Firefox Getting Bloated?

[iSkylla]

Firefox sucks. I still use it but I wish it would be faster...right now my firefox is using 200MB. It's okay but it's sluggish. I want a lightweight browser!

 

[Nemesis999]

No, you couldn't be more wrong.

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.

Well, damn, you got me there. I guess strawberries have always cost the same. Man, it must have sucked paying a months salary for a coupel strawberries in the 1800s.

In fact, you just argued MY point. The longer it takes to develope software the more it costs. So sure, they COULD spend that extra money trying to save HD/Memory space, and you can pay 20% more for the software. I personally would rather take insignificantly bloated software, spend slightly more on hardware, and not have the spend hundreds of dollars extra on the software I buy.

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.

Unless you're running a 10 year old computer, or you just have no clue how to manage your computer, Firefox shouldn't be running slowly.

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.

Are you trying to imply that they purposely slow their computers? Not even worth responding to.

 

[friedmud]

I have a firefox window open right now that has been open for 5 days (opened it on Monday morning) and in that time I've had hundreds of tabs open... including some tabs open the whole time (like one for Gmail). I also have several extensions loaded (but less than 10)

Right now it's using right at 200MB.... that to me is perfectly acceptable (this machine has 4GB of memory...). Sure, I'm in Linux... but I see the same behavior in windows. It seems like FF balloons out to about 200MB and then stays fairly constant after that.

Personally, "speed" and "lack of bloat" aren't two things I'm looking for in a browser. Yes I don't want it to be "slow", but as others have mentioned my net connection is _way_ slower than any web browser. I want the interface to be streamlined... have good shortcut keys (god I couldn't live without being able to do Ctrl+K to jump to the search box! Or Ctrl+L to jump to the address box). I also want it to be extensible, so I can make it work the way I want.

Like others have mentioned... I'm not worried about people who don't have the RAM to run FF... that group of people will continue to get smaller as time goes on. There are other browsers out there for them.... leave mine alone!

Friedmud

 

[Nemesis999]

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.

There's an entire world of software designed, tested, and used on older hardware. It's what we all used before we got newer hardware. Again, it comes down to the cost of optimization VS the cost of hardware. Hardware prices are simply lower. People seem to forget that it costs money to optimize software.

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.

People still use DDR1? But seriously, it comes down to the "older hardware" argument again. Why should those of us who have current hardware spend more money to make software more friendly for people using legacy equipment? There's an entire world of software designed around that hardware. You're asking others to do more work in producing the software, (in this case, free software), when there are versions designed for your system, so that you don't have to upgrade hardware.


I'm not saying that programmers should mindlessly program regardless of waste. If a programmer tried to bucket sort 32bit integers they'd get smacked in the head, but if it comes down to time spent vs efficiency, then no, efficiency should not always take precedence.

 

[imzjustplayin]

In fact, you just argued MY point. The longer it takes to develope software the more it costs. So sure, they COULD spend that extra money trying to save HD/Memory space, and you can pay 20% more for the software. I personally would rather take insignificantly bloated software, spend slightly more on hardware, and not have the spend hundreds of dollars extra on the software I buy.

I'd rather pay more initially for software than pay significantly more for my hardware. If the developers can't take the time to properly write software and make it run efficiently, then I don't want to have anything to do with them. Considering that firefox is free, I don't have much room to complain, that said FF was considerably better before 1.5 came out. Vista has been in development for 5 years and the features that have come out of it do NOT spell 5 years of work. What vista does say is that they had a whole host of other projects going on but because they weren't able to complete them, they never could be brought into the final product.

Just because hardware gets faster all the time doesn't mean you can slack off on writing and debugging, tweaking or what ever your software. All bloated software does is make me do less with what I have. Since we've had some performance improvements since hardware of 5 years ago, I'd expect to do MORE with what I have, not the same or less..

Unless you're running a 10 year old computer, or you just have no clue how to manage your computer, Firefox shouldn't be running slowly.

Firefox runs slow because I keep it open 247 and I'm constantly browsing, since firefox basically has memory leaks of some sort, it makes the memory usage balloon up to as high as 1GB for ram and 2GB for pagefile. (I had 1Gb of ram in that system at the time) To say that firefox doesn't have issues with memory is simply ignorant. The only way you'd avoid these issues is if you closed firefox after a short browsing period or you shutdown your machine after you're done. Try doing normal browsing with firefox for a week with out ever closing it (therefore you'd have to leave your system running all the time) and you'll see it balloon in memory usage.

