When I switched to only MacOS and Linux along with a fast DSL connection, even old PPC Macs work well even with many plugins.
Simple things to try.
Get rid of Windows if you have it.
Max out your main memory, so there's no swapping.
Get the fastest DSL connection you can afford.
Add the FasterFox extension.
You may find this combo increases your surfing pleasure considerably.
Eliran
· 1 year ago
Man... Firefox memory leak is a mess But still it beats off IE7
i rather have my FF Crush from time to time then use the IE7.
so... we still have to thank Mozzila for the great but not perfect browser :)
jamie
· 1 year ago
I think you are right in bringing attention to the need for Firefox to improve in some way. I am excited to use version 3 and look forward to a more stable browser. I use an Intel Mac and although I must say that Firefox is working better for me than Safari, it does crash about once a day.
Julian Seery Gude
· 1 year ago
Hi Stan, saw your tweet and stopped by to read about your experience with FF.
I don't use FF much anymore because it is so slow in comparison to other browsers and I make myself limit my tab use to 5 or 6 (I do this in all browsers actually).
Because of how slow Firefox is I tried Camino on the Mac which uses the mozilla engine. It is far better experience. The browser is much faster and almost never crashes or hangs up. I also find myself using Safari's new version a lot when I didn't like it at all before - Apple seems to have addressed a lot of site compatibility issues I've experienced in the past.
Like you, I'd like to use FF 3 but it doesn't work with Google Gears which I like to sync my Google Reader RSS feeds with MindMeister (great mindmapping web app). None of my critical web dev add ons work on FF 3 either like Firebug or Web Developer. Until they do I can't upgrade to the much improved FF 3 and I'll continue to use FF 2 ONLY when I need to, relying instead on Camino and Safari as my base.
Fernanda
· 1 year ago
I have the exact same problems. Lately, reading Gmail on FF has been a disaster. I have way more than 20 tabs open at the same time and, many times I also have other apps running. My current laptop is brand new and quite powerful (the black MacBook). It should not happen. BTW, it has been crashing more than once a day and what saves me is the "restore sessions" thing. Otherwise, I'd give up on it altogether...
Syl
· 1 year ago
You are totally right. Sometimes you can't even switch/close tabs! That's why I found another way to close tabs while FF is freezing (I use CTRL+W!), but sometimes it doesn't even work...
Don't open an adobat acrobat file with a lot of tabs opened! Otherwise it will freeze everything up. Don't forget to close those pages where a flash video is loaded or paused!
There are way to many problems with flash, pdf files! I just hope that FF3 will bring a lot of improvements.. just like you.
angesbiz
· 1 year ago
Oh boy am I ever frustrated with Firefox and here I was thinking it was my laptop! Thanks for the clarification. I have the same issues where I can have up to 20 tabs open and YouTube videos don't play... eeeek!! I would love to see it more stable because it's a great browser.
Technology PR
· 1 year ago
I use both firefox and IE. I would say IE is light weight when compared to Firefox. But Firefox is good when it comes to CSS intensive websites. I have had the same frustrating experience with firefox and other browswers too.
penpals
· 1 year ago
You are right... Firefox can be very, very slow. Sometimes it uses over 500MB RAM on my machine...
Keeem
· 1 year ago
I have just accepted it as necessary evil to get stuff done. It is not uncommon for FF to be sucking up 800 or 900 megs of memory, with maybe 15 or so tabs open. It has gotten so bad in the past that I had to change my Session Manager settings to auto-save so when the inevitable "Not Responding" happens I can go back to where I was. That, along with Delicious and Web Developer toolbars, are the only toolbars or extensions I use -- and I use them regularly -- so I've just become accustomed to the inevitable. I avoid PDFs in browsers, shudder at Java loading as the color palette shift brings everything to a halt for a while, and close tabs as they're not needed. My primary computer, a quad processor with 4 gigs of memory, suffers the same as my dual core laptop with 2 gigs. It still beats IE though. :)
Jo
· 1 year ago
Me too! Hate to be passive but somebody please set some priorities?
Clay Smith
· 1 year ago
This is why I switched back to Safari. Believe me, I'm a Firefox advocate. I just couldn't figure out where the speed went. Saft, Greasekit, and Pithhelmet restore most of the functionality I need from a browser that I would have otherwise lost with Safari. Of course, if you're not on a Mac, then it isn't an option.
Luc
· 1 year ago
You're right! My work setup is: I use IE7 for Gmail and other "static" task like listen webradio etc. Firefox is my real work engine where I develop, browse and do things as its my favourite browser. But, unfortunately Firefox is no longer my one and only favourite...
