Firefox Getting Bloated?

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Is Firefox on the path to being a big, bloated browser? Wired seems to think the browser is headed that direction. Time for an intervention?

With Firefox 3.0 poised for release this summer, the "IE killer" is in danger of morphing into an early Fat Elvis, if increasing numbers of die-hard fans turned reluctant critics are any guide.
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I have started to try Opera, and so far I rather like it. I just wish the plugins were more like firefox's, and not widgets.
 
I've been using firefox since release and it's gotten a bit slower/more hoggish. And no offense Eden but the Opera interface bugs the hell out of me. I loved FF for it's simpleness like the article is wishing for. Oh well.
 
i currently have 45 extensions, and firefox is consuming 180MB atm. im also already aware that ie/opera are faster and consume less memory, but u cant beat the customizability of firefox.
so yes im a happy firefox user :)
 
this is interesting. I use both with each having their strengths and weaknesses but im so sick of hearing FF fannnnnatics bash IE.
 
I used Opera for years, but when Firefox came out I switched and never looked back. Sure Opera is lighter and a little faster, but the plugins suck and as a previous poster said, the interface is really annoying now after getting used to Firefox.
 
XamediX said:
this is interesting. I use both with each having their strengths and weaknesses but im so sick of hearing FF fannnnnatics bash IE.
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I tend to agree that the pure bashing is getting annoying. IE7 is not a bad browser, but it definitely has its faults. At this point, I feel like they have far outstripped the faults of Firefox and Opera, and, except for Windows Updates, I have largely left it behind. The IE-Tab extension in Firefox makes it pointless for those active X sites.

As for opera, I am actively trying it out, as it's light-weightness is appealing. However, it seems a little clumsy, GUI-wise, compared to Firefox and IE. Maybe it's just because I'm not used to it tho.
 
For a FF extension junkie with 87 extension and who recently upgraded to 2GB or ram. All I can say is I don't care. Nothing beats FF extensions, nothing.
 
I'm a longtime Opera user. But these extensions everyone is raving about has me intrigued. I might have to try out Firefox a bit more.
 
I haven't noticed any FF problems...still seems fast as ever....

I have Opera installed, but I cant seem to get used to it....I use it once in a while, but always find myself going back to FF....
 
Yeah I have to agree. My firefox is just as fast as the first version as far as I can tell.
 
I used to love FF then after getting used to Opera I have completely stopped using it. It just feels so slow compared to Opera, among a few other annoyances (bottom status bar for example).
 
Abu Som3a said:
i currently have 45 extensions
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Hypernova said:
For a FF extension junkie with 87 extensions
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Jesus christ! x2!



I have about a dozen. It's not like lE is super blazing. Haven't tried Opera for several years, but how fast does a browser need to be? You have to factor in internet connections and web server response. And Firefox is free with a giant add-on community. Why is it so hard to look past any speed issues, if they actually exist?
 
Opera seems to be the browser for people who just want to get in, get done, and get out. Firefox seems to be the browser for people who want to do all sorts of crazy stuff with their browser via plugins.

Opera is noticably faster than IE and FF, though. I'm all about the speed.
 
I use both Opera and Firefox on my laptop and PC. On my laptop, I get 10 minutes less with Opera battery life when compared to Firefox. Dunno why that happens.

Anyway, I love both Opera and Firefox. I like how the trash bin for closed tabs is right where you can get to quickly in Opera. However, I do like all the extensions for Firefox. So both browsers have their faults and strengths.

I have noticed that Firefox does feel a bit slower than its previous incarnations.
 
I generally use Opera and FireFox. I use IE just for a handful of items. With that being said I really don't notice a whole lot of speed difference on my systems with the software load they have.
 
I've been using Firefox since Pre-1.0 releases (It was pretty early on in the numbers -- 0.4 sounds about right), though it didn't become my default until later, I believe with version 0.9 (which was better than 1.x IMHO). I used to use Safari as my default, until Firefox surpassed it, and now Safari sucks. I used to try browser all the time back in the day -- Opera, iCab, various Netscapes, Chimera/Camino, Mozilla, OmniWeb, Lynx, AOL's crappy browser, etcetera...

I'd try them out every so often, but really, I kept coming back to Firefox and Safari. But in the end, Safari has languished, and I ended up getting a PC anyways, onto which I promptly loaded Firefox.

