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#275946 - 12/02/2006 16:52 What to do? Firefox sucks and...
hybrid8
carpal tunnel

Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
I'm on the slow, but innevitable, countdown to sending Firefox packing (Mac OS X). Every release makes it into more of a pig (more bloat, slower performance, more crashing). Prior to the 1.5.01 update it was taking up more memory than Photoshop on my system (over 1GB of real + virtual mem with only 2 or 3 tabs open, meanwhile Photoshop had a 1000x700 file with 20-30 layers).

Camino unfortunately had some shortcomings the last time I tried it out. And after posting on its message forum concurring with another poster who had mentioned a lacking feature, one of the developers chimed in and was so negative I'm reluctant to even try the program again. His second or third post went so far as to say he'd go out of his way to petition that the feature/fix never be implemented. The feature in question is the ability to set the browser to ask where to save a file any time you perform a download - like in Firefox and what IE has done for 10 years.

Then there's Safari... I love Apple Mail, and if Safari were as good for the web as Mail is for mail.... but I it isn't and it's just not right for me. Maybe with the Leopard (10.5) upgrade...

Bruno
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Bruno
Twisted Melon : Fine Mac OS Software

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#275947 - 12/02/2006 17:17 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: hybrid8]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
I've noticed the same thing with Firefox under Solaris.

My only suggestions are trying the full Mozilla Suite's browser and Opera. I have no idea if Mozilla has the same memory hog problem or not, and I personally really dislike Opera's UI. But those are the only ones I know of.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk

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#275948 - 12/02/2006 17:21 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: wfaulk]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Quote:
the full Mozilla Suite


That would be known as SeaMonkey these days. I'm running v1.0, which is only slightly buggy. The development versions seem to have advanced quite a bit since this version, but few plugins/extensions/themes work with those yet.

Cheers

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#275949 - 14/02/2006 01:55 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: wfaulk]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
Apparently, many of these Firefox leaks have been fixed in the latest trunk builds. See this blog. I'll just sit it out until the next major point release comes out, but it certainly looks like the developers are on top of the issue.

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#275950 - 14/02/2006 02:11 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: DWallach]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
I'd believe that more if it hadn't been getting consistently worse over the course of the last five or so releases, if not longer. Leaks were listed as the fourth bullet point on the 1.5.0.1 release notes, right below "International Domain Name support for Iceland (.is) is now enabled." No offense meant to the four people who were clamoring for the Icelandic support, but memory leaks that cause me to have to restart the browser multiple times a day seems a little more important. Also, the leading quote of "I don't know how often these leaks were severe enough to cause noticeable slowdowns or thrashing, but enough Firefox users seem to care about memory leaks..." doesn't inspire confidence in their concern. They seem to think that this is a theoretical problem.
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Bitt Faulk

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#275951 - 14/02/2006 02:25 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: wfaulk]
hybrid8
carpal tunnel

Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
I generally don't have much faith in community-driven open-source type projects. Another big PITA one (on Mac OS) is Adium. Wow, what a buggy piece of crap. i still use it unfortunately, because there's nothing better. But seriously, how hard is it to make a UI wrapper for GAIM? Like Firefox, every "final" release is a beta at best. I hate seeing software releases with numbers less than 1.0 (Adium and Camino perfect examples).

In any case, I took a closer look at Camino and might be able to run it after all. There are a number of programs written to modify and add to its features. The same goes for Safari - though my biggest problem with that one is that I can't change the behavior of horizontal scroll like I can with Mozilla-based stuff. I use an MS notebook mouse with one of the tilt wheels - I set up Firefox to go back and forward pages by using the wheel left and right. Very simple to use and much quicker than trying to use the tiny thumb button on the side of the mouse. I wish MS would just add that to the configuration options in their control panel. Horizontal scrolling is of marginal interest to most people at best. It's usually slow even when you want to use it.

Bruno
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Bruno
Twisted Melon : Fine Mac OS Software

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#275952 - 14/02/2006 03:37 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: hybrid8]
mcomb
pooh-bah

Registered: 31/08/1999
Posts: 1649
Loc: San Carlos, CA
Have you ever tried Omniweb? It is a bit slow, and has it's own share of bugs, but it also has a lot of advanced features that can come in handy. It has been my preferred browser for most uses on OS X for years.