Are you trying to imply that they purposely slow their computers? Not even worth responding to.

If you don't understand that they purposely make their systems starved of ram so that they perform slower than their other machines and load them up with useless programs, then you're simply clueless.

I'd take a Pentium III 1ghz with 1GB ram, Windows 2000/XP, 36GB 10K RPM SCSI Drive, and a Radeon 9500 than some Dell with a Celeron D 3ghz, 256MB ram, Windows XP, Dell "suite software", Integrated graphics and a 7200rpm (or even 5400rpm, dunno if these are still made or not) drive any day. And guess which system would be cheaper....? CPU speed is NOT everything. Newer is NOT always better and yes I don't think you know what you're talking about.

 

[JohnleMVP]

People still use DDR1? But seriously, it comes down to the "older hardware" argument again. Why should those of us who have current hardware spend more money to make software more friendly for people using legacy equipment? There's an entire world of software designed around that hardware. You're asking others to do more work in producing the software, (in this case, free software), when there are versions designed for your system, so that you don't have to upgrade hardware.

If this was the latest next-gen quake or doom game your point would be valid, but we are talking about a web browser. It is a mainstream product that should run on the computers the masses have, not just the enthusiast that upgrade every time a new product comes out. Firefox is in a competition for market share vs all the other browsers, they need firefox to run well on older machines.

 

[Nemesis999]

I'd rather pay more initially for software than pay significantly more for my hardware.

That's on the assumption that hardware costs more then software. Unless you use a) Free software, which removes your right to complain, or b) Pirated software, which removes your right to complain, I can't see how hardware for a simple browsing PC could possibly be significantly mroe expensive then the software. $100 for a e4300 + mobo, $70 for 2GB RAM, $40 for a 200GB HD, Onboard video, onboard network, onboard sound Total: $210. That will easily smoke any copy of Firefox you throw it. After accounting for a copy of Windows I see no way you could possibly be using paid software without exceeding hardware costs.

Just because hardware gets faster all the time doesn't mean you can slack off on writing and debugging, tweaking or what ever your software. All bloated software does is make me do less with what I have. Since we've had some performance improvements since hardware of 5 years ago, I'd expect to do MORE with what I have, not the same or less..

Again, those of us with new hardware can do plenty we couldn't 5 years ago.
Those with 5 year old hardware can do what they could 5 years ago.
Those with 5 year old hardware that want what the people with new hardware have are the ones with a problem.

Firefox runs slow because I keep it open 247 and I'm constantly browsing, since firefox basically has memory leaks of some sort, it makes the memory usage balloon up to as high as 1GB for ram and 2GB for pagefile. (I had 1Gb of ram in that system at the time) To say that firefox doesn't have issues with memory is simply ignorant.

Bloat and bugs are unrelated. I never claimed FireFox was bug free. It's well known that it has and has had issues with memory leaks, but that doesn't have anything to do with bloat. Bloat is a result on unoptimized code and excessive unneeded features. Memory leaks are the result of mistakes in the programming.

The only way you'd avoid these issues is if you closed firefox after a short browsing period or you shutdown your machine after you're done. Try doing normal browsing with firefox for a week with out ever closing it (therefore you'd have to leave your system running all the time) and you'll see it balloon in memory usage.

So your argument is that the free software has a problem because it's too much effort for you to click the [x] every 6 hours? It has a memory leak. Stop using it or click the [x], either works. Again, it's free software and memory leaks aren't related to the topic of this thread.

If you don't understand that they purposely make their systems starved of ram so that they perform slower than their other machines and load them up with useless programs, then you're simply clueless.

...

...

Are you arguing that they should make a whole range of identical systems and sell them at different prices? Of course the bottom-end systems have less hardware there's a reason for that. (Here's a hint, they're priced lower.) I'm sure if you were to call Dell and demand that they include Dual 8800 SLI, 4GB RAM, 1TB HD space and a Quad core SPU in your $299 computer they'd be MORE then happy to comply, after all, it costs them the same no matter what hardware is in it, right? They really just charge more for high-end systems to gouge.

