Firefox 1.5 - still quite crap...

[Atheus]

There are a few good new features in 1.5, but the old annoyances are still there.


Problems with firefox:

1: I'm viewing a static page with no animation and right now it's using 9-14% of my CPU power - WHY!?

2: It's using 75MB of memory - why?... i only have 7 tabs open... they're 90% text...

3: I just closed a tab, why didn't my memory usage go down? Why, in fact, did it go up?


Problems with IE6:

1: Old, lacks features. Couldn't they at least add tabs?

2: SO insecure, currently vulnerable to another remote root exploit (Text) which microsoft refuses to even acknowledge let alone fix.


So we have a choice between commercial crap and open-source crap... awesome...

 

[rh71]

Originally posted by: Atheus
3: I just closed a tab, why didn't my memory usage go down? Why, in fact, did it go up?

sickest problem ever. :| proof (from an old version)

FIX IT.

 

[Modeps]

I think you've got some other problems on your computer if FF is using cpu cycles when idle. I've never had that issue.

 

[BW86]

Originally posted by: rh71

Originally posted by: Atheus
3: I just closed a tab, why didn't my memory usage go down? Why, in fact, did it go up?

sickest problem ever. :| proof (from an old version)

FIX IT.

thats wierd, I currently have 8 tabs open and firefox is using 33.3 megs and 0% CPU.
SS
I closed them all and FF went back to using 19 megs.

 

[evilharp]

Originally posted by: rh71

Originally posted by: Atheus
3: I just closed a tab, why didn't my memory usage go down? Why, in fact, did it go up?

sickest problem ever. :| proof (from an old version)

FIX IT.

Firefox caches pages and web data to system memory (as well as to the HDD). Try clearing your "cache" and see what happens to the amount of ram being used. I just freed up 20mb by clearing mine (dropped from 50mb to 30mb).

 

[StevenYoo]

Originally posted by: evilharp

Originally posted by: rh71

Originally posted by: Atheus
3: I just closed a tab, why didn't my memory usage go down? Why, in fact, did it go up?

sickest problem ever. :| proof (from an old version)

FIX IT.

Firefox caches pages and web data to system memory (as well as to the HDD). Try clearing your "cache" and see what happens to the amount of ram being used. I just freed up 20mb by clearing mine (dropped from 50mb to 30mb).

ooh, i have to try that. thanks for the tip

 

[Atheus]

Originally posted by: Modeps
I think you've got some other problems on your computer if FF is using cpu cycles when idle. I've never had that issue.

I closed some backgroud tabs with flash animations (AT front page, engadget) and the usage went down to 0, but why is it rendering animations when the page is in the background?

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: Atheus

Originally posted by: Modeps
I think you've got some other problems on your computer if FF is using cpu cycles when idle. I've never had that issue.

I closed some backgroud tabs with flash animations (AT front page, engadget) and the usage went down to 0, but why is it rendering animations when the page is in the background?

You can always install Adblock and the Adblock Fiterset.G Updater to prevent those flash ad animations from displaying.

More of a band-aid than a solution, but it will definitely improve your browsing experience with FF.

 

[Todd33]

I gave up on FF, it was crashing too much. Try Opera, so far so good.

 

[Modeps]

Way to pwn yourself OP. Just because something isnt focused doesnt mean it's not using system resources. :roll:

 

[Robor]

As far as the memory usage, try turning down your browser cache settings. There's no need for 50MB of browser cache. I usually turn mine down to 8MB and set it to clear on close.

I've tried Opera before (last month?) and had several pages display totally whack so I uninstalled it. Please don't ask me to give examples because I don't remember but they displayed fine in IE and Firefox.

 

[icarus4586]

In my experience, Opera seems pretty polished, and it renders pages pretty quickly. The problem is that it has the most rendering errors.
Firefox every once in a while will do something weird with memory use. (I've read that it has to do with poorly written Javascript that leaks memory. I guess IE's JS engine does a better job at garbage collecting.) But I haven't had problems with rendering, and in version 1.5 pages render very fast.
IE is OK for some things, but it's not too secure and doesn't have any of the features that newer browsers have. I only use it when I have to.

 

[corkyg]

In IE, one can change a link/bookmark icon by right clicking, etc. Anyone know of a way to change a bookmark icon in FF?

 

[Atheus]

Originally posted by: Modeps
Way to pwn yourself OP. Just because something isnt focused doesnt mean it's not using system resources. :roll:

Err yes, that was my point... but _why_ should it use the processor when it's not being rendered onscreen? I'm not a browser dev (are you?) but when i write a game i do not animate objects which do not appear in the frame. I can't get a decent test of this actually, if i open IE and firefox at the same time (with identical animations in both) the cpu usage seems to jump randomly around between 0 and like 15%. Regardless of focus.

