#275946 - 12/02/2006 16:52
What to do? Firefox sucks and...
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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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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#275947 - 12/02/2006 17:17
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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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]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14496
Loc: Canada
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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]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
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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]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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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]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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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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#275952 - 14/02/2006 03:37
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: hybrid8]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 31/08/1999
Posts: 1649
Loc: San Carlos, CA
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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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#275953 - 14/02/2006 04:02
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: hybrid8]
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old hand
Registered: 23/07/2003
Posts: 869
Loc: Colorado
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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]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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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]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 16/04/2002
Posts: 2011
Loc: Yorkshire UK
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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!
_________________________
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]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
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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]
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veteran
Registered: 01/10/2001
Posts: 1307
Loc: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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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]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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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]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
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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]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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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]
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veteran
Registered: 25/04/2000
Posts: 1529
Loc: Arizona
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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]
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old hand
Registered: 14/04/2002
Posts: 1172
Loc: Hants, UK
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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]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 14/01/2002
Posts: 2858
Loc: Atlanta, GA
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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.
_________________________
-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]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
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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.)
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#275965 - 14/02/2006 13:40
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: tonyc]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
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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.
_________________________
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]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
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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]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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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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#275968 - 14/02/2006 16:05
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: andy]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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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]
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veteran
Registered: 21/01/2002
Posts: 1380
Loc: Erie, CO
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Memory usage problems explained in this post.
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#275970 - 14/02/2006 18:37
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: cushman]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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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]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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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]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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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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#275973 - 15/02/2006 01:24
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: Tim]
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old hand
Registered: 23/07/2003
Posts: 869
Loc: Colorado
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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]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 19/09/2002
Posts: 2494
Loc: East Coast, USA
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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.
_________________________
- 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]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 13/09/1999
Posts: 2401
Loc: Croatia
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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.
_________________________
Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Q#5196
MkII #080000376, 18GB green
MkIIa #040103247, 60GB blue
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#275976 - 15/02/2006 05:51
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: bonzi]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Yeah. It seems to be fine under Windows, but much less so anywhere else. It kind of irritates me that the largely Unix-based Netscape development has transitioned to be not only Windows-based, but to the point that Unix is almost an afterthought. Even the installation is lousy.
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Bitt Faulk
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#275977 - 15/02/2006 11:40
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 19/01/2002
Posts: 3584
Loc: Columbus, OH
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They'd be complete retards not to focus on windows, since the vast majortiy of their installations are on windows now. Not that I don't think it'd be great for them to keep the quality level on other platforms as high, but I can't blame them for what they're doing.
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~ John
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#275978 - 15/02/2006 12:19
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: wfaulk]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 25/08/2000
Posts: 2413
Loc: NH USA
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Bitt,
How excatly do you change this value? I don't see anything under tools\options, and I don't see an .ini file in the install directory. What's the magic word to find this setting?
-Zeke
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WWFSMD?
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#275979 - 15/02/2006 12:32
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: Ezekiel]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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If it's like pretty much every other option, you can type "about:config" into the address bar. You'll be presented with a huge list of settings. Huge.
Bruno
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#275981 - 15/02/2006 13:01
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: hybrid8]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 25/08/2000
Posts: 2413
Loc: NH USA
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Thanks. I've never done that. I don't usually fiddle with options much.
-Zeke
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WWFSMD?
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#275982 - 15/02/2006 13:23
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
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Quote:
It just explains that Firefox programmers are damn inneficient and don't really think through the crap they're putting onto peoples' systems.
Nope. It really just means that an experimental feature thrown into a beta release of a free, open source product ends up not working as efficiently as you might like. Boo hoo. Turn it off, go back to Firefox 1.0 (still getting security updates!) or submit a patch.
Quote:
I don't mind "free" but I'd much rather have something I truly like/enjoy using and pay for it.
By the very fact that you're continuing to use Firefox and Adium, I'd say the free alternatives seem to be winning out... You're framing this comparison between free and commercial software as if the free versions are generally inferior to the commercial versions, and I don't think that statement is accurate. Furthermore, without the forces of free software development pushing on commercial developers to innovate (or be replaced by free alternatives) you'd have little or no innovation at all from the commercial vendors.