-Mike
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EmpMenuX - ext3 filesystem - Empeg iTunes integration

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#275953 - 14/02/2006 04:02 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: hybrid8]
webroach
old hand

Registered: 23/07/2003
Posts: 869
Loc: Colorado
You know, I just have to say: either I have the best luck in the world with software or you guys all have the worst.

I use both Adium and Firefox constantly, and I have no problems whatsoever. Never have. Neither have any of my friends who use them. I think it's kind of harsh to call either of them a "buggy piece of crap"; my empeg crashes more often that either of them. If Adium changed it's version number to "3.0.13" would that be better?

</snarky>
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Dave

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#275954 - 14/02/2006 04:08 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: mcomb]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
Yeah. Omniweb is great.
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Bitt Faulk

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#275955 - 14/02/2006 06:33 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: webroach]
boxer
pooh-bah

Registered: 16/04/2002
Posts: 2011
Loc: Yorkshire UK
Quote:
You know, I just have to say: either I have the best luck in the world with software or you guys all have the worst

Exactly where I am, I've been cheerfully using Firefox with no problems: Now I'll be looking for fault!
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Politics and Ideology: Not my bag

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#275956 - 14/02/2006 07:20 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: boxer]
tman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
Quote:
Quote:
You know, I just have to say: either I have the best luck in the world with software or you guys all have the worst

Exactly where I am, I've been cheerfully using Firefox with no problems: Now I'll be looking for fault!

I do have trouble with Firefox sucking up huge amounts of memory every so often but apart from that, it's been great. No problems at all with Adium.

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#275957 - 14/02/2006 07:33 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: hybrid8]
julf
veteran

Registered: 01/10/2001
Posts: 1307
Loc: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Quote:
I generally don't have much faith in community-driven open-source type projects.

Quote:
i still use it unfortunately, because there's nothing better.


Ah. Yes. Quite.

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#275958 - 14/02/2006 08:24 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: hybrid8]
peter
carpal tunnel

Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4172
Loc: Cambridge, England
Quote:
I generally don't have much faith in community-driven open-source type projects.

I was all ready to switch to Firefox from Galeon when Firefox hit 1.5, but I was put off by the bonkers new licence. So I download firefox.tar.gz, configure and make and install, it makes a binary called "/usr/bin/firefox" and sticks all its libraries in "/usr/lib/firefox", but then I'm not allowed to have it say "Firefox" in the title bar unless I've got a signed, on-paper agreement with the developers? WTF?

Imagine if the coreutils developers were like that: "Sorry, 'ls' is a trademark of Coreutils, Inc., and you should refer to that program as Bonkery-Bonkeroid unless you have a signed trademark agreement in place"...

Peter

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#275959 - 14/02/2006 08:44 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: peter]
tman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
I thought you were allowed to say it was Firefox but you weren't allowed to use the logo? All of the third party tweaked versions I've tried have been called Firefox but had other logos.

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#275960 - 14/02/2006 09:19 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: tman]
peter
carpal tunnel

Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4172
Loc: Cambridge, England
Quote:
I thought you were allowed to say it was Firefox but you weren't allowed to use the logo? All of the third party tweaked versions I've tried have been called Firefox but had other logos.

The Unix one at least says "Deer Park" everywhere unless you --enable-official-branding.

Peter

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#275961 - 14/02/2006 11:15 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: webroach]
Tim
veteran

Registered: 25/04/2000
Posts: 1522
Loc: Arizona
I'm not sure how it is on the Mac, but up until two releases ago, it wasn't uncommon for Firefox to be chewing up over 1.5g of memory on my machine. If I had more than two tabs open, it was the biggest memory hog of anything running (including games). It has gotten better, but to claim that it never had problems is really using rose colored glasses.

- Tim

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#275962 - 14/02/2006 11:39 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: boxer]
g_attrill
old hand

Registered: 14/04/2002
Posts: 1172
Loc: Hants, UK
Quote:
Quote:
You know, I just have to say: either I have the best luck in the world with software or you guys all have the worst

Exactly where I am, I've been cheerfully using Firefox with no problems: Now I'll be looking for fault!


I had serious memory leaks with earlier versions, but since 1.0 it has been pretty good and no crashes recently that I can think of.

I have written a few Greasemonkey scripts too, it is an excellent extension. One script I wrote at work changes the AdWords billing page to open and print the invoices automatically instead of having to open each one individually, open the print page and then print it. Given that we had to print three months of invoices across several accounts it saved a massive amount of time, or at least a massive amount of tedious clicking. I can't find a way to get the print dialogue box to print automatically though, I think this would need a change in the source though, which is currently beyond me.

