Why 2012 Was Firefox’s Year

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
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Mozilla may not be King of the browser hill, but Firefox hasn’t let that small fact slow down its momentum to become a top innovator in its field and bringing on-going projects to completion in 2012.

In many ways, the past 12 months have been a coming-to-fruition of a few key endeavors the Mozilla Foundation has been putting its heart and soul into for years.
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Monkey34 said:
Troll much? Way to exaggerate.:rolleyes:
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No sense of humor Mr. Sillypie. :p

But, on the other hand, which other browser has this issue? The Mozilla thing just seems to be "oh someone else will fix it with plugins" instead of making the base thing work. They seem to just put minimal effort into making stuff work well and just focus on selling points. Then bleat about being a tiny company. Opera is done by a much smaller company and doesn't have that level of problem and works much much better.
 
I've been using Firefox for years. Version 2 had some issues but since then it's been smooth sailing for me. I never really understood the hype around Chrome. Tried it, said meh, went back to FF.
 
LastQuestion said:
Yet, it's still not 64-bit...
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Chrome isn't either. Where's your rage on that? Test builds do not count.

Mozilla would be better off to bring back Electrolysis to move Firefox into a process per tab like Chrome, which would eliminate some of the memory issues people see in 32-bit, and then go 64-bit later, but just like Chrome it wouldn't be beneficial for them to do so.
 
It's morphed back into Netscape. That's why I switched over to a lightweight, fast browser like Chrome.
 
Monkey34 said:
Troll much? Way to exaggerate.:rolleyes:
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You're arguing with DeathPrincess the wrong way. A truly [H] person would say something like, "Whatevar! I have a dual socket quad core with ten Intel Xenon Googleplex XYZ-8856 series processors overclocked to 9 terrabits per nanowatt with 51.2 Gigajoules of RAM and leaky Firefox only needs 700 Megajoules of memory. Because my computer overcompensates so well for my lack of social life and/or reproductive organ sizes, it doesn't matter if it leaks memory at 95 ohms per microfarad."

Back to the drawing board with you! *whipcracks*
 
More like "why 2012 was NOT the year for Firefox"

Because it became irrelevant in 2010.
 
Disposed said:
More like "why 2012 was NOT the year for Firefox"

Because it became irrelevant in 2010.
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I wouldn't go that far. For a basic computer that doesn't need much Firefox is a fine browser. I personally don't use it, but I have installed it on several friends computers as they won't be running with a ton of tabs open and won't run into issues.
 
There was a time Firefox stood above the competition. That time ended when they went to 4.0, Chrome came out and IE tightened their game.
 
They really need to get a hold of memory usage. 1.4GB of memory for 3 tabs with text/images just doesn't make sense.
I use it only because of firebug, but even then it's only when I work on my web sites css.
 
It honestly is still a very good browser. It isn't a no-brainer choice like it once was, but I believe that is more due to other browsers becoming better than Firefox slipping. It's still competitive in any way you'd choose to measure it (speed, compatibility, customizability, etc).

I do wish they'd make a native 64 bit version (for improved ASLR, not really due to a need for 4GB pages) and adopt process sandboxing.
 
I left after v 3.6 or something. Literally every computer I had firefox on stopped working, and was so slow I could sometimes go to IE download and install chrome and then load up that same webpage before firefox did it. Firefox was so broken that I tried out chrome and I am never going back.
 
tacos4me said:
this. people still use firefox?
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I do. I also use Google Chrome, Opera (stable and Next), Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox Aurora on occasion. I always come back to good ol Firefox. Also, Chrome uses an incredible amount of memory on my machine (up to 2GB with 7-8 tabs open) while Firefox uses 400-700MB.
 
Firefox will fall only when the other browsers come up to par on an open enough browser infrastructure to allow addons full capability. That's the whole reason the developer of NoScript hasn't ported it over to Chrome yet. Chrome and IE are still too 'closed'. Mozilla is still the only one who strives for a truly open web and that is reflected by a browser that is infinitely customizable.
 
I still use FireFox, but I agree that it has it's issues. It isn't the top notch, cut above the rest it used to be, but I feel much of that is because Chrome and IE have learned from FF and stepped things up. I usually don't pay attention to memory use, since I have 16GB of ram, but with this tab, Anantech's main page, an eBay page, and a blank page showing an AS SSD benchmark FF is using ~282MB..
 
Ram usage almost never factors into my web browser choice anymore. All my machines have at least 8GBs of ram now, and on this machine which I am using to type, I have about 12 tabs open, 3 of those tabs are various video sites. Chrome uses about 1337MBs~ lol.
 
PhaseNoise said:
It honestly is still a very good browser. It isn't a no-brainer choice like it once was, but I believe that is more due to other browsers becoming better than Firefox slipping. It's still competitive in any way you'd choose to measure it (speed, compatibility, customizability, etc).
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I disagree, Firefox has gotten worse as well as others have gotten better. I still use Firefox as my main browser, but it is the least stable of the browsers that I use (IE, Chrome, Opera). At work I have both IE and Firefox open almost all the time because Firefox is unstable with anything flash and I don't want it crashing and freezing when I'm working.
 
pxc said:
It's morphed back into Netscape. That's why I switched over to a lightweight, fast browser like Chrome.
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Chrome is only faster if you don't open lots of tabs. It's great if you don't typically have many tabs open, but once you get above 15 or so Chrome locks up more and more.

Not to mention how poorly Chrome's GUI works with large numbers of open tabs.
 
Tudz said:
At work I have both IE and Firefox open almost all the time because Firefox is unstable with anything flash and I don't want it crashing and freezing when I'm working.
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Flash content is in a separate process entirely and has been since 3.6.4 so if you're seeing browser crashes specifically when dealing with Flash it's far more likely to be something going on with the add-ons you're using rather than Firefox itself.
 
wonderfield said:
No, web browsers certainly cannot leverage efficiency at all.
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The whole efficiency advantage that mattered back when 64 bit was new and dont mean a fucking thing now? Yeah...

Processors are so much faster you wont notice a difference in 64 bit efficiency over 32 bit. :rolleyes:
 
Uggh no edit, Besides the most demanding apps that is. A web browser? Certainly not...
 
Disposed said:
The whole efficiency advantage that mattered back when 64 bit was new and dont mean a fucking thing now? Yeah...

Processors are so much faster you wont notice a difference in 64 bit efficiency over 32 bit. :rolleyes:
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IANAP, but as I understand it not everything is more efficient with a 64-bit word size anyway so that argument really is very poor.
 
Runningflame570 said:
IANAP, but as I understand it not everything is more efficient with a 64-bit word size anyway so that argument really is very poor.
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Yes a browser that *should* open in a half a second and load pages as fast as your network allows will really benefit from more efficiency... It starts up .4 seconds instead of .5 and you are still bottle necked by your ISP.

The argument that browsers need to be 64 bit is ridiculous because the only real benefit for an app like that WOULD be memory allocation and like said before if you need more memory for your browser something is wrong.
 
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