You've tap-danced around the issue with the (paraphrasing) "I don't have time to investigate the alternatives right now, so I guess I'll use Firefox, even though it sucks" business, but the truth is that there aren't many horses in the browser race on OS X, Firefox is the best one, and when you get right down to it, it doesn't "suck." You're just getting beta-quality versions that purport to be release quality, but you get that from the likes of Microsoft and Apple, too. (I defy someone to tell me Safari 1.0 was a release-quality browser.) The difference with Firefox is you get to see the new features earlier, submit bug fixes and/or patches, and contribute to the process of making it better.
Or, in your case, bitch about the fact that it's not as good as you want it to be.
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#275983 - 15/02/2006 13:58
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: tonyc]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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Because two or three things suck - at different levels - doesn't mean they all don't suck. It just means they differ in degrees of suckiness.
Firefox is headed for a dirt-nap. It's getting worse, not better. 1.5 wasn't a beta release. If they want the air (or rather respect) of legitimacy then they'd better buck up.
I don't use Gimp. I bought Photoshop. Though I hear Gimp is pretty good. I don't use Thunderbird (I can't stand it), I use Apple Mail which I bought (with the OS). I'm willing to pay $1000 for a copy of "TextPad" on Mac OS X. I use Tri-Backup instead of free backup solutions, a commercial password manager, etc.. The list goes on for a long time.
Free can be both a fantastic "deal" as well as very high quality. I didn't mean to imply that commercial = better quality than free (look at Symmantec, it's all commercial and it's all VB garbage). Not all projects are created equal nor are they managed equally. I don't like the way Firefox has been going and Adium has also not been stellar. Fire is also free but has its own problems. There just isn't choice in the IM landscape. Not much incentive for someone to make a commercial IM client for the Mac with iChat and Adium commanding such an install base. Sometimes there just aren't commercial alternatives better or worse.
On the browser front, the selection for Mac OS X is more than enough. But truly, I don't have the time (right now) to spend configuring and changing all the options plus searching for patches to solve all the little nit picks. This is something I've done with Firefox over the course of a year - it was not in its current installed state right out of the box. I blew 2 or 3 days in 2004 researching mail programs and at least half that time was spent in total frustration with Thunderbird. So much frustration that I decided to use Microsoft Remote Client to access my PC for mail. Until Tiger came out and Apple Mail was finally worth a damn.
By the way, where does the opinion, that because something is free it can't/shouldn't be criticized, come from? If you put something out there and make fanfare, you take a risk, regardless of price. Just like I took a risk posting the original message. It was free, so if you didn't agree, you could have moved on to the next thread. 
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#275984 - 15/02/2006 15:02
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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Regarding Adium, I have seen some issues with it from time to time, but they tend to get fixed quickly. A good recent example was the wake from sleep crash I got 50% of the time in 0.86. I find the developers are pretty responsive to both feedback requests and bug reports for the most part. I had an odd issue when I was moving my system to work and back home with multimonitors. I typed up a description of the issue, and sometime in 0.8x the program did a better check to see if the contact list was visible. If it wasn't, it knocked it to a screen where it would be, solving my need to relaunch the program when moving.
Compare that to Proteus, my first IM program on the Mac. I went to the effort to make a XML translator to move my Trillian list over to Proteus, keeping my meta contacts and such. I used Proteus from version 2 to 4, and watched the development go from bug fixes to bug adding. They seemed to want to add some very advanced features, and would do so in release versions without much testing at all. Going from version 2 to 3, I was forced to manually readd all my ICQ contacts, because it finally went to server side contact support. No thought was put into migrating this automatically like Trillian did. Version 4 has stagnated as well with a promise of a 4.5 or something off on the horizon by the new developers for nearly a year now. All this in a paid product.