Adam Posey
· 1 year ago
I use Firefox 3's nightly builds and some days are certainly awesome (great speed, no crashes, wonderfully responsive with no memory leaks) and other days just, well, aren't.
To help to quell your pain I suggest you try the following remedies: Fluid, Prism, and Adobe AIR. Between the three of those things you should be able to take care of your web working without being dependent on a potentially unstable browser.
For the record I currently run Mibbit, Facebook, Streamy, and Mint in a Fluid SSB and use Twhirl or Alert thingy to handle FriendFeed
Carl
· 1 year ago
The problem isn't firefox; it's the fact that the browser has become a mini-operating system. It has to manage the resources of several different applications - mail, rss readers, video players - and it has to do all this with none of the web-based applications having been written to work in tandem with other applications.
Yes Firefox could hoover up less memory, but that's a symptom rather than the cause.
Brandon Eley
· 1 year ago
I think the problem is much worse on Macs. Like you, I often have 10 or 20 tabs open with different web applications, Wordpress, email, etc. After a couple of hours, Firefox (and my whole computer) would just grind to a halt. The memory leaks are just unbearable.
I was finally forced to switch, just so I could get some work done. I am currently using Safari 3, and patiently awaiting the release of Firefox 3. I've tried the betas and they don't work with my add-ons. I also use Foxmarks, as well as Firebug.
I still open Firefox 2 to test sites, but close it promptly. I also hope Firefox 3 fixes these issues... Firefox has always been my choice when it came to browsing.
BeBizzy
· 1 year ago
I have actually moved much of my tasks back over to IE7 due to the fact that if I leave the Firefox browser open for more than a couple of minutes it totally freezed my machine. I even have a couple of apps I'm in pretty much all day that warns you about Firefox.
I'm hoping for a fix, because I love the functionality of the plugins and such, but I can't jeapordise productivity because my browser craps out on me.
Charbarred
· 1 year ago
I completely agree. In many cases the browser is the most important application running on your computer and it can't afford not to be stable. With FF 2 I reached a level where it would crash at least 10 times a day. I'm working with FF3 and it's more stable but still can't handle loads of tabs open (ie, regular work). For years I used Maxthon, and even though it relies on IE it was far more stable. I had to leave it because I needed a couple of extensions it didn't provide, but it was a work horse. Mozilla should take a couple of notes about stability and memory management from the Maxthon team. And yeah, if you build a browser that can take extensions, don't go blaming the extensions for crashing it later. It usually means you haven't designed it well enough to begin with. Here's hoping the final release of FF3 kicks ass!
Grapfx
· 1 year ago
20 tabs open? There is only so much juice your ISP can provide and you want all that to flow into one application. Try using NoScript and AdBlock to block all those annoying banner ads that are "messing" with other things. Don't blame firefox for your super multi-tasking ways. With everything you are doing, think about trying to accomplish that in a time before computers, how would your desk look. Would your bookshelves crash due to the cluster you put upon them? Also try using some "offline" open source tools as well and not depend on one application to do everything for you.
Rai
· 1 year ago
Too right... I have the exact same problems. Have had to control my usage of FF bu limiting extensions and add ons, as well as the number of tabs open. Also, I restart it at least every 2 hrs. But then, there isn't anything available (that I know of) that can take it's place, so it's more like you gotta make do with what you got. Hopefully FX3 will overcome some of these issues, but frankly, I'm not banking on it.
Kyrre
· 1 year ago
Right on the money!
Because of Firefox's bad performance, I use Safari as my casual browser and Firefox only as my work browser (need Firebug, Elasticfox).
MikeM
· 1 year ago
Can't use it anymore, won't load, slow when it does load. Sucks, period. I thought it was my computer! I'm back to IE and man do I miss the features of Firefox!!!
RobbievdB
· 1 year ago
I've started to make a distinct difference between applications in the browser like gmail, remember the milk etc.etc. which I run in their own window in Prism and my browsing which still runs in firefox 3.
This has not only improved the experience, but which is more important, when the browser crashes my applications are still there. I can definitely recommend Mozilla Prism just because it's there and does what it needs to do.
Alex
· 1 year ago
I have the absolute same experience. Recently I left the FF window open and the computer running over night. the next morning it took up about 1 GB of RAM and nothing worked *grmpf*
Now I use Safari and FF at the same time and this helps somewhat altough its a pain with bookmarks and history and so on
jive
· 1 year ago
Man did this article come to me with relief. I was just searching on google: "memory leaks in gmail and firefox", "firefox memory leak detection" etc... I'm getting sick of this. Firefox craps out on me constantly. And I depend on my extensions....
Makes me want to take a second look a opera...
Anrkist
· 1 year ago
Try loading 10 tabs with some decent res photos in each... come back in an hour. If they all loaded anyways. Sometimes they just turn black.
Marc Falk
· 1 year ago
Hey Stan,
I know your situation too well. 20+ tabs, and it's a real killer. When I first got the problem, I thought...well, firefox is (obvious!?) the best browser, so what can I do about it?
The issue got so big that I decided to hunt a new browser. I searched, read and explored the world of browsers, and came to Flock.
Flock is a browser based on the gecko-engine (the same as firefox), which means that many of the addons you use in Firefox also work in Flock. For some reason, Flock doesn't crash at 40 tabs, and it's a bit faster at 20 tabs (my impression). Besides that, Flock also has a social aspect, so it's easy for one to keep track of all ones social activities (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr etc). I can only recommend it. Find it here: http://flock.com/
jfranzone
· 1 year ago
I am the same way with opening many tabs. A lot of the time I actually need those tabs open as well... I may be programming and have several reference sites open and one with an example in it. I also usually have my Netvibes page open and may click to open up any interesting links that friends may send me on IM.
I've been trying out other browsers more and more. Specifically I've been trying Opera and Safari. The problem is I have a couple of plugins that I really use a lot... so I guess I'm just SOL.
Bart
· 1 year ago
I've been using the Firefox nightly build for the past few months and it's only getting better and better. Also, it's blazing fast
You need not fret. At work, where FF2 is my only option (FF3 beta just crashes all the time, while at home its perfectly stable) I rarely even use FF2 because it feels SO SLOW compared to FF3 and mostly use Safari for my Ajax-heavy apps like Google Reader and Gmail
Josh
· 1 year ago
I've been using Firefox 3 beta 5 for awhile now, and the improvement is extremely noticeable. The browser is much faster and they seem to have fixed the majority of the memory leaks (partly with an improved allocation algorithm and garbage collection recycler). For those of you who are desperate to switch and hoping for the best in Firefox 3, from my experience I definitely think your hopes are justified. Just hang in there for a few more months, 3 is a better browser in virtually every way, especially on Mac.
Sylvain
· 1 year ago
Didn't see anywhere above about http://beta.foxmarks.com/ which is beta test version of new Foxmarks extension. It works very well with FF3. After installing this, and despite FF3 doesn't support Google Browser Sync, a very nice tool that enables password sync between computers, I almost switched to FF3 which is MUCH faster than FF2.
Fred Moesker
· 1 year ago
Agreed. If it wasn't for the 'Restore' option after crashes I'd be cooked. Firefox + NetVibes seems to be a really bad combination lately.
the constant skeptic
· 1 year ago
I am using firefox 3 beta 4 and netvibes with 6 netvibes tabs (lots of rss feeds to filter) and it is running fine. Then again, my machine is very fast and my internet is amazing. Try seamonkey if you want speed.
HexDigital.com
· 1 year ago
I've never been a fan of Firefox (sometimes for less valid reasons than those listed in your post! - like it's ugly) and totally agree. I can't say that IE7 or the Beta of IE8 is 100% reliable, but I do know that I often have more tabs in my window than I can see and it copes very well, even on a relatively low spec machine.
Ignorant Developers
· 1 year ago
A major problem with websites these days are ignorant developers who include huge JavaScript libraries, which bog down the client and increase the footprint, to do the simplest things they could of done in a few lines of plain JavaScript.
Ignorant Developers
· 1 year ago
I am not saying that is the only problem, but it certainly makes things a lot worse.
Just look at this simple page on Mashable, 26 external JavaScripts, some of which reach 90k in size, with additional inline JavaScript. My built in HTML validator is also going crazy with 200 errors.
If everyone just cut the bloat, and while they are at it use web standards, then the Web would be a better place.
the constant skeptic
· 1 year ago
I use seamonkey, safari, and firefox 3 beta 4 at the same time. No hiccups. IE7 crashes every time I try to run it. Stop whining about something that is free and works very well and is constantly being updated to work better. I think most of the commenters are bill gates bots.
Tony T
· 1 year ago
Only 20 tabs? Some days I have about 50 tabs open across 5 windows. 1 for personal, 2 for projects, 1 for leisure and 1 for research. The restore option is great as I can just shut down/restart and restore my tabs later. Google reader is also a great tool to cut down on all the open blogs (sorry Mash!). I've stopped my old habits of installing beta software (mostly due to those old windows betas) but I think I should definitely give FF3 a try!
MaxGladwell
· 1 year ago
I try to spread the load between FF and Safari when I can. But I do rely on FF for a lot.
one1speed
· 1 year ago
Firefox still rocks. I've been running the Beta and its working really well for me.
Dave
· 1 year ago
People should use FF3. I have 30+ tabs open all day and 11 extensions. Firefox is currently using 200mb of memory. And it's really quick.
n8tivesunn
· 1 year ago
I have no problems with FireFox. Maybe you should try using TinyXP since you're building systems with less.
Robert
· 1 year ago
What surprises me - is that it leaks memory like crazy. I use it on a mac and Win vista. On mac, I have to restart it everyday or so to reclaim the memory. On Win - the performance is even worse if you have it running over 2 days or more. If it wasn't for firebug - I would be on another browser.
daniel
· 1 year ago
Hi,
I had some problems just after I installed the beta5 that comes with ubuntu 8.04, but after a couple of days it seems to stabilize and now it works almost without any problem.
The firefox3 is much less memory consuming that the previous version.
regards dz
Corvida
· 1 year ago
I think it's funny how no one really recommended another browser instead.
I'd just recommend a switch to Opera or Safari. I have Opera installed as a backup browser for FF2's bad days. It works like a charm, but unfortunately you will miss out on Foxmarks.
Alique
· 1 year ago
I don't know whats wrong with current FF. Their memory leak problem really annoying me. Sometimes up to 500mb memory use. It really slow down my computer. Right now i use Safari for my main browser until FF3 release.
SBourne
· 1 year ago
I regularly have that many tabs open. The only time I've had problems is with certain IE-only sites I have open with the IE Tab extension. Perhaps the problem is with Flash? I have the Flashblock extension, so Flash items never launch unless I click on them.
jeff
· 1 year ago
I agree. I have about 5 firefox add ons. but I was thinking that maybe my cable was too slow or something. Good to know I am not the only one having issues. Firefox is great for developing, but it has been getting way too too slow as of yet.
might have to go back to safari...
wannatech
· 1 year ago
And I thought I had spyware. Firefox also freezes down when the Internet connection is not working well, you can't even go from one tab to another.
Peter
· 1 year ago
Firefox is an absolute disaster. it always has been.
it's the worst browser in existence, except for all the others.
IE has is ridiculously insecure, even for those who don't care about security.
Opera doesn't let you slide your mouse over to the right scroll bar appropriately - you have to 'bump off' the edge of the screen to actually get the scroll bar.
Maxthon will not not just crash your computer, it will outright murder it. Boom.
what's wrong with Firefox?
how about, what's _not_ wrong with it?
please Netscape or Godzilla or AOL or whoever runs firefox, _please_ charge me $25 for this software so you can make it actually work.
Voodooguru
· 1 year ago
Lately I've been playing with Ubuntu 7.10 and using Firefox to browse. I've experienced constant crashes and have had awful problems on pages with flash content. With Windows Vista, FF 2.0.0.14 hasn't given me any trouble, so I was surprised that FF turned out to be so problem-prone in Ubuntu.
iWeb Problems Too
· 1 year ago
I've been testing out the FF3 Beta too.
I'm also a Mac user, who uses iWeb to do a few little projects like sharing photo albums online with family.
FF3 doesn't work with iWeb's photo galleries!!!
WTF!
This alone will make about 10 million Mac users very angry. Not to mention the million or so using the .Mac service where all photo albums are based on iWeb and iPhoto's tech.
So much for FF, if they release one that has serious bugs with basic Mac services (ones that, as part of the iLife suite, are bundled with every Mac sold in the past 2 years or so).
Josh
· 1 year ago
The browser is in beta. You can hardly expect it to work perfectly with every service. Writing it off for a reason like that is kind of silly. I suggested trying the beta because, at least for me, it addressed all the performance issues that were frustrating the writer of the article, and had made me avoid using Firefox 2 for the last year or so (which is pretty damning, given that I've contributed patches to it in the past). I did not, however, recommend it because it was perfectly compatible and bug-free. Fx2 does a pretty good job of at least the former.
annie
· 1 year ago
I don't think anyone's mentioned it, but the Nightly Tester Tools add-on lets you make your addons compatible with FF3:
I'd switch to IE the moment i see Adblock working for it.
Nexeus Fatale
· 1 year ago
Not that I don't disagree with you about FF's performance, even F3B5 has some flakey things that happen with flash - but what's the alternative? Safari on Windows feels bulkier, IE is a joke, Opera is the only other choice and it's not like that browser doesn't suffer from similar problems. You can agree on what is what or which is better, but really name a browser that's flawless?
Jagung
· 1 year ago
Hi, same prob here. Lately my firefox browser get hanged frequently compared to previous versions of firefox. When it get stuck, i pop out Windows Task Manager and it shows that firefox is using the most memory of my machine. I couldn't even close the the browser properly unless i terminate the process using the task manager and if i'm in the middle of task such as filling online form, i have to start it all over again :(
Russell
· 1 year ago
A couple of people have mentioned Prism. I just wanted to emphasize those comments - it's a very simple but very useful little application.
I use Highrise quite a bit and it's perfect within its own Prism window, independent from the cluttered browser. And I can Alt-Tab to it, which is the routine I have got into for switching applications.
My assumption is that Windows is better at handling multiple applications than Firefox is.
I have also started to use the Flock browser, mainly for the social networking aspect, but I have found it easier to use than Firefox. You don't need complete web pages open for many things, especially in the social networking area. These can be hosted in a small sidebar.
The Web Clipboard in Flock is another useful little feature. If there is a small part of a web page that you want to keep as a reference (a code sample, for example), you don't have to keep the entire page open in a tab - you can simply drag the bit that's of interest to the "Web Clipboard" sidebar and then close the tab.
I am not associated with either the Prism project or Flock in any way. I just find them useful.
hi... your commenns are are valid.. firefox is not the only browser with such problems..
I use firefox, opera and the latest apple safari browser, a stunning super fast browser with even more problems that firefox...
on my pc with 756 mega ram after three hours of surfing the safari browser holds a wopping 500 meg of ram and not releasing it.. but then so does opera and firefox.
On none of my browsers i have any add-ins or plugins loaded otehr than what it installs with and that seems to mostly sort some memory problems out
of all the browsers including IE the best all round browser is still Opera on memory and speeds but falls out of the brwosers bus when it comes to sites with heavy java and flash.... thus i use safari to read my gmail which seems to be the most compatible with the lastest version with color taggings. and also when sites requiree java and flash otherwise opera is used for the rest.
my two electronic cents worth.............
Christopher
· 1 year ago
The problem of the occasional hd and studdering is because of a file called urlclassifier3.sqlite, its in your profile folder. Its related to the attack site/forgery site checking. Disable those two settings and then delete that file, restart Firefox. It will work as good as the day you installed it. Keep those settings disabled untill Mozilla releases RC1, else the problem will come back. Its a known issue. I had the exact same problem with 3.0 Beta 5, this temporary workaround has solved it.
Rob
· 1 year ago
I don't get it. I've been running Firefox for two years and never have the problems others complain about. And that is now on 10 systems I maintain for family and friends. Yes, I've seen it crash here and there but it's rare. I read some say it uses 500Mb or even 1Gb of ram but I've never seen it go over 148Mb and, right now, with 15tabs open, I'm using 128Mb.
I just don't get it.
Marco
· 1 year ago
We share the same frustration ... and knowing my website will replace Yelp in the localized start page of FF3 still doesn't help A little it does, in fact ... I'm a liar I know :-)
John
· 1 year ago
Firefox either alone or in conjunction with some of its plugins has a bug that makes it suck up CPU power. It is a weird problem-- unpredictable. Yeah, I'm frustrated too. I've been running the Firefox 3 betas for several weeks and the problem seems to have been corrected, but unfortunately a lot of extensions don't work yet-- including Foxmarks and FireBug.
By the way, I like to run 20 tabs at a time as well :)
joe
· 1 year ago
I uninstalled a bunch of junk like Adobe Flash and javascript and it made a lot of difference. Then i re-installed flash and it is working faster now.
Noot
· 1 year ago
I completely agree
Jeff
· 1 year ago
Firefox 2.x is virtually unusable.
I have a 2.8GHz Dual-Core CPU and 4 GB RAM, more than enough. OS = XPSP2 & XPSP3 Even when the CPU is not maxed out, and the RAM usage is at 10 - 25%, this occurs, so it is not running out of RAM.
I installed Opera 9.27 and I do not have the "hanging" the Firefox has, which can completely render Firefox unusuable.
This is now occurring about 100% of the time.
On a few rare occations (2-3% of the time), the entire computer locks up.
But, I open ALL of the EXACT same webpages in Opera that I have in Firefox, and it has never locked up like Firefox where in Firefox, I can't even switch to a different tab after a few minutes of it being opened.
Since it does not occur in Opera with the EXACT same webpages, it is a Firefox issue.
I never had any probelms with earlier Firefoxes.
The fact that Firefox crashes on MACs too, it can't be entirely related to Microsoft.
And, when Opera 9.27 doesn't have this hanging problem when Firefox does with the same webpages on the exact same machine, it proves that it is nothing external. It is Firefox.
Jordan Sharp
· 1 year ago
FF3 is a decent improvement over FF2... but the problem is ultimately a design flaw in firefox - it's all one thread... it's like the Windows 3.1 of the browser world.
Firefox's problems won't be fixed without a complete overhaul (firefox's single-threaded design is entrenched)... and they aren't willing to put the work into a rewrite (check out the article by the lead firefox programming guy dissing threads - nothing more than excuses/rationalizing for him not wanting to make firefox multithreaded - the real reason is because it's too much work). But what's worse is they won't even let you run 1 process per firefox window (a decent and simple half-solution), because the way they do profiles is poorly designed and they'd have to rewrite that.
I hate to say it, but IE wins Browser War II - 'netscape rises... and falls again' (I'm on Linux using FF3... mostly because Flash is broken in Opera and Konq, and those 2 crash as well anyway... but I'd be running IE if I could).
Travis
· 1 year ago
I haven't really had any of these problems, but have heard about others with issues.
I am most definitely NOT a Bill Gates bot, in response to commenter "the constant skeptic." I run Mac OS X, and Firefox stutters on audio, video, and flash. I am only running extension NoScript, so there should be no reason for Firefox to have a problem. I have been all over the web trying to learn how to make Firefox behave better. I find that in order to have Firefox let go of memory, it isn't enough to just close Firefox. I have to close it down and restart my Mac. Now, when I used to have Windows PCs, I had to restart PCs because they would crash. With Macs, I haven't had to restart them, except during the occasional power outage OR in the case of Firefox causing everything to grind to a complete halt! Seriously, enough is enough. I don't care if Firefox is free. I guarantee you someone is making a lot of $$$ off Firefox. Let's take the relationship between StumbleUpon, which is now owned by eBay. $$$ is being made there. Isn't there any browser out there that can run Java and Flash with no problem? Also, why should I continually need to upgrade my OS X just to be able to run a browser? Should I be forced every few years into buying a new computer all because my browser needs a newer computer to run on???? This is insane! Someone has figured out that the only way to get people to buy new computers is to make web content more and more sophisticated, so that old versions of browsers are obsolete. In turn, they have made newer versions of browsers OS-dependent, so if one doesn't have the latest OS one can't run the browser. Well, guess what. My Macs are PowerPCs. I am not upgrading to Intel Macs. That means I am stuck on an older OS. There are millions of us out there. Please stop assuming all of us have wicked fast bandwidth connections. Even an ordinary cable connection still produces stuttering audio and video on my Mac G3 and Mac G4. If anyone knows of a browser that runs newer web content without requiring the fastest computer and the latest OS and it renders video properly and audio without stuttering, please advise! Thank you! I remember back when Firefox 1.5 was the little engine that could, and now it's turned into a bloated monster that gives me PWODs and nightmares. Release me from this hell.
dainathomas
· 4 months ago
Frustrated with Firefox ??? Nope not at all ... infact its hard for me to work on any other browser .. the first thing I do (if I change my seat in office) is to download the latest version available. IT has excellent addons and extensions which makes my work really easy ... I think this is the best browser .. though IE8 also had grt features .. but not as grt as Firefox ....
Cheers Daina
Iser Steinmetz
· 4 months ago
cluster tabs should solve the firefox tab overloading issues.
All Comments
You could have been describing me. (Except Foxmarks)
We'll be watching for updates.
Thanks
MyZine.com
Share Video, Photos & Audios
When I switched to only MacOS and Linux along with
a fast DSL connection, even old PPC Macs work well
even with many plugins.
Simple things to try.
Get rid of Windows if you have it.
Max out your main memory, so there's no swapping.
Get the fastest DSL connection you can afford.
Add the FasterFox extension.
You may find this combo increases your surfing
pleasure considerably.
But still it beats off IE7
i rather have my FF Crush from time to time then use the IE7.
so... we still have to thank Mozzila for the great but not perfect browser :)
I don't use FF much anymore because it is so slow in comparison to other browsers and I make myself limit my tab use to 5 or 6 (I do this in all browsers actually).
Because of how slow Firefox is I tried Camino on the Mac which uses the mozilla engine. It is far better experience. The browser is much faster and almost never crashes or hangs up. I also find myself using Safari's new version a lot when I didn't like it at all before - Apple seems to have addressed a lot of site compatibility issues I've experienced in the past.
Like you, I'd like to use FF 3 but it doesn't work with Google Gears which I like to sync my Google Reader RSS feeds with MindMeister (great mindmapping web app). None of my critical web dev add ons work on FF 3 either like Firebug or Web Developer. Until they do I can't upgrade to the much improved FF 3 and I'll continue to use FF 2 ONLY when I need to, relying instead on Camino and Safari as my base.
Don't open an adobat acrobat file with a lot of tabs opened! Otherwise it will freeze everything up. Don't forget to close those pages where a flash video is loaded or paused!
There are way to many problems with flash, pdf files! I just hope that FF3 will bring a lot of improvements.. just like you.
To help to quell your pain I suggest you try the following remedies: Fluid, Prism, and Adobe AIR. Between the three of those things you should be able to take care of your web working without being dependent on a potentially unstable browser.
For the record I currently run Mibbit, Facebook, Streamy, and Mint in a Fluid SSB and use Twhirl or Alert thingy to handle FriendFeed
Yes Firefox could hoover up less memory, but that's a symptom rather than the cause.
I was finally forced to switch, just so I could get some work done. I am currently using Safari 3, and patiently awaiting the release of Firefox 3. I've tried the betas and they don't work with my add-ons. I also use Foxmarks, as well as Firebug.
I still open Firefox 2 to test sites, but close it promptly. I also hope Firefox 3 fixes these issues... Firefox has always been my choice when it came to browsing.
I'm hoping for a fix, because I love the functionality of the plugins and such, but I can't jeapordise productivity because my browser craps out on me.
For years I used Maxthon, and even though it relies on IE it was far more stable. I had to leave it because I needed a couple of extensions it didn't provide, but it was a work horse. Mozilla should take a couple of notes about stability and memory management from the Maxthon team.
And yeah, if you build a browser that can take extensions, don't go blaming the extensions for crashing it later. It usually means you haven't designed it well enough to begin with.
Here's hoping the final release of FF3 kicks ass!
But then, there isn't anything available (that I know of) that can take it's place, so it's more like you gotta make do with what you got.
Hopefully FX3 will overcome some of these issues, but frankly, I'm not banking on it.
Because of Firefox's bad performance, I use Safari as my casual browser and Firefox only as my work browser (need Firebug, Elasticfox).
I thought it was my computer! I'm back to IE and man do I miss the features of Firefox!!!
This has not only improved the experience, but which is more important, when the browser crashes my applications are still there. I can definitely recommend Mozilla Prism just because it's there and does what it needs to do.
Now I use Safari and FF at the same time and this helps somewhat altough its a pain with bookmarks and history and so on
Makes me want to take a second look a opera...
I know your situation too well. 20+ tabs, and it's a real killer. When I first got the problem, I thought...well, firefox is (obvious!?) the best browser, so what can I do about it?
The issue got so big that I decided to hunt a new browser. I searched, read and explored the world of browsers, and came to Flock.
Flock is a browser based on the gecko-engine (the same as firefox), which means that many of the addons you use in Firefox also work in Flock. For some reason, Flock doesn't crash at 40 tabs, and it's a bit faster at 20 tabs (my impression). Besides that, Flock also has a social aspect, so it's easy for one to keep track of all ones social activities (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr etc). I can only recommend it. Find it here: http://flock.com/
I've been trying out other browsers more and more. Specifically I've been trying Opera and Safari. The problem is I have a couple of plugins that I really use a lot... so I guess I'm just SOL.
You need not fret. At work, where FF2 is my only option (FF3 beta just crashes all the time, while at home its perfectly stable) I rarely even use FF2 because it feels SO SLOW compared to FF3 and mostly use Safari for my Ajax-heavy apps like Google Reader and Gmail
After installing this, and despite FF3 doesn't support Google Browser Sync, a very nice tool that enables password sync between computers, I almost switched to FF3 which is MUCH faster than FF2.
Just look at this simple page on Mashable, 26 external JavaScripts, some of which reach 90k in size, with additional inline JavaScript. My built in HTML validator is also going crazy with 200 errors.
If everyone just cut the bloat, and while they are at it use web standards, then the Web would be a better place.
The restore option is great as I can just shut down/restart and restore my tabs later.
Google reader is also a great tool to cut down on all the open blogs (sorry Mash!).
I've stopped my old habits of installing beta software (mostly due to those old windows betas) but I think I should definitely give FF3 a try!
Maybe you should try using TinyXP since you're building systems with less.
I had some problems just after I installed the beta5 that comes with ubuntu 8.04, but after a couple of days it seems to stabilize and now it works almost without any problem.
The firefox3 is much less memory consuming that the previous version.
regards
dz
I'd just recommend a switch to Opera or Safari. I have Opera installed as a backup browser for FF2's bad days. It works like a charm, but unfortunately you will miss out on Foxmarks.
might have to go back to safari...
it's the worst browser in existence, except for all the others.
IE has is ridiculously insecure, even for those who don't care about security.
Opera doesn't let you slide your mouse over to the right scroll bar appropriately - you have to 'bump off' the edge of the screen to actually get the scroll bar.
Maxthon will not not just crash your computer, it will outright murder it. Boom.
what's wrong with Firefox?
how about, what's _not_ wrong with it?
please Netscape or Godzilla or AOL or whoever runs firefox, _please_ charge me $25 for this software so you can make it actually work.
I'm also a Mac user, who uses iWeb to do a few little projects like sharing photo albums online with family.
FF3 doesn't work with iWeb's photo galleries!!!
WTF!
This alone will make about 10 million Mac users very angry. Not to mention the million or so using the .Mac service where all photo albums are based on iWeb and iPhoto's tech.
So much for FF, if they release one that has serious bugs with basic Mac services (ones that, as part of the iLife suite, are bundled with every Mac sold in the past 2 years or so).
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/...
I use Highrise quite a bit and it's perfect within its own Prism window, independent from the cluttered browser. And I can Alt-Tab to it, which is the routine I have got into for switching applications.
My assumption is that Windows is better at handling multiple applications than Firefox is.
I have also started to use the Flock browser, mainly for the social networking aspect, but I have found it easier to use than Firefox. You don't need complete web pages open for many things, especially in the social networking area. These can be hosted in a small sidebar.
The Web Clipboard in Flock is another useful little feature. If there is a small part of a web page that you want to keep as a reference (a code sample, for example), you don't have to keep the entire page open in a tab - you can simply drag the bit that's of interest to the "Web Clipboard" sidebar and then close the tab.
I am not associated with either the Prism project or Flock in any way. I just find them useful.
Sur Netvibes j'ai toutes mes adresses mail et mes sites communautaires. Facebook et Myspace.
Mon tableau de bord et parfait avec tous les modules que je peux intégrer...
I use firefox, opera and the latest apple safari browser, a stunning super fast browser with even more problems that firefox...
on my pc with 756 mega ram after three hours of surfing the safari browser holds a wopping 500 meg of ram and not releasing it.. but then so does opera and firefox.
On none of my browsers i have any add-ins or plugins loaded otehr than what it installs with and that seems to mostly sort some memory problems out
of all the browsers including IE the best all round browser is still Opera on memory and speeds but falls out of the brwosers bus when it comes to sites with heavy java and flash.... thus i use safari to read my gmail which seems to be the most compatible with the lastest version with color taggings. and also when sites requiree java and flash otherwise opera is used for the rest.
my two electronic cents worth.............
I just don't get it.
A little it does, in fact ... I'm a liar I know :-)
By the way, I like to run 20 tabs at a time as well :)
I have a 2.8GHz Dual-Core CPU and 4 GB RAM, more than enough.
OS = XPSP2 & XPSP3
Even when the CPU is not maxed out, and the RAM usage is at 10 - 25%, this occurs, so it is not running out of RAM.
I installed Opera 9.27 and I do not have the "hanging" the Firefox has, which can completely render Firefox unusuable.
This is now occurring about 100% of the time.
On a few rare occations (2-3% of the time), the entire computer locks up.
But, I open ALL of the EXACT same webpages in Opera that I have in Firefox, and it has never locked up like Firefox where in Firefox, I can't even switch to a different tab after a few minutes of it being opened.
Since it does not occur in Opera with the EXACT same webpages, it is a Firefox issue.
I never had any probelms with earlier Firefoxes.
The fact that Firefox crashes on MACs too, it can't be entirely related to Microsoft.
And, when Opera 9.27 doesn't have this hanging problem when Firefox does with the same webpages on the exact same machine, it proves that it is nothing external. It is Firefox.
Firefox's problems won't be fixed without a complete overhaul (firefox's single-threaded design is entrenched)... and they aren't willing to put the work into a rewrite (check out the article by the lead firefox programming guy dissing threads - nothing more than excuses/rationalizing for him not wanting to make firefox multithreaded - the real reason is because it's too much work). But what's worse is they won't even let you run 1 process per firefox window (a decent and simple half-solution), because the way they do profiles is poorly designed and they'd have to rewrite that.
I hate to say it, but IE wins Browser War II - 'netscape rises... and falls again' (I'm on Linux using FF3... mostly because Flash is broken in Opera and Konq, and those 2 crash as well anyway... but I'd be running IE if I could).
My issue with ANY browser is Vista, that's it....
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Cheers
Daina
http://www.clusterurl.com
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/...