Firefox is NOT the holy grail

[SP33Demon]

Originally posted by: jjsole
And I'm sick of there not being a Software forum around here!

Dam right!

 

[BrokenVisage]

Originally posted by: Saint Michael
Gotta love all the people who took 9000 literally. It's an exaggeration used to point out that Firefox is a leaky monster of an app.

'OVER 9000!!' is an Internet meme, most people aren't taking it literally just capitalizing on the ironic misrepresentation by the OP.

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: mrSHEiK124

Originally posted by: frostedflakes

Originally posted by: mrSHEiK124

Originally posted by: mugs
Glad I'm not the only one who has Firefox spontaneously consume 100% of my CPU time. I'm really starting to hate it.

I can't even find a link between all the times it's happened. I used to think it was because of Flash, I've had FF spike to 100% trying to load GMail. No Flash there. Sometimes the only way out is to kill the process.

The default GMail layout is actually fairly processor intensive. It slows down, but doesn't halt things on my 630MHz EEE PC, probably because I've slimmed down Windows with nLite and don't have many background tasks and services running. On my 1.9GHz dual-core desktop, it can peg one of the cores to 100% (although typical load seems to be 20-30% for both cores, though, so 40-60% of a single core).

To me it sounds more like an old computer issue. At the bottom of the page, you can select basic HTML layout for GMail instead of the fancier default layout, I'd suggest trying that out and seeing how it effects speed. Also, I'd recommend downloading Flashblock to get rid of useless flash content. By default it will block all flash content, but will leave a placeholder where the flash content would be, and by clicking on the placeholder, you can allow the flash to be displayed. It also lets you whitelist sites you don't want it to block (for example if you visit YouTube a lot, or flash gaming sites, you'd probably want to whitelist those). It's a fantastic little plugin, I use it on my EEE and it works great.

Dothan 1.73 GHz = old, but I sure hope you're not suggested it's too slow for the INTERNETS. Come on now. I'm not complaining about Crysis...

Web 2.0 involves a lot more than simply rendering HTML. I don't think it's the raw speed that hurts you, but not having an extra core. This means if you're rendering a flash app or JavaScript heavy page, if the CPU pegs and you have anything else running that wants those CPU cycles as well, you're going to notice lag.

If you don't think something as simple as the web can bring even a decent computer to it's knees, go load up a MySpace page filled with animated GIFs, flash apps, etc.

But as I mentioned before, give Opera a shot and see how it does. IIRC it's supposed to handle Javascript more efficiently than FF2, so that may make things smoother for you. It's pretty common knowledge that Opera is faster than Firefox. Unfortunately, it falls behind in some other areas (for example, some pages don't render properly). I don't think this is very common, though, so I wouldn't call it a huge issue.

 

[hanoverphist]

Originally posted by: irishScott
I think your rigs has problems beyond FF with those numbers.

Been using it for years, never had any usage remotely that large even with 30 some odd tabs open.

i would agree. i have an old pentium M 1.6gz with 1gb ram and i dont have those problems at all. well, i do when i leave a few tabs open and then play wow or any othehr larger game for a while. when i close the game, FF takes forever to recover itself. ive noticed its only an issue if i have FF open before i start the games, if i close FF and then open a game i can alt+tab and open FF without any issues. and this is a 3 yr old abused system. take a look at other things on your system before outing one browser, good or bad.

 

[skace]

Just to be clear, I leave firefox V2 running for at least a month at a time. Around 100mb used and 0% cpu. The difference is that I don't install shitty plugins.

 

[paulxcook]

Maybe I just don't have the bazillion plugins that you do, but I dont have the problems with FF 2 that you do. I would use 3 since it's so fast, but there are a few plugins that aren't compatible yet.

 

[Baked]

Funny how I never have those problems you mentioned. Maybe you just suck at PC. Buy a Mac?

 

[James Bond]

FF3b5 FTW

 

[jaqie]

I have used FF2 and FF3 - even just a week ago - and compared to Opera 9.27 they use much more RAM for the same browsing, and have a much more sluggish "feel" to them, although FF3 is not as bad as 2. As for plugins, all I ever run in firefox is adblock plus.
The reason I even use FF is that some sites just don't work well with opera. For example, google maps, and google streets... those run abhorridly slow on opera, but firefox runs them nice and slick.
This is on an athlon x2 3800+ (dual 2Ghz), 1GB PC3200 dual channel, XP 32 bit SP2 system with a geforce 7900GS video card.

 

[George P Burdell]

Try this:
http://portableapps.com/apps/i.../firefox_portable/test

No need to install, just unzip and use.

Firefox 3 still uses a large amount of RAM (mainly due to the nature of XUL), but they've plugged a lot of memory leaks. Compared to FF2, it uses less memory and runs like a roadrunner. The embedded SQlite database opens up many new features.