I'd take a Pentium III 1ghz with 1GB ram, Windows 2000/XP, 36GB 10K RPM SCSI Drive, and a Radeon 9500 than some Dell with a Celeron D 3ghz, 256MB ram, Windows XP, Dell "suite software", Integrated graphics and a 7200rpm (or even 5400rpm, dunno if these are still made or not) drive any day. And guess which system would be cheaper....? CPU speed is NOT everything. Newer is NOT always better and yes I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Well, good to know I already suggested a $210 computer that would blow both of those out of the water, huh? Hell, you can pick up a 6600 for the AGP slot for $20 these days. I can't seem to find a dell with 256MB ram, they all have 512MB. With, guess what? A whole range of upgrade options up to 4GB!!! Amazing, money can buy you different hardware?! Whoda thunk. No matter how much you plug your ears and humm that old P3 is curb-fodder if you want to use much recent in the ways of software. Hang on to your P3 if you want, but it strips you of you right to demand that other people/businesses spend their time and money on optimization because you want to stay in the technological stone-age.

 

[Nemesis999]

If this was the latest next-gen quake or doom game your point would be valid, but we are talking about a web browser. It is a mainstream product that should run on the computers the masses have, not just the enthusiast that upgrade every time a new product comes out. Firefox is in a competition for market share vs all the other browsers, they need firefox to run well on older machines.

Why upgrade your software? I personally haven't even gotten around to upgrading to the newest FF yet. The masses likely don't even know a new FF is out. They're perfectly happy using what they have and likely will until they get a new computer, which will easily handle the current version.

 

[KaosDG]

All I have to say is... in the World of IT, the solution to "throw more hardware at it" is laughable.

 

[imzjustplayin]

That's on the assumption that hardware costs more then software. Unless you use a) Free software, which removes your right to complain, or b) Pirated software, which removes your right to complain, I can't see how hardware for a simple browsing PC could possibly be significantly mroe expensive then the software. $100 for a e4300 + mobo, $70 for 2GB RAM, $40 for a 200GB HD, Onboard video, onboard network, onboard sound Total: $210. That will easily smoke any copy of Firefox you throw it. After accounting for a copy of Windows I see no way you could possibly be using paid software without exceeding hardware costs.



Again, those of us with new hardware can do plenty we couldn't 5 years ago.
Those with 5 year old hardware can do what they could 5 years ago.
Those with 5 year old hardware that want what the people with new hardware have are the ones with a problem.

Bloat and bugs are unrelated. I never claimed FireFox was bug free. It's well known that it has and has had issues with memory leaks, but that doesn't have anything to do with bloat. Bloat is a result on unoptimized code and excessive unneeded features. Memory leaks are the result of mistakes in the programming.

I never said Firefox had bloat, YOU said firefox had bloat. I'm saying VISTA has bloat. Firefox ran properly at one point, now it doesn't.

Are you arguing that they should make a whole range of identical systems and sell them at different prices? Of course the bottom-end systems have less hardware there's a reason for that. (Here's a hint, they're priced lower.) I'm sure if you were to call Dell and demand that they include Dual 8800 SLI, 4GB RAM, 1TB HD space and a Quad core SPU in your $299 computer they'd be MORE then happy to comply, after all, it costs them the same no matter what hardware is in it, right? They really just charge more for high-end systems to gouge.

I didn't say I expected OEMs to do anything, they're a business there to make money. What better way to make money than to artificially make hardware appear slower than it is. You basically were saying that what I said was ludacris when you're actually just agreeing with me but you just think I'm stupid for bringing it up. Apparently you think it's a lot easier to just buy a new machine instead of bothering with old hardware, I disagree as there are people who have a lot at stake when they have to upgrade. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if you're one of those people who constantly reformats.

Well, good to know I already suggested a $210 computer that would blow both of those out of the water, huh? Hell, you can pick up a 6600 for the AGP slot for $20 these days. I can't seem to find a dell with 256MB ram, they all have 512MB. With, guess what? A whole range of upgrade options up to 4GB!!! Amazing, money can buy you different hardware?! Whoda thunk. No matter how much you plug your ears and humm that old P3 is curb-fodder if you want to use much recent in the ways of software. Hang on to your P3 if you want, but it strips you of you right to demand that other people/businesses spend their time and money on optimization because you want to stay in the technological stone-age.