The main reason I use it now? I have gotten SO used to the KEYSTROKES now that everything else seems unintuitive to use. I am a Firefox user, and yes, it is customizeable to hell and decently quick, BUT it crashes quite a bit (THANK GOD for Session Restore is all I have to say, or I WOULDN'T be using Firefox as much), and has memory problems/leaks. But, like I said, I have gotten so used to the way it works, that the browser and I are a streamlined and efficient. Firefox STILL has the best Tabs implementation out there IMHO. I'm accustomed, therefore it is my browser. ;)

Sorry for the novel, but I felt like posting it, and I am sure it's a good reason others use THEIR choice of browser, too.
 
It hasn't been an IE killer since IE7 came out. Have you ever noticed the memory usage? It gets disturbing! Regardless, I have just gotten too used to the easy-to-use plugins and slick speedy interface to dedicate myself to Opera.
 
Speaking of memory usage, when I watch ABC shows online, Firefox gets close to 200MB. IE6 will get to around 125. I'm not saying it's entirely Firefox's fault, as some of it may be ABC's media viewer. It seems to affect the media stream though.
 
I don't think that Firefox is bloated... You can make it that way, by installing to many extensions and crap, but that's up to the user... Right now Firefox is using 94,556 K of memory... So What!? Who gives a shit. Out of 2095596 K Total and 1152430 K available, Right now I'm doing most of the multitasking that I would do at one time. I'm running 4 applications right now. The only reason I have 2GB of RAM is for gaming. When I game, I usually don't do anything else... Hell, Lets give more memory to Firefox!!!
 
n3g471v3 d3c1b3l said:
I don't think that Firefox is bloated... You can make it that way, by installing to many extensions and crap, but that's up to the user... Right now Firefox is using 94,556 K of memory... So What!? Who gives a shit. Out of 2095596 K Total and 1152430 K available, Right now I'm doing most of the multitasking that I would do at one time. I'm running 4 applications right now. The only reason I have 2GB of RAM is for gaming. When I game, I usually don't do anything else... Hell, Lets give more memory to Firefox!!!
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The reason people are complaining about FF being bloated is because they leave their systems on and FF open with Tabs, after a while depending on how much you've browsed, the memory usage in FF increases to astronomical proportions. FF shouldn't be bloated like it is and it's a real problem for me because I have to occasionally close FF entirely despite me having tabs open simply because the machine comes to a crawl with most of the memory being used by FF and now paging to the HDD.
 
My Firefox is currently at 126MB of ram used with about a dozens extensions and 3 tabs open. It was a 46MB with more tabs open about 4 hours ago.

It has a bit of a memory leak problem. But when you have over 1 GB of ram, does it really matter?
 
Compared to what I consider "light" for a browser, all of the current browsers are vastly bloated. I remember in the days of Opera 3 and 4 when it was lightweight and fast and the only thing that slowed it down was a slow internet connection (which had nothing to do with the browser) and java (which also had nothing to do with the browser). This is when I was introduced to tabbed browsing and mouse gestures. I couldn't live without mouse gestures after that.

I believe it was after version 4 or version 5 that I considered Opera as bloated and slow and stopped using it. I hung on to version 4 or 5 of Opera for a long time and would have kept it for a bit longer except it didn't have native SOCKS support which was required for work. I used IE for all my work apps and uses even if some of it would work in Opera.

Since I didn't have the needed native SOCKS support, I started using Firefox 0.7. It had tabbed browsing which I didn't want to live without (although the implementation was different and took some getting used to) and also had mouse gestures via extensions. It had some rare stability issues and loved to eat up RAM but it did what I wanted it to do mostly. The only major downside I had with it at the time was going "back". I was accustomed to Opera reading the cache off the hard drive and having the page loaded instantly. It didn't bother connecting to the webpage at all for anything.

Since then I have used Firefox exclusively for my own use up to the latest version. Well, except for the few pages I had to use IE on in which I just used the IETab extension. Currently, I just don't care if I run across an IE only page. I just don't mess with it. It annoys me that it's IE only and since I'm not running Windows, it's a moot point anyway.