I'll admit, Adium is not perfect. And they have turned down some of my suggestions forcing me to use two IM applications at work (One for MSN/ICQ/AIM, one for Jabber chat rooms), but overall it is a lot better then the alternatives. I had considered GAIM via x11 once, but stopped looking at it when I realized GAIM lacks basic things like metacontacts.
Regarding Firefox, I only run it from time to time on Windows. I still find that even with 1.5, it's not an OS X application and stands out like a sore thumb. I wish Cameo was more an effort to make an OS X Firefox, complete with extensions support. But instead, it's just a OS X port of the Mozilla render.
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#275985 - 16/02/2006 01:23
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: julf]
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addict
Registered: 25/06/2002
Posts: 456
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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.
Democracy is the worst form of government
...except for all the others.
For some reason, that famous quote popped into my head when reading Julf's post.
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#275986 - 16/02/2006 02:23
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
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Quote:
Because two or three things suck - at different levels - doesn't mean they all don't suck. It just means they differ in degrees of suckiness.
I guess I'm just questioning your suckarithmic scale, especially when neither you nor anyone else can locate a product in the same category that is better. It is indeed possible for all products in a given category to suck, but only in relation to your own ideal of what a browser should be. Plus, your gripes seem mostly related to the downhill trajectory of Firefox's quality and stability from 1.0x to 1.5, which begs the question why not just run 1.0x until the 1.5 baseline gets cleaned up.
Quote:
On the browser front, the selection for Mac OS X is more than enough.
Do you *really* think there's a browser out there that's better? Wouldn't we avid Mac users have found out about this Holy Grail of web browsing already? Firefox's competition on the Mac is pretty much Safari, OmniWeb, and Opera. IE for the Mac is a joke, and the myrad also-ran browsers are what you'd expect from also-ran browsers. As for not having time to configure a browser, if it takes longer to configure a browser than it did for you and I to write these posts, I'd say that eliminates the browser right away as a legitimate option.
Quote:
By the way, where does the opinion, that because something is free it can't/shouldn't be criticized, come from?
Not what I'm saying at all. It just seems like there are a lot of software prooducts that suck more than Firefox, and just by virtue of being the best browser available forjust about every platform it runs on, it shouldn't be one's first target for declarations of suckitude.
But hey, you're right, posts here are free... Many not even worth the paper they're written on.
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#275987 - 16/02/2006 02:39
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: hybrid8]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 19/09/2002
Posts: 2494
Loc: East Coast, USA
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Quote:
It's getting worse, not better. 1.5 wasn't a beta release. If they want the air (or rather respect) of legitimacy then they'd better buck up.
I wonder if the target audience knows or cares that FireFox has memory leaks and other deficiencies. Target audience being all the IE users. The people who like FireFox because of the cute mascot or because their local computer guru or IT support person told them it's better.
And said computer guy made said recommendation because they know:
A memory leak sure beats a twenty times worse spyware infestation.
Quote:
no domain managed to infect the Firefox-equipped PC in a drive-by download attack.
(obligatory manager-style out-of-context quote to sway opinion)
_________________________
- FireFox31 110gig MKIIa (30+80), Eutronix lights, 32 meg stacked RAM, Filener orange gel lens, Greenlights Lit Buttons green set
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#275988 - 16/02/2006 03:16
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: tonyc]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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I'm not just talking about simple config stuff like setting a couple of preferences. I'm talking about stuff like importing bookmarks (ok, that one can be quick), figuring out how to support quick-searching for services other than Google, trying to get something that will give the functionality of some plugins I've come to use, etc.. Lots of patching to get everything. Firefox needed changes and extensions, so do the others.
I don't go back to Firefox 1.0 because I haven't run that in ages. I had been running a nightly for the longest time and it offered a bunch of features of 1.5 (like enw prefs) that I could not give up by going to 1.0. Plus none of the current extensions I'm using will work with 1.0 - I'd have to go find versions appropriate for whatever version I went back to. I'd gain some speed and stability but I'd lose in other areas.