Perhaps you are being insulting because you feel you have to defend firefox? Well you don't have to defend it from me, I develop open source code and I always recommend firefox... just pointing out a few issues.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: Atheus

Originally posted by: Modeps
Way to pwn yourself OP. Just because something isnt focused doesnt mean it's not using system resources. :roll:

Err yes, that was my point... but _why_ should it use the processor when it's not being rendered onscreen? I'm not a browser dev (are you?) but when i write a game i do not animate objects which do not appear in the frame. I can't get a decent test of this actually, if i open IE and firefox at the same time (with identical animations in both) the cpu usage seems to jump randomly around between 0 and like 15%. Regardless of focus.

Perhaps you are being insulting because you feel you have to defend firefox? Well you don't have to defend it from me, I develop open source code and I always recommend firefox... just pointing out a few issues.

I wonder if that's the responsibility of Mozilla or the plugin developer (in this case Macromedia).

 

[rh71]

Originally posted by: Robor
I've tried Opera before (last month?) and had several pages display totally whack so I uninstalled it. Please don't ask me to give examples because I don't remember but they displayed fine in IE and Firefox.

When the free-key for Opera period was on... I came across some sites with rendering issues also. But the few pages I've visited (tv.yahoo.com for example) have fixed the issues since.

I think there've been quite a few fixes since worldwide release. (More people coming across issues makes for quicker resolutions)

 

[Heifetz]

A problem that I have encountered using firefox is how slow it is when it encounters flash on a page. The flash seems to slow the webpage to a crawl. This does not happen with IE. Perhaps its the flash plugin that is causing this, or it might be a firefox problem.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: MrChad

Originally posted by: Atheus

Originally posted by: Modeps
Way to pwn yourself OP. Just because something isnt focused doesnt mean it's not using system resources. :roll:

Err yes, that was my point... but _why_ should it use the processor when it's not being rendered onscreen? I'm not a browser dev (are you?) but when i write a game i do not animate objects which do not appear in the frame. I can't get a decent test of this actually, if i open IE and firefox at the same time (with identical animations in both) the cpu usage seems to jump randomly around between 0 and like 15%. Regardless of focus.

Perhaps you are being insulting because you feel you have to defend firefox? Well you don't have to defend it from me, I develop open source code and I always recommend firefox... just pointing out a few issues.

I wonder if that's the responsibility of Mozilla or the plugin developer (in this case Macromedia).

I think it's a pretty reasonable idea although I can see why it may not have been a priority to implement that kind of 'optimization'. I imagine the initial responsibility would be a combination of the browser and the rendering engine but support from any plugin developers would be good (if it's not there already). I think an important thing, though, would be to make it configurable as there may be times when people want the plugin to do something useful in the background.

 

[juiio]

Originally posted by: Heifetz
A problem that I have encountered using firefox is how slow it is when it encounters flash on a page. The flash seems to slow the webpage to a crawl. This does not happen with IE. Perhaps its the flash plugin that is causing this, or it might be a firefox problem.

At least you get working flash. Flash has never worked for me in FF.

 

[kamper]

Not to completely troll, but I've very rarely come across flash objects that I really want to see. Every now and then some idiot designs a navigation system in flash but that's completely unnecesarry and could be accomplished much better with conventional methods. Then there's the all flash sites, but I don't need to go into detail there, I usually just refuse to browse them.

The only useful things I've seen are movies, which could be done just as easily with a much lower level of browser integration, and little useful apps like the interactive map that Heathrow airport has. But that stuff is the huge minority of flash usage on the net.

I guess my point is that it's unfortunate that a working flash plugin has become something of a necessity for browsing when it really delivers so little value (unless you actually like distracting ads). In a perfect world we wouldn't be worrying about this at all.

/rant

 

[Nothinman]

At least you get working flash. Flash has never worked for me in FF.

Consider yourself lucky.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

If firefox doesn't work, there is always the alternative :thumbsup

 

[Alex]

firefox memory usage still seems kinda weird and unstable from person to person's computer...
i quickly opened up 7 more tabs (8 total) and memory usage jumped to 50mb... closed them all and now i'm down to 38mb... that seems like quite a bit for one open tab... but then again i have a decent processor (Athlon64 2800+) and a ton of ram (1.5GB) so this memory usage really doesn't bother me... sure i'd like to see it more lightweight but for the average user with 512-1024mb of ram this shouldn't really present a problem...