, etc.). FF is my "clean" browser which I use when poking around the web via Google & not knowing what neighborhood I'm likely to land it. Also handy to avoid all the pesky distractions people load their sites up with, i.e. flash, etc. Chrome and Safari are installed for when I need to do compatibility testing. I don't care about Opera compatibility and wouldn't care about Safari were Apple not a religion. I spent ages developing native Windows applications. With all the horsepower, responsiveness and UI capabilities that come with that environment, I have a really hard time getting excited about any brand of web browser. Installation / deployment benefits aside (and they are considerable), it's a huge step backwards for software development and feels doing brain surgery wearing mittens. IE, FF, Chrome... blech. It's like asking me which brand of rotten eggs I prefer. Who cares?
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
I assume that "clean" here is a euphemism for "porn".
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Scott Serl wrote:
Firefox starts up in 1.5 seconds for me
Don't jinx it ;) You know, I have seen numerous people claiming ~5 seconds startup time. To me, that's a serious bug in the sense that whatever feature they added, is not behaving consistently.
Scott Serl wrote:
better check your addons or look for javascript malware.
I've tried with fresh clean installs too. I've tried on a newly formatted machine too. Never been able to get ~5 seconds startup, not with v3.5 and above.
To be truthful, I am using 64 bit linux. I run windows in a virtual for visual studio only. After 1 hour of constant browsing, firefox was using only 100MB of ram out of 8GB total on my machine). I just tried startup of firefox in my windows 7 virtual and it took 3 seconds, but I have no additional plugins installed over the ones that come as default. In Linux, I have Flash 10 (puke), firebug, and httpfox plugins installed.
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
I don't have any problem with FireFox's speed. I also don't bother with a crap load of add-ins or toolbars.
I do bother with a crap load of add-ins or toolbars and I still don't have any problem with FF's speed. What am I doing wrong?
Kevin
You haven't tried chrome yet?
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You haven't tried chrome yet?
Yes, I've had Chrome on my PC for over a year. It's my second browser. I also use Opera (and IE when I have to).
Kevin
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I remember, not so long ago my tryst with a new browser began. It was fast, lightweight and claimed to be more secure than the browser god at that time - IE6. No points for guessing, the new kid on the block is called Firefox. Fast forward to a year later... The new kid has earned quite a reputation and is starting to raise attention as the IE killer. With hundreds of addons and more pouring in day by day, the kid is really going places. It still remains fast, lightweight and secure. I even read an article that says the Facebook is urging it's users to switch from IE to FF. Fast forward to present day... The kid has transcended into adulthood. Has become a major player and released version 3.5! As with every adult losing some of his agility with age, this adult was no exception. The browser has become bloated (too much fries?), takes 2-3 minutes to startup and claims to have become faster and secure! So there are talks about 'increased randomness', 'scanning temp folders for getting the ever eluding purely random number' and how they cause the slow startup. Addons like Vacuum Places are topping the charts and blogs/bug reports to fix the slow startup are probably getting more hits than 'Get Firefox'. So I follow all that, even start with a clean install with a clean profile. The kid is now becoming god like - refusing to load any faster (sometimes even slower than the real god). So I bite the bullet, click on Firefox icon and take walk to get my coffee. When I come back, it's loaded and there - what an absolute delight! So I launch a barrage of activites (like browing social network sites, checking on deals and stuff) which I'm so used to getting done in few minutes. To my absolute amazement, Facebook load takes an awful amount of time, as does running any rich app like Mafia wars for example. It now eats up 200 - 500 mb or more of RAM (on Windows 7 PC) and is a CPU hog when 4 or more tabs are open. Unwilingly, I like at the new new kid on block - Google Chrome. Despite despising it for its lack of features/addons, the new kid is really really fast. So its fast, lightweight and claims to be secure. Everything runs great and having multiple tabs is no problem at all. Conspiracy theory - MS planted someone at FF to come up with a real idea to slow down the browser and its working! The death pill has been injected. If Mozilla team is off doing new things, then this adult is fast going to die a silent death - one less user at a time (count me in). At the time of writing th
Well I have a number of extensions loaded in FF and do not have any problem at all with the speed of it, even Facebook runs quickly. Try deleting all your normal and Flash cookies.
I hope you realise that hamsters are very creative when it comes to revenge. - Elaine