I'm not thrilled with Firefox
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| caitlyn Sep 17, 2009 5:30 PM EDT |
I'm not thrilled with Firefox but I keep using it because, as Carla points out, it works where other open source browsers just don't. Opera is better in some ways and is certainly more stable but its proprietary and, again, some pages just don't like it. I've actually been really impressed with Arora, a webkit-based browser offered with Pardus. That may be the future for me. |
| TxtEdMacs Sep 17, 2009 5:51 PM EDT |
Firefox seldom crashes on my machine, although its components are in the six to eight years old range. When it goes down the problem I might have if I try immediately to restart is a message saying it's still running. Now I just run "ps -ef |egrep firefox" in a terminal before trying to revive it and oddly it is never there and it starts up fine. It might ask if I want to recover the old session or start anew, where I opt for the former with my multiple tags. So far I have not seen the multiple windows weirdness. While I know from experience that the Windows version has priority in the development stage, I have had few complaints once the Linux version has been released. Indeed, it has improved. I wonder if the cause is that I have not been a tester since the last version of the 2.x series. [serious] YBT |
| TxtEdMacs Sep 17, 2009 6:10 PM EDT |
[serious and sorry] I misread the part about the windows disappearing. I suspect this problem is a design issue that probably cannot have a real remedy until version 4, when Firefox will function in a similar fashion as Google's Chrome where every tab / [window?] is a separate process. Right now I am not shocked when Firefox drops dead taking my hundred or so tabs [it no longer gives me a count], because whatever killed Ff takes it all down. If a Firefox window is a connected process, then it too should fail completely. I did a quickly Google search and I am not certain if it is possible to separate Firefox windows into separate sessions could mean separate processes. Since I hate too many windows despite having multiple monitors and multiple panels (I used to think of these as sessions) it is a problem I am unlikely to encounter. [/serious] |
| caitlyn Sep 17, 2009 6:47 PM EDT |
I've actually had far fewer crashes in 3.5.x than I did in 3.x. Its very rare that it dies on me the way Carla describes. With Flash I still do get the CPU(s) pegging at 100% for a time regardless of what machine I run it on more often than I'd like. Again, it's not as bad as previous releases but it still happens. What happened to the claims before Firefox 3.5 was released about how much faster and lighter it would be? As far as I can see it just isn't true. |
| Bob_Robertson Sep 17, 2009 6:53 PM EDT |
> it works where other open source browsers just don't. I like that konqueror has the "Open link with..." context menu item. When something doesn't work, I can go back and open the link with Firefox, and it usually works. But I don't use it as my primary browser, I prefer Konq, for no easy to point to reason. I guess because I don't have it open all the time, I haven't had the "windows closing" problems. Well, not since Netscape 4 anyway, but that was when I used nothing but Netscape. So it still fits. |
| hkwint Sep 17, 2009 7:27 PM EDT |
Well, Caitlyn, your experiences are exactly the opposite of mine. How strange... Firefox 3.x almost never crashed, only in cases I knew. Firefox 3.5 crashes from time to time - and worse, is not able to recreate the session. Everytime I visit some website where you can 'login', the session re-creator fails. Maybe a bug introduced by my home-brewn Gentoo-configuration, I'm not sure. The first time I used 3.5 on some "Javascript-heavy" sites, I immediately noticed it "felt" faster. It loaded the whole page faster (tweakers.net especially). Nowadays I'm used to the 3.5 speed. And viewing Youtube files full-screen, it just works in other open source browsers where in Firefox it just doesn't. But true, that's probably an exception, most of the times it's the other way around. However, there have been some sites in the past that worked with Opera and not with Firefox. But due to the new popularity of vendor-neutral web standards, I think/hope that may be an issue of the past. |
| Steven_Rosenber Sep 17, 2009 9:45 PM EDT |
Firefox isn't on my "good" list at present. After a long session I get a lot of screen "delay" you might say, in Ubuntu 8.04. I have to generally wait just a bit too long before I'm "allowed" to click a new button/link. And in Windows, I'm still finding that a long session causes things to sink into the sludge. Like I said over on Carla's entry, I'm really impressed by Opera 10 in Windows where the browser is blazing fast and everything looks great, but less so in Linux, where it looks like hell. |
| chalbersma Sep 17, 2009 10:35 PM EDT |
Opera in Linux is solid. I personally use it all the time. |
| aronzak Sep 18, 2009 12:10 AM EDT |
This is from Firefox. I've had occasional experinece with Firefox sometimes arbitrarily locking up and freezing for a few seconds. Firefox 3.5.1 had a major problem with chewing up 90 percent of the CPU at a time, fixed in 3.5.2. Firefox is generally very solid, but I have had problems. Opera on Linux was a joke when I tried it, and personally I don't see what the fuss is about. But some alternative browsers, like Arora, look promisingly lightweight and efficient. |
| KernelShepard Sep 18, 2009 10:39 AM EDT |
As someone who has been very unsatisfied with Firefox for years, 3.5 is a vast resource/speed improvement, but it seemed to crash a lot more often for me with the initial release(s) at least. Now that I've upgraded to 3.5.3, it seems to be more stable. Or maybe I've just gotten used the frequent crashes and don't notice it anymore (it used to crash every 3rd or 4th link I clicked). That said I've been trying to move to Chrome, it just feels a whole lot snappier and stable so far. |
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