I’ve been a long time Firefox fanboy. I was one of the 10,000 people who contributed, and had their name featured in the NY Times back in 2004. I’ve long preached to anyone who would listen that Firefox is a better alternative to Internet Explorer, particularly back in the days prior to IE 7.
Then my love affair with Firefox started to end. Firefox 1.5 (and the earlier versions, I started at 0.7) never skipped a beat, and unlike IE it had tabs, which were a god send to me as it was to many others. Mozilla launched Firefox 2.0, and suddenly my internet experience started to sour. I’m a heavy tab user, so it’s not unusual for me to have 15, 20 and even more tabs open, it’s how I read my feeds in the morning, opening up the stories that interest me for later reading. Firefox had what has been called by others “memory leaks,” which in laymen’s terms meant that it tripped out your memory on a PC, froze up and crashed…and far too regularly. I became a Mac user this year, and the first thing I did when I started up OS X for the first time was to download Firefox, hoping that perhaps it was a PC problem. It wasn’t. Same memory problems, same crashes. Mac fanboys told me that it was my fault for using plugins, so I deleted Firefox and started again without the plugins. Same problems, constant freezing (even with 4gb on a MacPro) and crashes. I switched to Safari for a time, and as much as it was a decent browser, it doesn’t play nice with all sites, in particular with the WYSIWIG backend on Wordpress blogs. Then came Flock 1.0. I’d never been a Flock fan before, always believing it to be nothing more than Firefox with plugins (Flock is based on the Firefox engine). Having watched the demo at TechCrunch 40 I downloaded the beta of Flock 1.0 and surfed away without incident. Some how the folks at Flock had tweaked the underlying Firefox engine to stop the memory issues.
I was hoping that Firefox 3.0 might finally fix the blight that was Firefox 2. Firefox 3 Beta 1 has been released for testing (download here) so I fired up Firefox 3 and Flock with the exact same tabs opened, hoping that perhaps Mozilla had finally heard the protests of its loyal user base. The stats (image right) say it all.
It didn’t crash in my testing, but having said that the test was fairly short. Firefox was never a browser to crash immediately, usually teasing the user with functionality for some time before deciding that enough was enough, then freezing or crashing all together some time later.
Others have more positive reviews of Firefox 3. I can only hope that by the time it gets to full release it’s as stable as Firefox 1.5 was.
Firefox, if anything, has been much needed kick in the butt to EI to make some much needed improvements. I still use it as my main browser but I don’t really see ANY reason that compels me to jump to version 3.0. What I got now works fine, sure it crashes here and again but no more or less then XP
Jon
Jon
fair call, which despite the crashed I never abandoned it when I was a Windows users. Try Flock though, you’ll be surprised, even if you never use the social networking functions.
I’ve switched to Flock. It does a great job of importing all your Firefox presets and you can hide much of the ’social’ stuff. It looks and feels exactly like Firefox except for the inability to close it without doing a Force Quit.
I guess I won’t be upgrading just yet..
I have been using firefox since its v1.0.2 or sth and it has been my favorite browser, it used to crash at the beginning but since 1.5 it works just fine, only when browsing facebook and youtube I use opera, from my experience flash videos load better in opera, and with facebook, redirects and stuff work faster on Opera than Firefox. Everyday i see more of my friends to use firefox than IE, at our university firefox comes preinstalled on all computers and half of people use it, its a great peace of software, and will continue to gain marketshare.
good luck to firefox folks…
think i’ll be sticking with FF 2 for a while — no reason to do it besides curiousity. Can’t afford anymore bugs and playing around with getting it to work. I am seriously thinking of digging out my old FF 1.5 download and reinstalling that one.
As much as I share your views on the decline of quality since FF2 I think you’re jumping the gun on FF3. This is still in beta. Beta is about perfecting functionality not optimization. Wait until they start rolling out release candidates and then we’ll see if they’re on a slippery slope or the road to recovery.
Switch to Opera – the fastest and most stable browser i’ve ever worked with. Install a normal skin for opera of your choice, i think they even have Firefox skin and you’ll be amaised what it can do.
After using Firefox and Opera, i’ve seen that page load times is much much faster in Opera, mostly because i see the page before it loads, rather than wait until 100% of html or compleate image is loaded, i can see 50% of that image and make a fast judgement what’s on page.
Thanks for the tip, Duncan. I’ve been getting annoyed with Firefox for some time but not enough to switch back to IE. I’ll give Flock a shot.
Here’s a good review in comparison by the way
http://willlang...-15-vs-opera-9/
Andrew I agree!
Opera is since years the browser of my choice. Fast and stable!
Only a few sites don’t work with Opera – for example stumbleupon…
You probably have to remember that the alpha or beta they have released now is a debug build, hence much more memory/cpu intensive due to the additional logging to provide bugs feedback.
Speed and heaviness can’t really be judged from a beta/debug release.
about the opera thing, is the speed thing a gimmick? how much more faster can a browser be when we have broadband at 1Mb – 10MB? Is it going to make any difference?