Gareth

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#275963 - 14/02/2006 12:19 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: webroach]
JeffS
carpal tunnel

Registered: 14/01/2002
Posts: 2858
Loc: Atlanta, GA
Quote:
You know, I just have to say: either I have the best luck in the world with software or you guys all have the worst.
Same here, no problems with FireFox at all.
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-Jeff
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.

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#275964 - 14/02/2006 13:30 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: webroach]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
Quote:
You know, I just have to say: either I have the best luck in the world with software or you guys all have the worst.


I concur. Adium is absolutely flawless for me. and I use the hell out of it for Jabber, AIM, ICQ, and MSN. I may have had one Adium crash in the entire time I've been using it. I even remember thinking to myself that the 0.xx versioning was a bit modest, and they should call the current releases 1.x. They're certainly more release quality than many of AOL's official clients have been.

As for Firefox, yes, I've had crashes, and yes, they're annoying when they happen. But I used to get as many or more browser crashes with IE on Windows, with Netscape on Solaris, with Safari on my Mac, and every single other browser I've ever used, with the possible exception of lynx and eLinks.

The 1.5 releases of Firefox are indeed a step backwards in stability, but in time, the bugs will get ironed out, as they will for Adium, assuming it actually does crash a lot (which I can't vouch for.) It might not come on the timetable that some would like, but it's better than having two legitimate commercial choices, both of which suck (as the browser situation was before Firefox.)
_________________________
- Tony C
my empeg stuff

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#275965 - 14/02/2006 13:40 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: tonyc]
andy
carpal tunnel

Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5914
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
I'm another one that has found 1.5 more stable than 1.0, I would often get cases where Firefox and Thunderbird would hang at the same time with 1.0, which doesn't happen with the latest version.

The only outstanding problem that I have with Firefox is that after a specific instance of it has been running a couple of days it will suddenly decide that its window is much wider than it actually is, resulting in some of the right hand side of pages (and the address bar) being clipped. Closing and reopening fixes this.

While it appears to use more memory than IE, it is by no means a memory hog. Even when I have had an instance running for a few days, if I close all the tabs it is only using about 120MB.

This is on Windows, when I have used Firefox on the Mac it didn't seem to be quite as stable.
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Remind me to change my signature to something more interesting someday

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#275966 - 14/02/2006 14:30 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: andy]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
I use GMail, which appears to be a big source of the memory expansion of Firefox (presently using 273MB after perhaps a day or two of running, and typically expanding to 500+MB after a few more days, when I'll typically kill and restart it). This works for me, but if it didn't, I'd be downloading one of these "burning edge" daily builds to see if it got any better.

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#275967 - 14/02/2006 14:46 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: tonyc]
hybrid8
carpal tunnel

Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
Wow, I find Adium to be troublesome and I haven't had even 20% of the trouble a friend has. We both installed it at the same time though I use it more often. Adium is in my Mac OS X login items list, so it's always active. I haven't had a crash with the current version .89, phew. I normally update to all new versions a day or two after they're released.

I have accounts for ICQ, MSN, AIM, YAHOO, Bonjour and .Mac and I have a few people defined as meta contacts which is a single contact with multiple accounts. In addition, all communication between my friend and I use encryption, regardless of protocol.

Aside from crashing which I've seen too much of for my tastes, I'm more likely to run into other bugs that just get on one's nerves.

Numbr one for a long time (and it's still not 100%) is the ability to connect or reconnect to servers after being disconnected for one reason or other. Including, sleep/wake the system, disconnect the network connection, etc. Then we have.... Constantly asking for my password for one connection or other (mostly the .Mac) showing it's not using the keychain properly. It always tries to send unencrypted text when I first contact said friend, even though I have the prefs set to ALWAYS use encyption. It selects a different account/protocol to send the message to even though I have clearly selected the one I want in the chat window on initial message. Trying to delete an empty contact group always says it won't delete it because it's not empty - but it seems to be gone after doing it anyway. Poor polish like not automatically closing the initial message Growl pop-up after having selected the chat window. Can't drag groups around in anything but the regular window style (can't really do anything with groups unless you revert to this style first actually), can't drag any group up above the first (even though it shows the insertion mark it won't do anything when you release the mouse button). I still don't think I've managed to get fiule transfer working on any protocol with any contact - outgoing or incoming (though we can probably blame GAIM for this rather than the Adium UI).