 

[Eeezee]

9000 MB of RAM? I've never seen it go beyond 500MB, and I run a bunch of Ad plugins.

How are you getting Firefox to go beyond a gig of RAM?

 

[drinkmorejava]

Make sure to go with Opera 9.5b2. Absolutely love it.

 

[Steve]

Originally posted by: Eeezee
9000 MB of RAM? I've never seen it go beyond 500MB, and I run a bunch of Ad plugins.

How are you getting Firefox to go beyond a gig of RAM?

How are you posting this late in the thread without reading it?

 

[Quiksilver]

Sounds like someone just needed to tweak about:config a bit so it wouldn't use nearly as much memory (especially on minimize). I've been using FF 3 beta 5 since its release, the only real complaint is flash isn't always detected as installed on some sites, so flash won't show up but other flash sites work flawlessly. I've only made a few about:config adjustments and installed adblockplus.

 

[mooseracing]

Originally posted by: jaqie

Originally posted by: mrSHEiK124
I'm going to try Opera.

Welcome to reality

I've been using it for 9 yrs now. I have only one complaint and that its a memory hog when you have about 20 tabs open, which is all the time for me. Of course I never have tried it anything else so it may be worse or better.

Opera = King


edit: just counted 22 tabs, and 130Mb memory on XP...on Vista I have 18 tabs open and 230Mb of ram burned. And IE is burnign up 108Mb and only 2 tabs.

 

[alkemyst]

Originally posted by: MaxDepth
Have you tried FireFox 3 Beta Five (or Beta 3)?

There is a huge world of differences between two and three. I was about to give up on it myself.

FF3 is great if you can deal with lack of addins right now.

I really like it.

IE7 is almost unusable at times as it prevents alt-tabbing too often.

 

[alkemyst]

Originally posted by: Zaitsev
Firefox 3b really is fast, and has some great features. I'm just waiting for better addon support.

edit: Surely he meant 900 mb.

don't underestimate the size of pr0n!

 

[Check]

my computer is currently running at 0-4%
I've never had my computer run at 100% (or 50% since I have a dual core) because of firefox...

to the OP
what kind of computer are you using?

 

[alkemyst]

Originally posted by: check
my computer is currently running at 0-4%
I've never had my computer run at 100% (or 50% since I have a dual core) because of firefox...

to the OP
what kind of computer are you using?

www.hop.com worked for me

I've got a 1.73 GHz Dothan and 2 GB of RAM

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: mrSHEiK124
IE is swiss cheese into my Windows kernel; I'm not about to start using it and open my computer up to being compromised.

"Swiss cheese into your Windows kernel?" Where did you hear this one?

 

[Check]

Originally posted by: alkemyst

Originally posted by: check
my computer is currently running at 0-4%
I've never had my computer run at 100% (or 50% since I have a dual core) because of firefox...

to the OP
what kind of computer are you using?

www.hop.com worked for me

I've got a 1.73 GHz Dothan and 2 GB of RAM

The processor doesn't tell me what kind of computer he has.
If it's a Dothan then he most likely has a laptop, and I'm asking what kind. The reason I'm asking is because some IBMs have a glitch with the battery management software they use which causes the CPU to randomly jump to 100%

but you know you could just be a dick about it... that's really helpful afterall

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Originally posted by: check

Originally posted by: alkemyst

Originally posted by: check
my computer is currently running at 0-4%
I've never had my computer run at 100% (or 50% since I have a dual core) because of firefox...

to the OP
what kind of computer are you using?

www.hop.com worked for me

I've got a 1.73 GHz Dothan and 2 GB of RAM

The processor doesn't tell me what kind of computer he has.
If it's a Dothan then he most likely has a laptop, and I'm asking what kind. The reason I'm asking is because some IBMs have a glitch with the battery management software they use which causes the CPU to randomly jump to 100%

but you know you could just be a dick about it... that's really helpful afterall

Dell Inspiron 9300. Too big to worry about battery management software, it's always plugged in.

Originally posted by: mechBgon

Originally posted by: mrSHEiK124
IE is swiss cheese into my Windows kernel; I'm not about to start using it and open my computer up to being compromised.

"Swiss cheese into your Windows kernel?" Where did you hear this one?

lol, I made it up

 

[Steve]

Originally posted by: check

but you know you could just be a dick about it... that's really helpful afterall

That's just alkemyst for ya.

 

[jjones]

Good move. We need to get everyone back on IE6.

 

[Canterwood]

Originally posted by: PricklyPete

Originally posted by: clamum
I left Firefox for Opera a few years ago and haven't been back to it. I :heart: Opera.

I left Firefox for Internet Explorer a few years ago and haven't been back to it. I :heart: Internet Explorer.

Don't worry. This is just an automated reply from a compromised zombie box. :laugh: