Yes I am, Stan. Me too. Deeply frustrated with Firefox.
Mashable author Stan Schroeder wrote about Firefox, the software which is right now absorbing 40% of my CPU performance and using 1 GB of total 2 GB of RAM. This is not just another software we are using, this is the “thing” that we are using most of the time when we are using our computers (for the ones using Firefox as their web browser).
Like Stan, I am also using Gmail for emails, Google Calendar, Vitalist, a web-based RSS Reader and so on… %90 of my computer-based activities are on the web and by so I need a web browser to navigate among them. That is Firefox for me, that is still Mozilla Firefox and I have lots of tabs open on it right now.
I really don’t remember the exact date when I moved to Firefox, but I definitely remember why I moved to. I moved to it, because;
- it was faster (now there is Opera),
- it was using low memory (less memory than Internet Explorer),
- it was stable,
- it was safer (at least, we believed in, but it seems not),
- it had many extensions (which made the life easier for me),
- it had tabs,
- it was free,
- it was open-source,
- it was dissentient,
- …
For me, the most important items of this list were 1, 2 and 3 1, 2, 3 and 5. For me, these three four were the main sources of real positive experience of Firefox.
- Now, I am waiting for a tab to open for
a minute15 seconds to a minute, let’s don’t talk about the time needed for Firefox to open. - It is right now absorbing 40% of my CPU performance and using 1 GB of total 2 GB of RAM.
- It crashes
all the timemore than it should be (mostly because of high-level memory and CPU usage). - .
- I am now using more extensions (23 in total) than I was using and life is even easier, no problem with this.
You can read more about other items here, however, I really don’t care about the rest.
Having read the post of Stan, and gone through the comments left there, it seems that there are lots of high-level expectations from Firefox version 3 which is still in Beta. This step can be a milestone for Mozilla. We are on the edge of changing our minds. People are talking about returning back to Internet Explorer and I am thinking of moving to Opera permanently (Now I am an eager user of Opera and I am using it when Firefox is not responding (and this happens usually)).
Firefox had a successful story (which was full of myths) and a better user experience by providing innovations (like tabs, third party add-ons) resulting better overall performance around this successful story. Mozilla played well to combine all these together to build a successful brand experience.
Now there is this contradictory apparent truth: I am not able to experience Firefox as positive as I was able to. Actually, I am not experiencing it positively anymore. I don’t feel comfortable with it. I don’t feel better when I double-click the icon of Mozilla Firefox.
We are using more of the web, less of the desktop and the gap is growing each day. Microsoft is aware of the painful truth. Is Mozilla really aware of the appealing truth? Is Mozilla really aware of that version 3 may be a last chance for them?
pault107 responds:
Posted: May 4th, 2008 at 6:23 pm →
I, too, am experiencing exactly what you describe. It saddens me but I have been assured that all of these issues will go away with FF 3. Fingers crossed.
Jake responds:
Posted: May 4th, 2008 at 6:26 pm →
I think you will be greatly impressed by the new firefox. I’m using v3 beta 5, and I think its absolutely fantastic… Considering the fact that it is still in beta, and is crashing less than .14 is a fabulous sign.
Give it a whirl!
Jake
Shameless plug - wine recommendations
Kevin responds:
Posted: May 4th, 2008 at 6:32 pm →
Look it’s very simple. FF2 has a well-known memory leak that is made worse with some add-ons installed. When the leak is in effect, things will not run as well. You can delay how long it takes to “get bad” by having more memory in your machine; I don’t track it regularly, but at one point my FF2 was using 2.5GB on a machine with 4GB. The solution is to restart FF2 and the memory usage is reset. I work on the web for hours every day (mostly on Windows, but also on Linux) and I use all browsers, including the new Safari beta for Windows. My FF at any given point has 4 windows open and many dozens of tabs. They stay open all day and I have experienced the issues you describe. It’s not that hard to restart the application and reopen tabs, nor do 99% of the world ever have as many things open at once as I do, so I know it’s not as bad for most people as what I see, including you I’d bet.
All that said, I’ve been testing FF3 beta now as well, and this past week finally switched all my machines over to it. It’s better, much better. The only reason I waited to change universally was that not all of my “essential” add-ons supported FF3, but now they do. It’s faster than FF2 out of the box, and so far I’ve not experienced the memory at all. Try it before you walk around with any more “the end is near” signage. I’m constantly impresses by how much more polished it is over FF2, and I’m sure the rest of the world that gives it a try will be too.
Lee responds:
Posted: May 4th, 2008 at 6:40 pm →
Dude, Safari?
Gorkem Turgut OZER responds:
Posted: May 4th, 2008 at 6:52 pm →
Jake, Kevin,
I am still waiting for version 3 to be finalized since I am using add-ons not compatible with it yet. Moreover, I know that I will be facing with more crashes with a beta.
Rob responds:
Posted: May 4th, 2008 at 8:37 pm →
I just don’t get it. I’ve been running Firefox for two years and never had any of the problems anyone complains about. Yes, it’s crashed here and there but those are rare. Right now I have 15 tabs open and I’m using 128Mb of ram. Sometimes it’s less than that; never more than 148Mb but if I’m using other apps, FF uses less; as it should.
I just don’t get what other people’s problems are.
Tom responds:
Posted: May 4th, 2008 at 11:01 pm →
Since the differences in general user experience between IE8 and FF2 are so minimal? You guys pick FF because it loads a page in 2.1s while in IE it would take 2.3s? Why would anyone bother - absurd.
My main reasons to switch to FF were: 1.) NO ActiveX 2.) fabulous extensions wich were and still are not available for IE. 3.) using FF is cool
Deactivating extensions I was using once per quarter solved all issues here - and hey - a fool who pushes any browser to 1.5 gig memory usage while doing productive (paid?) work and not restarting the thing once a day. Nice balanced reply Kevin.
Bob Bob responds:
Posted: May 4th, 2008 at 11:26 pm →
I used firefox for years with no problems apart from the occasional flash hickup. Then I installed Noscript, foxyproxy and a few others. Now it needs fairly regular restarts (every week or so) :/
Hopefully FF3 will do better sandboxing of extensions. In the mean time the hassle is worth the trade off for the utility, so I will keep my extensions for the moment.
F.Baub responds:
Posted: May 4th, 2008 at 11:28 pm →
If it takes a minute for a tab to open … do you have AdBlock installed? It is a total CPU pig. I didn’t know what the culprit was til I switched from FFOX 2.x to 3, and then the “Do you want to abort the javascript” dialog revealed that it was always AdBlock-something.js that was absolutely massacring the CPU. It is AFAICT an evil extension.
Gorkem Turgut OZER responds:
Posted: May 4th, 2008 at 11:56 pm →
Tom,
Without extensions, what is left from Firefox? In addition, believe me, restarting doesn’t work.
F. Baub,
Thank you for your suggestion, I will disable it.
Tom responds:
Posted: May 5th, 2008 at 12:19 am →
I agree … FF without extensions isn’t much. I only have 6 small ones (mediaplayerconnectivity, foxmarks, downthemall, stumble etc.) running instead of 10-15 as in the beginnings. No worries - your article was a good read and you clearly described your point.
At work we use an internal monitoring page (auto refresh every 60s) wich manages to freeze an extension free FF within an hour though. horrible. So I somewhat understand your frustration.
Phil responds:
Posted: May 5th, 2008 at 6:42 am →
I was very frustrated with the memory and speed of Firefox 2 and dissapointed that v3 betas 1-4 were not better. Finally, they got it right with beta 5 and I’ve been very very happy with its performance.
Louie responds:
Posted: May 5th, 2008 at 7:00 am →
I am both using Firefox and Opera. I was forced to use Firefox Beta 5 because of the memory issues of Firefox 2. I am using Opera in sites where Firefox beta 5 crashes or doesn’t perform well. Like Phil, I am also happy with the performance of beta 5.
Firefox Plus Web Developer Extension Rules Don't Make Me Live Without It responds:
Posted: May 5th, 2008 at 8:38 am →
So I am not just imagining that Firefox 2 has a memory problem and this happens to other people too. Here’s hoping Firefox 3 will be better.
Arun Sharma responds:
Posted: May 5th, 2008 at 10:28 am →
I am using FF3b5 and I am terribly dissapointed .It is very unstable and crashes repeatedly . I have noticed that it crashes more often with google related sites (gmail,orkut etc). To quote stats , I am currently running 18 tabs and the memory usage is 1,09,208k in comparison FF3b5 is 6x times the memory usage of explorer.exe . I am running Vista 64bit and I have no freakin idea if some of the crashes are being caused by the o.s .
note:
Crashes are of two types
1. It stops responding
2. It crashes completely and I get a dialog box of FF in which it asks me what I was doing when it crashed
I am running FF3b5 with 1 gb of memory .
UserX responds:
Posted: May 5th, 2008 at 11:15 am →
If you are only using one application, what does it matter how much of the hardware it is using?
Wouter Lievens responds:
Posted: May 5th, 2008 at 11:42 am →
In my experience, FF3 isn’t much faster at all. It crashes slightly less, but it has the same memory/cpu issues. These issues seem to be worsened and/or caused by Google Mail and Google Reader, I think.
Gorkem Turgut OZER responds:
Posted: May 5th, 2008 at 12:40 pm →
UserX,
If this “only one application” would be working efficiently, we probably wouldn’t complain.
Wouter,
Your point is very interesting, may there be something to do with Google applications (since I am, for instance, using them very much)?
Firefox 3 is coming in a month, hopefully - rovivor.com responds:
Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 2:00 pm →
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