I notice, the real difference between Opera and other browser is the pre-fetch and the way Opera loads a page, Opera loads the content of a page in the cache and then display it with a blink of an eye, whereas other browser display the content as they load… illusion? gimmick?
I’ve heard that Flock is based on Firefox 1.5. That might be the reason why it doesn’t have the same memory issues.
I have used Firefox for years and it never crashes, not even when I have tens of windows simultaneously open. “I’ve long preached … that Firefox is a better alternative”. Sure. Have you been paid by MicroSoft or are you just unable to use computers?
Heheh
Firefox crashes on me but even then, I am staying with it. I’ve tried several others before (Opera, Maxthon, Netcaptor, IE etc etc etc). But I’m not budging from FF for now. Ironically, the only thing keeping me from moving is not FF but its addons like scribefire, Google Notebook and many more, all of which are not available elsewhere. Hey, it’s like saying that Windows is crap and then, not moving elsewhere because wireless drivers are not working on Ubuntu.
Firefox can easily takes 250mb – 500mb of memory of which I have to kill it, restart it and repeat the process throughout the day. Since im a .NET developer, I need all precious memory for vs2005 that I can muster.
@Marek – This isnt a new issue, it has been a nagging issue that seemingly has been getting ignored by the FF team for a long time. Try not to be so cynical because you aren’t experiencing the same problem (which I am willing to bet you are but haven’t noticed it).
I’m another vote for Opera, which I’ve been using for 6-7 years now. It’s a great browser, very fast and very stable and (I think) the first one to use tabs. I’ve had so many tabs open that all I could see was the red “x” box to close them and it went fine — the only time it crashes is if I have a lot of tabs open AND I land on a dodgy site.
Calvin: Opera is faster, it’s not an illusion, it gets tested. However, you’re right — with the kind of broadband speeds people in the US have it doesn’t matter. I’m in a small town in the Australian bush though, so for me it does matter.
In terms of comparing Opera to Firefox I don’t have anything much to say — I prefer Opera but it could be just because I’m more used to it. Likewise, everything people tell me is cool about Firefox Opera has had for a long time. The only thing that seems certain is that both browsers are better than IE.
The only con with Opera is that not all webmasters test for it, so sometimes pages just don’t work. It’s very rare but it does happen, and in those cases I use IE or Firefox (my banking service doesn’t work on Opera, for example). I do hate it when webmasters won’t even let me try with Opera, I just get an “unsupported browser” message when the site doesn’t have anything that would be a problem.
I’ve been using Firefox since the beginning. It’s always been rock solid for me. It crashes so infrequently that I cannot remember the last time it happened, and I routinely leave it up and running for days and days. I see no evidence of a memory leak on my system. I have absolutely no reason to switch and am looking forward to version 3.
Flock rules so far. It is a great social platform as well a good web developer platform. Almost all Firefox exstention are compatible and the user experience is great. Firefox is great too but for the last 3 months I’ve been enjoing multiple crashes so my trus is not on this product.
There are some settings for firefox which allow you to tune the memory usage. Can’t remember them, but a google search should turn them up quickly.
I am hooked on the mouse gestures plug in for Firefox and I can’t think of switching unless some other browser comes up with gestures support.
I’ve been using Firefox for quite a while and i love all its functions. especially plug ins like firebug since i am a website programmer. but , the memory leak is really irritating. i hope they will have that fixed after the release (official) of FF3.
@Marek
>Sure. Have you been paid by MicroSoft or are you just unable to use computers?
Wow. Incredibly lame comment. Even a cursory search on Firefox’s memory issue will yield tons of links supporting Duncan’s claim. (To say nothing of the fact that the alternative he presents is not a MS product.)
I’ve switched to Safari 3.0. It still doesn’t play nice with Wordpress, but it rocks on most sites and I’ve found it uses considerably less memory/CPU than Safari 2.0 – and needless to say Firefox too.
The Flock guys deserve a lot of credit. I’ve recently downloaded Flock 1.0 and was pleasantly blown away. The performance is great, and although it takes some getting used to with all of the feature complexity, once you figure it out, it’ll hook you.
Way to beat up on the first, BETA release of a new version of software like its a finished product, Duncan. You guys are supposed to tech industry experts, right? At least your WYSIWYG editors work…lol.
Flock became my new favorite browser with the latest release. However, it DOES still have a memory leak. Currently, it is consuming 178k mem usage …. yesterday it was up to 468k before I had to kill it in the Task manager. There is a recent post about it in their blog here: http://www.floc...-release-update . It seems to indicate the problem has been fixed in the latest release, but I have the latest and the problem persists. Anyone else see this happening?
D’oh! Just realized that Flock’s “recent post” about the memory leak being fixed is actually a year old. My comment still stands though: great browser, memory leak still there.
I’ve been using Mozilla since i stopped using Netscape. Before Netscape, i used Mosaic. And after Mozilla, i switched to the Firefox, since the earliest versions. Over the years, i tried all the other browsers around, including Opera and the different IE.