Other browsers may be worse in terms of site support and/or feature availability (and features can be a matter of personal preference). For the Mac there's also Navigator, Mozilla, Camino, iCab and a bunch of other small ones. Together with your list that's more than I can name for Windows. Not sure how many of these are still supported, but, including IE, they all still work (to some degree).
I mentioned that I started looking at Safari and Camino again. I found it was taking me too much time to get through all the patching and looking through all the plugins and hacks. too much thinking that I needed to dedicate to work.  Writing a message like this doesn't take very long and isn't anywhere near as tedious.
Anyway, Safari with some patching has a better looking GUI than Firefox, as does Camino. Firefox has the neat search bar that appears on the bottom of the screen, but you can install real-time type-and-search plugins for the other two. Safari has history in its search, Firefox and Camino don't. Google's toolbar is a BIG plus for Firefox and it does have history. It'd be nice if they made one for Safari which has a much higher install base on Mac OS than Firefox the last time I heard.
Anyway, I like things about all three above browsers - I haven't tried Opera and OmniWeb in years and don't know there's any reason I should try them now.
Anyway, the initial rant was mainly because Firefox has been acting like a pig and because the Camino developers (some of them) seem to be complete jerk-offs. Here's an interesting find in Camino. They rave about making it more Mac-like yet their button press images within the browser view are incorrect. Corrupted if you will.
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#275989 - 16/02/2006 08:13
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: music]
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veteran
Registered: 01/10/2001
Posts: 1307
Loc: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Quote:
For some reason, that famous quote popped into my head when reading Julf's post.
Actually, I was thinking of the same quote as I was writing my comment
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#275990 - 16/02/2006 17:41
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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As far as Firefox being a slow pig, seriously try changing that option I posted about before. It's like night and day for me.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk
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#275991 - 16/02/2006 18:22
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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Have you noticed unacceptable performance impact on navigating back/forward (having lost the prerendered views)? I just changed it and restarted. There's an obvious pause while the view is re-rendered but it's not unnacceptable right now. Let's see if performance overall improves. It was getting to the point where tytping text was slow. Letters would come out in bursts sometimes in edit boxes, including the Google toolbar. Turning this off just lost Firefox another one of its rather unique benefits. if i keep turning stuff off I'll be back to Mosaic sooner or later. Bruno
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#275992 - 16/02/2006 19:14
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Nope. Even back and forward seem faster to me. Methinks that their caching algorithm was tested under Windows and not under anything else.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk
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#275993 - 22/02/2006 21:07
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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I think the sessionhistory change in Firefox worked for a couple of days. It's going slow and I'm pretty sure there's something else wrong besides some extra caching. Now it's back to taking up 1.8GB or so of real and virtual memory. With 2 tabs open. That smells like a serious memory leak to me.
Don't know, maybe the problem doesn't exist on the Windows version? Maybe Windows people shut down their machines all the time? I normally never shut my notebook down and don't quit Firefox for weeks on end.
I bit the bullet and am now using Camino. I'm really missing the Google Toolbar most of all. And I can't easily tab directly to the page contents from the address bar (tabbing must step through each of the Toolbar bookmarks before it gets to the page content). I had to install Camitools to get ad blocking (though it has only a faint glimmer of an interface for this), change the titlebar and toolbar to the Unified format as well as enabing a few other tweaks. Camino is definitely way behind Firefox in extras and even behind Safari in this respect.
I'm also not liking the fact there's no "Properties" item when context-clicking on page elements like images. All in due time though. I suspect these things and others may be added by the time Camino 2 comes out, sometime in 2010.
Bruno
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#275994 - 22/02/2006 21:20
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: hybrid8]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 15/01/2002
Posts: 1866
Loc: Austin
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Most windows, regardless of OS, come with handy buttons to close them. I don't think you'd have so much trouble if you occasionally closed Firefox.
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#275995 - 22/02/2006 21:24
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Yeah, that's pretty much my experience, too. With that option set, I'm back to "power-cycling" the program once a week from a couple of times a day, which puts it back on par with the 1.0 line.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk
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#275996 - 22/02/2006 21:36
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: RobotCaleb]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 12/02/2002
Posts: 2298
Loc: Berkeley, California
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Quote:
I don't think you'd have so much trouble if you occasionally closed Firefox.