The crashes I've had have also mostly been while not actively using the program. I'll just be using Firefox or Word or whatever, and Adium will just blow up in the background. Now it's done it fairly gracefully every time, popping up a crash report window, etc.. Not like Firefox which has managed to take down the entire system multiple times (likely because of the memory leaks).

IMO, the Firefox team isn't really doing anything to innovate and since even before 1.0 had become complacent. I'm sticking with it for now, but in all honesty it's just because I don't have the time to properly investigate or configure the other solutions right now. On top of which is my fear that Safari (even if I do make it look/feel/work like I want it to) won't be supported by as many web sites.

You know who's programs have never crashed on me under Mac OS? Microsoft's. Strange but true.

Bruno
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Bruno
Twisted Melon : Fine Mac OS Software

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#275968 - 14/02/2006 16:05 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: andy]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
In Solaris, this instance that I've had running for less than 24 hours, currently at seven tabs, maybe as many as a dozen tabs open at once at sometime during the run, currently at 233MB (219MB RSS). If I close all the tabs but this one, it doesn't shrink at all, in either of those statistics. It takes up more memory and more CPU, and is slower than OpenOffice.org.
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Bitt Faulk

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#275969 - 14/02/2006 18:25 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: wfaulk]
cushman
veteran

Registered: 21/01/2002
Posts: 1380
Loc: Erie, CO
Memory usage problems explained in this post.
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Mark Cushman

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#275970 - 14/02/2006 18:37 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: cushman]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
Hmm. Fair enough. Elsewhere I posited that it might also bee poor memory management. I've just set browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to zero. We'll see if that has an effect on my poor performance.
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Bitt Faulk

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#275971 - 14/02/2006 19:32 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: wfaulk]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
Okay, for the last hour, that setting has made a *huge* improvement in my browsing. This page describing the option states that it's been there since 1.5b2, which explains why my browsing went to shit after upgrading to 1.5. They obviously need a better algorithm than the one they're currently using.
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Bitt Faulk

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#275972 - 14/02/2006 19:50 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: wfaulk]
hybrid8
carpal tunnel

Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
It just explains that Firefox programmers are damn inneficient and don't really think through the crap they're putting onto peoples' systems.

It's caching baby! These are probbably the same guys who "cache" a few hundred used coffee cups and other litter in their cars.

Bruno
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Bruno
Twisted Melon : Fine Mac OS Software

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#275973 - 15/02/2006 01:24 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: Tim]
webroach
old hand

Registered: 23/07/2003
Posts: 869
Loc: Colorado
Quote:
I'm not sure how it is on the Mac <SNIP> It has gotten better, but to claim that it never had problems is really using rose colored glasses.


No, it really isn't. It's simply an accurate summary of the problems I've had with Firefox, which is none. It's just always worked for me.

Oddly enugh, I've had the same experience as Bruno with Microsoft apps on the Mac; with the exception of Equation Editor (yeah, I know, not technically a Microsoft app, but included in Word) forgetting where it put one of its fonts, I've had ZERO problems with MS stuff.
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Dave

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#275974 - 15/02/2006 02:59 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: julf]
FireFox31
pooh-bah

Registered: 19/09/2002
Posts: 2494
Loc: East Coast, USA
Quote:
Quote:
I generally don't have much faith in community-driven open-source type projects.

Quote:
i still use it unfortunately, because there's nothing better.

Ah. Yes. Quite.

Bravo. Haha, made my night.
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FireFox31
110gig MKIIa (30+80), Eutronix lights, 32 meg stacked RAM, Filener orange gel lens, Greenlights Lit Buttons green set

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#275975 - 15/02/2006 05:42 Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and... [Re: JeffS]
bonzi
pooh-bah

Registered: 13/09/1999
Posts: 2401
Loc: Croatia
Quote:
Quote:
You know, I just have to say: either I have the best luck in the world with software or you guys all have the worst.
Same here, no problems with FireFox at all.

AOL

Admittedly, I switched only recently (to 1.5, on WinXP), but it doesn't strike me as a memory hog (and I do look for sources of swap trashing quite often - WinAmp usually being the main offender). I use tabs extensively, and have perhaps a dozen extensions installed.
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Dragi "Bonzi" Raos Q#5196 MkII #080000376, 18GB green MkIIa #040103247, 60GB blue

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