A Pentium III is HARDLY the technological stoneage. Yes I guess it'd be unreasonable to ask them to program for my 8088 or my 386 but to not program for a Pentium or above for an application as simple as an audioplayer is plain stupid. Btw, you wouldn't happen to be a programmer would you? If you are, then I hope you don't program for anything very important because I'd hate to see your code. You're clearly a person who has gotten caught up in the hype of new hardware while you fail to realize that that there are still people out there with dated hardware cruising by.

I'd be hard pressed to see a performance difference from my Dell XPS R450 with 384MB ram and my IC7-G rig for just about any everyday task. It's when horridly programmed applications such as iTunes that bother me the most. The biggest problem with YOU is that you live in an enthusiast world and you seem to have a poor understanding of the typical consumer. When a person buys a $300 machine to replace their current machine, they're usually in for a rude awakening when they find out how terribly it performs. Most people don't realize how to fix this and then 'learn their lesson' and just buy a more expensive computer next time around.

I just realized, are you a troll? I can't believe what I'm reading but then again considering that there are people who believe this world is only a few thousand years old, this is probably no different. You've clearly got something wrong with properly written software, maybe you're just an ex programmer who was fired for badly written code. Thats stupid e4300 setup doesn't account for other parts that are needed, not to mention the fact that I'd still take that P3 setup I mentioned above any day over that. You may think that clock speed is king, but I can tell you right now, there is more to a computer than its CPU. You need to understand that while I'm all for hardware advancement, I don't want to have to upgrade my hardware because of some poorly written software. If I'm going to upgrade my hardware, it's because I have a killer application that truely needs faster hardware such as HL2 back in '04 or I'm doing HD Video encoding, not because of Firefox or iTunes.

A webbrowser shouldn't take up 1GB of ram, an music player/song sorting software shouldn't take 100MB+ worth of ram.

Oh and btw, you act like as if it's really easy to just close firefox after 6 hours, it isn't. If you have over 20 tabs open, it ISN'T easy to just CLOSE IT because these are sites you may or maynot have bookmarked, more likely they're NOT bookmarked.

 

[Modred189]

Here's the solution to people whose Firefox is running slow:

a: UNLOAD ALL THE EXTENSIONS
or
b: BUY MORE RAM.




a: No one NEEDS their browser to do 20 things in the background. You may want it to, but you don't need it to. My firefox runs plenty fast, similar to Opera on the same PC. Why? I keep my extension use to a minimum. I have: DiggCommentSpotlight, FasterFox, ForecastFox, DownloadStatusbar, IEtab, and that's about it. Most of those are far from necessary. I just think it's funny that so many people complain, when they should have known the effects of loading down an application with tons of third party mods.

b: RAM is cheap, relatively. You can add a gig of ram to most systems (with DDR or DDR2) for less than $80 if you wait for sales. Even at the major retailers. Shoot, BestBuy (not known for great prices) has a gig of DDR for $75 this week. If you have to run all those extensions that need memory, buy the ram.

 

[SmokeRngs]

Here's the solution to people whose Firefox is running slow:

a: UNLOAD ALL THE EXTENSIONS
or
b: BUY MORE RAM.




a: No one NEEDS their browser to do 20 things in the background. You may want it to, but you don't need it to. My firefox runs plenty fast, similar to Opera on the same PC. Why? I keep my extension use to a minimum. I have: DiggCommentSpotlight, FasterFox, ForecastFox, DownloadStatusbar, IEtab, and that's about it. Most of those are far from necessary. I just think it's funny that so many people complain, when they should have known the effects of loading down an application with tons of third party mods.

b: RAM is cheap, relatively. You can add a gig of ram to most systems (with DDR or DDR2) for less than $80 if you wait for sales. Even at the major retailers. Shoot, BestBuy (not known for great prices) has a gig of DDR for $75 this week. If you have to run all those extensions that need memory, buy the ram.

Actually, I haven't found that the extensions I have use much more RAM than the default install of Firefox. I see RAM usage that will get up to 150 meg at times of heavy browsing and leaving the browser open for a while but it's usually not more than that. I would check the extensions I currently have installed but I'm actually typing this up in Opera right now and I'm too lazy to start Firefox.