I have tried a couple of the latest versions of Opera but find myself coming back to Firefox every time. Opera isn't the lean mean browsing machine that I originally started using it for. It might not be as bloated as other browsers, but it doesn't have anything that makes it stand out above the crowd for my uses. Extensions keep me using Firefox. They are just too handy and I've gotten accustomed to them to the point where I don't want to live without them.

I think I might install Opera here in a bit just to mess around with it since it's been a while and I like messing around with newer things. However, I doubt it will draw me away from Firefox.

Despite only having a gig of RAM in my system currently, I don't have trouble with RAM usage with Firefox. I don't normally run other programs at the same time which need a lot of RAM and I have not found Firefox to be detrimental to my browsing. If it does get bloated to the point of being detrimental to my browsing experience, I will change browsers. This is why I switched to Firefox from Opera a while back. While Opera was still quicker on page loads and rendering, the advantage of the Firefox extensions won me over.

Get Opera an easy to use and install extension base like Firefox and it will likely be a serious contender for my default browser. Besides, wasn't is the CEO or someone high up in the Opera food chain that said he'd swim the English Channel or something if there were a certain number of official downloads of Opera within a certain amount of time? It was considered a joke by just about everyone. Then the goal was met and he didn't back down. He actually got his ass in the water and started swimming. Obviously, he didn't make the whole swim but he got out there and tried. While that has no direct bearing on the browser itself, it's interesting to see someone that high up do that. While they are serious in the product they are making, they are also likely to be innovative and think outside the box. It may not actually have anything to do with the company as a whole, but it's interesting nonetheless.

 
What matters isn't memory usage or HD usage, it's RELATIVE HD/Memory usage.

Even if Firefox took up 1GB of HD space, would that matter today? Storage is in the range of $.20/GB, does 1 GB of space REALLY matter? 5 years ago it would, today it doesn't.

The same goes for memory. So, it's using 100MB? 200MB? Most enthusiasts have 2GB minimum, those that aren't enthusiasts can pick up another 1GB for ~$35, or 2GB for ~$70.

So sure, if you're sitting here going "Well, back in MY day, programs took 3MB of HD space and ran with 2MB of RAM" then yes, it's bloated, so is most software. The rest of us will shrug and ignore it because, in the end, it's insignificant.
 
Nah Opera doesn't need extensions. It's already feature rich out of the box; with FF I NEED extensions just to match a lot of the features that I like about Opera, even then it still can't duplicate everything. With Opera I can load a lot of tabs w/o taking a major hit on resources, while on FF after around 20 tabs, it starts to bog down.

For those ppl saying that memory isn't a problem, unfortunately, not everybody has 2gigs of ram, not even 1gig for that matter.
 
Nemesis999 said:
What matters isn't memory usage or HD usage, it's RELATIVE HD/Memory usage.
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No, you couldn't be more wrong.
Even if Firefox took up 1GB of HD space, would that matter today? Storage is in the range of $.20/GB, does 1 GB of space REALLY matter? 5 years ago it would, today it doesn't.The same goes for memory. So, it's using 100MB? 200MB? Most enthusiasts have 2GB minimum, those that aren't enthusiasts can pick up another 1GB for ~$35, or 2GB for
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Yes it would matter, it doesn't matter HOW MUCH MONEY YOU HAVE, straw berries shouldn't cost $50 or $100 simply because you make more money down the road. Certain things should have a certain cost, unless there is something being added that makes it necessary for more resoruces, it should NOT consume more resources.
~$70.
So sure, if you're sitting here going "Well, back in MY day, programs took 3MB of HD space and ran with 2MB of RAM" then yes, it's bloated, so is most software. The rest of us will shrug and ignore it because, in the end, it's insignificant.
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You act like as if bloat isn't a big deal, it IS a big deal. Programmers are getting sloppy and code is taking up more resources than it should. Itunes should NOT take up 100MB of ram, thats absurd. When I get a more powerful system, I want to be able to do MORE with it, not the same amount as before. Unfortunately Microsoft and other software publishers disagree and apparently think that I should have the same level of usability with new hardware as I did 5 years prior.

If I get 1GB of ram, I should be able to run MORE programs at a time, not the same old 5 at a time crap like I could back in the '95 days.. I understand the HDencoding takes up reosurces, I understand that photoshop or premiere take up resources, I under stand that F@H takes up resources, what I DON'T understand is why iTunes or Firefox running slow as shit and being unjustly bloated.