I still use Firefox, i don’t plan to change this, and i will most likely upgrade to FF3 when it will be out of beta. But i agree with the general idea developed in this post : FF2 is really too memory-consuming. And i hope FF teams will improve this as soon as possible. If FF wants to keep facing IE7, it is a major issue.
Guys, i have been using the new FF for the past 6 hours or so and i have encountered two MAJOR problems. First, there is NO BACK BUTTON on the browser… So its impossible to move backwards… Is anyone else experiencing this?
Second, when you open a new tab the cursor does not start in the URL bar. SO you then have to move the mouse up to the URL bar to type in a new URL. ITS DRIVING ME CRAZY!!!
In all fairness it does seem to be moving smoothly with the exception of the aforementioned.
Let me know if anyone is having the same issues.
@ David G
yea that problem with tab and enter is annoying. forces you to restart every once in a while…
Memory leaks are a huge issue in Firefox – I hope they do much more work on this before it’s released. It’s no good to blame plugins for this…
seems like they are looking into memory issues, with fragmentation (not leaking) being a key culprit…
http://blog.pav...-fragmentation/
Say it with me now…Opera Opera Opera!
http://www.opera.com
I’ve been using the beta for the last few days, and … well, you’re not giving it a fair shake.
There have been minor issues here and there (quicktime video doesn’t want to stay in one place), but it’s crashed on me exactly zero times. And I generally keep the program on for a number of hours with dozens of tabs, and the experience is far smoother than on Firefox 2 so far. I actually quite like the new beta, and I’ve probably used it a lot ore than you have. It sounds like you’ve used it like 20 minutes and then wrote a review.
All I know is that I’ve been waiting for Firefox to not be slow for some time, and that some time is today.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to Force Quit out of Firefox. I usually have it freeze up on me about 3-4 times per day. This must be the buggiest it’s ever been. I’m quite disappointed and I think I might try out flock.
@ David G:
I do not have those problems, but here’s some tips: First: Use backspace or Alt + Left arrow to move backwards (or right click on the menu area, select “Customize” and add the back button yourself).
Second: Use Ctrl + L or Alt + D to move the cursor to the address bar without having to reach for your mouse.
ouch. haven’t the mozilla guys even HEARD about these memory leaks?
I’m still waiting for the day Opera becomes Open Source… getting nearer every day.
@ #27 Recursed, read the article again. Duncan said he’s been having he same problems since FF v1.5.
I’ve had different versions of IE, FF and Opera on my computers for years now and I’m going to be using Opera more from now on. Especially since I’ve been getting into more flash and video heavy browsing. FF crashes within minutes on sites like Justin.tv and bebo for me but both IE7 and Opera do fine.
I just need something that works.
Nobody else seems to have said it yet, so might as well pitch this one in: Camino.
It’s built for the Mac and miles better on it than its big Mozilla brother Firefox.
Can’t speak with any authority about the memory usage, but however often I think about going back to Safari, I don’t last long before going back to Camino
I can’t say I’m experiencing the same issues with Memory Leaks with Beta 1. Coming from 2.0.0.9 a few weeks ago (I downloaded the Beta before it was announced) the memory usage has much improved.
I work on a webapp, so I constantly have several tabs of that open, as well as Google reader and multiple news stories or other reference materials open.
Using FF all day my memory would slowly creep upwards to 500+ mb with 2.0.0.9, but with 3.0b1, I haven’t gotten my memory over 135mb.
Still a lot of memory to be used, but at least it’s not 500!
Of course this 3.0 beta is a beta, but it’s not fair to castigate people bringing up memory issues due to a lack of optimization in the 3.0beta. The fact is that they’re complaining that the optimization that would be premature for 3.0 never happened with *2.0*. They’re late!
These complaints have been around a long time (and if you’ve never seen FF take up 500M+ and take 10 seconds to switch tabs…), so memory is going to be one of the first things that people check in 3.0. Think about it: it’s such a problem that people are hoping 3.0 includes the nonexistent fixes from 2.0. What a world, eh?
Joe@22: “I am hooked on the mouse gestures plug in for Firefox and I can’t think of switching unless some other browser comes up with gestures support.”
Opera had mouse gestures years before the FF plugin came out.
And how much did you pay for it? And how much did you love IE before? Stop complaining and start contributing.
I’m a new mac user — can I ask what program/widget you were using to list your current processes.
I think the time is ripe for a new tiny light open-source browser to become an internet star. Only requisite is that its websites have the appropriate number of gradients, rounded corners and glass reflections…
I like Flock a lot. Does anybody know of any plugins for the Linux version that allow you to view .pdf, .doc, .xls, .ppt, .odt, etc. files in the browser? I’d be sold on it if so.
I dont care for FF plugins. If AIRoboform starts working with opera, I will immediately switch.
@Sean:
iStatPro – http://islayer.com
Also available as menubar app.
I completely agree. I have switched to flock and my browser just stopped running out of memory.
Steve