Why anyone would leave their browser sit open for days at a time is beyond me. I always close any program I'm not currently using and wno't see the need for in the near future.

 

[N H O]

And Avant still rules them all... go figure

i must agree

 

[Nemesis999]

I never said Firefox had bloat, YOU said firefox had bloat. I'm saying VISTA has bloat. Firefox ran properly at one point, now it doesn't.

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.

People like you are the reason we can't edit posts on here. Maybe you should make up your mind on what you're arguing?

I didn't say I expected OEMs to do anything, they're a business there to make money. What better way to make money than to artificially make hardware appear slower than it is.You basically were saying that what I said was ludacris when you're actually just agreeing with me but you just think I'm stupid for bringing it up. Apparently you think it's a lot easier to just buy a new machine instead of bothering with old hardware, I disagree as there are people who have a lot at stake when they have to upgrade.

I'm not agreeing with you at all. You claimed they were purposely limiting RAM to slow the computers. I see 512MB on the $250-$350 computers, 1GB on the $350-$750 and varing amounts on the others.

Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if you're one of those people who constantly reformats.

Unlike you, I'm competent. Other then the reformat I did when replacing harddrives, the last time I reinstalled XP was almost 2 years ago, when I changed OSes.

A Pentium III is HARDLY the technological stoneage.

The P3 was introduced in 1998, 9 years is an eternity. 9 years before the P3 was the 20MHZ AM386 processors. Maybe they should have kept programming for Windows 3.0 and DOS to keep the people running 386s happy while other people used P2/P3s? 9 years before the AM386 was the 6MHZ 80286, maybe they should have focused on programming for that instead of using what they had.

You sound like an old man puttering around in his 40 year old rustbucket mumbling about how nothing is made like it used to be.

Thats stupid e4300 setup doesn't account for other parts that are needed.

Ah, because other then video, RAM, HD< Mobo, and CPU you need a...? Case/PS are on Hot Deals free AR all the time. What else? CD? Floppy? You didn't list those in your setup.

not to mention the fact that I'd still take that P3 setup I mentioned above any day over that. You may think that clock speed is king, but I can tell you right now, there is more to a computer than its CPU.

And hence we can conclude that you're an idiot. A e4300 smokes the archaic P3, The 600GT makes short work of a 9500, the SATA .10 drive easily matches or beats the SCSI drive, and the DDR2 kills the DDR and/or SDRAM both in amount (2GB vs 1GB) and speed.

You keep arguing that processing power doesn't matter when your example is getting killed in every category. Who's the troll?

A webbrowser shouldn't take up 1GB of ram, an music player/song sorting software shouldn't take 100MB+ worth of ram.

Huh? What? You said Firefox wasn't bloated at the beginning of this post. Now it is? Perhaps you need to make up your mind.

Oh and btw, you act like as if it's really easy to just close firefox after 6 hours, it isn't. If you have over 20 tabs open, it ISN'T easy to just CLOSE IT because these are sites you may or maynot have bookmarked, more likely they're NOT bookmarked.

So your arguments is that you're too lazy to maintain your browser, so you're just going to let it load 20+ tabs then whine that it's using memory? I've had 200+ tabs open, never more then 5 at a time since I opened Firefox almost 16 hours ago. It is currently using a mind-numbinb 82,142K.

Here's an idea. Stop using Firefox. Stop whining that people who work to produce FREE SOFTWARE are sitting in a cubicle producing better faster code so you can pinch pennies. Or better yet, just do us all a favour and stop posting.

 

[imzjustplayin]

Here's the solution to people whose Firefox is running slow:

a: UNLOAD ALL THE EXTENSIONS
or
b: BUY MORE RAM.




a: No one NEEDS their browser to do 20 things in the background. You may want it to, but you don't need it to. My firefox runs plenty fast, similar to Opera on the same PC. Why? I keep my extension use to a minimum. I have: DiggCommentSpotlight, FasterFox, ForecastFox, DownloadStatusbar, IEtab, and that's about it. Most of those are far from necessary. I just think it's funny that so many people complain, when they should have known the effects of loading down an application with tons of third party mods.

b: RAM is cheap, relatively. You can add a gig of ram to most systems (with DDR or DDR2) for less than $80 if you wait for sales. Even at the major retailers. Shoot, BestBuy (not known for great prices) has a gig of DDR for $75 this week. If you have to run all those extensions that need memory, buy the ram.