The way OEMs look at people is that they're trying to give people a certain level of performance for what they're paying, keeping it inline with 5 years ago. But because hardware is more powerful, they have to bog it down so that it performs like a low end machine of yesteryear which is total bullshit. I hate that shit, it's unnecessary and just encourages laziness.
 
Nemesis999 said:
What matters isn't memory usage or HD usage, it's RELATIVE HD/Memory usage.

Even if Firefox took up 1GB of HD space, would that matter today? Storage is in the range of $.20/GB, does 1 GB of space REALLY matter? 5 years ago it would, today it doesn't.

The same goes for memory. So, it's using 100MB? 200MB? Most enthusiasts have 2GB minimum, those that aren't enthusiasts can pick up another 1GB for ~$35, or 2GB for ~$70.

So sure, if you're sitting here going "Well, back in MY day, programs took 3MB of HD space and ran with 2MB of RAM" then yes, it's bloated, so is most software. The rest of us will shrug and ignore it because, in the end, it's insignificant.
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While your above statements do reflect the majority of computer owners in the US, the US is but 1 country among hundreds in the world. Unfortunately it's not as easy for them, as it is to us.
 
I've noticed that firefox is getting a bit slow and hefty as well. I work as a web developer so Firefox is a must because of its great plugin's, but I was actually surprised how fast IE7 is compared the FF though.


Nemesis999,
Just because ram is cheap doesn't mean its okay for to be a hog. You also have to consider people with older machines. Sure DDR2 is cheap, but DDR1 is like twice as much. Plus with IE7 being pretty efficient why would a person download FF if they had to upgrade their pc.
 
Eden said:
While your above statements do reflect the majority of computer owners in the US, the US is but 1 country among hundreds in the world. Unfortunately it's not as easy for them, as it is to us.
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If you can't handle the heat get out of the kitchen. If a computer user's location and level of wealth is prohibitive in only making available hardware with 'older' level specifications then use software to suit. Older, less demanding versions exist.

I'm not in the US, but I do reside in a developed and relatively 'wealthy' country. And I don't want what I use to be held back by the inability of others elsewhere to access products I'm able to access, or the seemingly anal fixation some people seem to have regarding the need for "small footprint". That last has limits, of course. It simply refers to the fact that I accept a reasonable degree of what some people like to call 'bloat'.



I ditched Firefox along with the migration to Vista. I only ever started using it because it was more secure than IE under WinXP, and that concern has become an irrelevence for me now.
 
Right now I have Firefox open with 65 tabs and 30+ extentions and Noia xtreme theme, it is using 233MB of ram and I still have 1.4gig available. I could play Oblivion with QTP3 and still have ram left over, so I dont really give a shit.
 
shiznit said:
Right now I have Firefox open with 65 tabs and 30+ extentions and Noia xtreme theme, it is using 233MB of ram and I still have 1.4gig available. I could play Oblivion with QTP3 and still have ram left over, so I dont really give a shit.
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When did you open firefox? If you've had firefox open for more than a day at a time, I doubt it'll stay at 233mb.
 
I use session saver and i'm too lazy to close my tabs and just keep opening new ones lol. I opened firefox 15 min ago and it loaded the 65 tabs i had open last night. Right now it is using 240MB. If someone thinks that's bloated, they should go back to DOS.
 
I only use firefox for two reasons.....

AdBlock and FlashBlock

These greatly improove my browsing on the more obnoxious sites
 
i finally switched from FF to IE7...found a couple decent add-ons and haven't looked back.
 
Right now FF extensions make it a must. Simply nothing else comes close. The web development plugins are really useful.

What is the deal with people wanting to keep the same session of a their browser open for days at a time? I guess that explains why I never have a problem with FF as I start and stop sessions farely often. I don't have a burning need to lurk on a site or keep a session open for more than a few hours at a time at most.

FF hit a sweet spot at 2.0. I am not sure what features they are planning to add in 3.0. But it would be nice if they took a breath and focused on speed issues before diving into new features.

IE7 is ok. I have tried Opera many times and uninstalled it many times.:D My rule of GUI, if you hear the phrase "when you get used to it" run the other way. Good GUI either is intuitive or its just plan bad design.
 
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