And lose my twelve tabs? Session saver only works 75% of the time. Lately I just wait for firefox to crash. It does it at least once a week. If you've never used a mac laptop, it's hard to understand why mac users never shut down. Apple laptops all go to sleep whenever you close the lid, and wake up whenver you open them. This means that I never think about turning my powerbook off or on, it's (almost) always available in two secconds after opening the lid.
If you want to talk about OSX memory hogs, dashboard is the most memory abusing app around. Each of my widgets take up 18+ megabytes of physical memory. The mac mini (with 256mb) works much better since I disabled dashboard.
Firefox certainly isn't perfect, but for me its far better than any of the alternatives.
Matthew
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#275997 - 22/02/2006 21:50
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: matthew_k]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 15/01/2002
Posts: 1866
Loc: Austin
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I rarely turn my laptop off, too. But I don't really run into big personal problems closing Firefox every now and then.
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#275998 - 23/02/2006 12:59
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
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Quote:
Don't know, maybe the problem doesn't exist on the Windows version? Maybe Windows people shut down their machines all the time? I normally never shut my notebook down and don't quit Firefox for weeks on end.
My Windows laptop gets restarted about once a month. My Windows desktop doesn't get restarted for months at a time.
I rarely close down Firefox on either of them. I don't get the memory leaks that people see on non-Windows OSes.
_________________________
Remind me to change my signature to something more interesting someday
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#275999 - 23/02/2006 13:08
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: matthew_k]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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I preferred to use Firefox because of its special sauce. That little bit extra that you can't always put your finger on. But that sauce has gone a bit rancid and is giving me a bad case of the runs lately. Maybe once they clean it all up I'll hop on to that band wagon again. I suspect it might only happen in the 2.0 timeframe though. Let's see what Apple does to Safari by that time - for now I think I may just stick with Camino.
Bruno
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#276000 - 23/02/2006 13:34
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: matthew_k]
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Anonymous
Unregistered
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Quote:
If you want to talk about OSX memory hogs, dashboard is the most memory abusing app around. Each of my widgets take up 18+ megabytes of physical memory. The mac mini (with 256mb) works much better since I disabled dashboard.
I agree. I was thinking how cool the dashboard was the first time I tried it out, until I realized having 15 or so widgets open along with a couple of other apps eats up all of my 512mb of memory. Now I just keep one or two widgets open at a time.
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#276001 - 23/02/2006 13:51
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: ]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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The Widgets aren't alone. How on earth does Adium take up over 36MB of real memory? It's using more than Mail (at 35MB). And Growl another 13MB?
Ouch.
Bruno
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#276002 - 24/02/2006 12:39
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: hybrid8]
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Anonymous
Unregistered
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I think OS X is too graphics intensive. It looks nice though.
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#276003 - 24/02/2006 13:18
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: ]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 27/02/2004
Posts: 1919
Loc: London
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Interesting new av Billy, trying to do your bit to promote religious tolerance?
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#276004 - 24/02/2006 14:46
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: tahir]
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Anonymous
Unregistered
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Tolerating radical islam is out of the question for me. The avatar is to promote free speech...
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#276005 - 24/02/2006 15:40
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: ]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 27/02/2004
Posts: 1919
Loc: London
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Quote:
The avatar is to promote free speech...
Nice, I'm sure it'll have a huge impact.
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#276006 - 24/02/2006 16:50
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: tahir]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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Hmmm, there hasn't been enough "sucks" or "fox" content in these recent messages. Troubling.
And an exploding turban just isn't as funny in some parts of the world as it must be in others.
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#276007 - 24/02/2006 17:05
Re: What to do? Firefox sucks and...
[Re: hybrid8]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 27/02/2004
Posts: 1919
Loc: London
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Quote:
Hmmm, there hasn't been enough "sucks" or "fox" content in these recent messages.
You've got me thinking Seuss again Mr Knox
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