I don't have 20 extensions and firefox has this issue. I have one extension and that is adblock.

 

[imzjustplayin]

People like you are the reason we can't edit posts on here. Maybe you should make up your mind on what you're arguing?



I'm not agreeing with you at all. You claimed they were purposely limiting RAM to slow the computers. I see 512MB on the $250-$350 computers, 1GB on the $350-$750 and varing amounts on the others.


Unlike you, I'm competent. Other then the reformat I did when replacing harddrives, the last time I reinstalled XP was almost 2 years ago, when I changed OSes.



The P3 was introduced in 1998, 9 years is an eternity. 9 years before the P3 was the 20MHZ AM386 processors. Maybe they should have kept programming for Windows 3.0 and DOS to keep the people running 386s happy while other people used P2/P3s? 9 years before the AM386 was the 6MHZ 80286, maybe they should have focused on programming for that instead of using what they had.

You sound like an old man puttering around in his 40 year old rustbucket mumbling about how nothing is made like it used to be.



Ah, because other then video, RAM, HD< Mobo, and CPU you need a...? Case/PS are on Hot Deals free AR all the time. What else? CD? Floppy? You didn't list those in your setup.


And hence we can conclude that you're an idiot. A e4300 smokes the archaic P3, The 600GT makes short work of a 9500, the SATA .10 drive easily matches or beats the SCSI drive, and the DDR2 kills the DDR and/or SDRAM both in amount (2GB vs 1GB) and speed.

You keep arguing that processing power doesn't matter when your example is getting killed in every category. Who's the troll?



Huh? What? You said Firefox wasn't bloated at the beginning of this post. Now it is? Perhaps you need to make up your mind.



So your arguments is that you're too lazy to maintain your browser, so you're just going to let it load 20+ tabs then whine that it's using memory? I've had 200+ tabs open, never more then 5 at a time since I opened Firefox almost 16 hours ago. It is currently using a mind-numbinb 82,142K.

Here's an idea. Stop using Firefox. Stop whining that people who work to produce FREE SOFTWARE are sitting in a cubicle producing better faster code so you can pinch pennies. Or better yet, just do us all a favour and stop posting.

Really, just stfu I just can't understand why I keep feeding a troll such as yourself.

Firefox has memory leaks, ok? Memory leaks, bloat, what ever, it doesn't really matter.

 

[osalcido]

firefox has been getting pretty ridiculous... what with spell checker, RSS reader, download manager, phishing protection, its hard to know if i downloaded a browser or an application suite.

 

[osalcido]

and I hate that it updated itself to 2.0 without fucking notifying me. i know u can turn it off but it should not be on by default. even microsoft didnt do that.

 

[imzjustplayin]

Hmm, I wonder what was Nemesis999 first computer 'it' built and first computer 'it' worked on.

 

[Nemesis999]

Really, just stfu I just can't understand why I keep feeding a troll such as yourself.

You make blatantly contradictory arguments, change your position to whatever makes for the most argumentative stance, and as soon as every single one of your weak points is destroyed you declare the other person a troll and say you're not going to argue any more. Who's the troll here?

Firefox has memory leaks, ok? Memory leaks, bloat, what ever, it doesn't really matter

I would say they matter but since you so rapidly jump between the two it's hard to tell what you're trying to argue.

 

[imzjustplayin]

You make blatantly contradictory arguments, change your position to whatever makes for the most argumentative stance, and as soon as every single one of your weak points is destroyed you declare the other person a troll and say you're not going to argue any more. Who's the troll here?

I don't change my view points, I may use words interchangeably but that doesn't mean my opinion has changed.

 

[imzjustplayin]

You make blatantly contradictory arguments, change your position to whatever makes for the most argumentative stance, and as soon as every single one of your weak points is destroyed you declare the other person a troll and say you're not going to argue any more. Who's the troll here?



I would say they matter but since you so rapidly jump between the two it's hard to tell what you're trying to argue.

Personally, I consider a memory leak and bloat on the same level. You can add features to a program without causing it to run poorly. I can't say Windows XP has memory leaks because the way it performs is fairly consistant, and it's hard to say it's bloated because it does come with good features. That said, the way the features are programmed into the OS is what makes it bloated. To say it has memory leaks would imply that it doesn't let go of memory when it actually does. I see no reason why the features that are in XP couldn't be implemented into Windows NT 4.0 and use the same amount of resources and or slightly more.

Sure you'd have to rework NT 4.0 considerably, making it not NT 4.0 anymore but the idea is to have the footprint of NT 4.0 while having the moderness of XP. If you take out the UI changes of Vista and the annoying UAC, I'd say there are some good features added into vista, but for what you get, the cost in terms of system resources is what makes it not worthwhile. The point I get at when I complain about poorly written programs is that I should be able to do more with more hardware, not less. When a programmer decides to not optimize their code or use extremely high level compilers and just use modules, then it just shows that not only do they not care but that they lack attention to detail. It's this attitude that put GM in the position they are in now with Toyota on top.

Even if you think it's unnecessary and that people are 'too stupid' to know better or that they should just buy another car or whatever a few years down the road, you really shouldn't underestimate them. Sure the the typical consumer won't blatantly point faults but they'll subtly/eventually pick it up and when they see a superior product, they'll pick that instead; sometimes anyway. Even if someone isn't going to have a car for more than 3 years, it's still a good idea to output a quality product because if something goes wrong or they hand down whatever to a friend, sibling, cousin, whomever they'll have to use it and if things go wrong with it if it's even 15 years old, the issues that go wrong with it will definately stick with them.

Here is an example of bad/unacceptable programming. Morrowind, while suppose to be a good, fun game, it ran poorly on a lot of hardware and it requires a really high end system to get acceptable framerates from what I've heard. This is because it was poorly written, this ISN'T acceptable considering the kind of graphics you're getting.

Half Life 2 on the other hand is an example of very good programming. You can play Half Life on a Direct X 6 video card and still get very acceptable picture quality. Not everybody has money for the latest systems and when good software is written to work on older hardware, people notice. This is why I believe attention to detail is important and why I hate sloppy programming.

You may not notice the difference but I sure do and others do as well; heck you may even notice but simply don't care but I wouldn't know.

 

[Hvatum]

I think improving the memory usage of Firefox shouldn't be too hard. It's an open source application, and I don't think people working on it in their free time have been interested in looking at memory usage. But now that this is getting some attention I imagine it will be addressed.

Having alternate memory behaviors might be nice. A conservative one and generous one. Remember, lower memory use would make it feel slower, since it wouldn't cache old web pages in RAM. So when you press the back button ten times you would notice a real delay. RAM is so cheap now, I think the Firefox team made the right choice. Most people can afford more RAM usage in return for increased browsing responsiveness.

Personally I prefer Firefox to use anywhere up to 500M if it will make my browsing feel faster. Things which haven't been accessed in awhile can just be moved onto swap by the OS. No big deal.

 

[imzjustplayin]

I think improving the memory usage of Firefox shouldn't be too hard. It's an open source application, and I don't think people working on it in their free time have been interested in looking at memory usage. But now that this is getting some attention I imagine it will be addressed.

Having alternate memory behaviors might be nice. A conservative one and generous one. Remember, lower memory use would make it feel slower, since it wouldn't cache old web pages in RAM. So when you press the back button ten times you would notice a real delay. RAM is so cheap now, I think the Firefox team made the right choice. Most people can afford more RAM usage in return for increased browsing responsiveness.

Personally I prefer Firefox to use anywhere up to 500M if it will make my browsing feel faster. Things which haven't been accessed in awhile can just be moved onto swap by the OS. No big deal.

The problem is, while that does sound theoretically good, it would appear so that firefox has memory leaks because when you close all but one tab, the memory usage does NOT go down at all, therefore firefox is NOT releasing the information it has stored in memory, thereby being the very definition of a memoryleak; IIRC anyways.

 

[Hvatum]

The problem is, while that does sound theoretically good, it would appear so that firefox has memory leaks because when you close all but one tab, the memory usage does NOT go down at all, therefore firefox is NOT releasing the information it has stored in memory, thereby being the very definition of a memoryleak; IIRC anyways.

You're right. That's another matter though, and it does seem to be getting better. I just think the developers were focused elsewhere (Browsing speed, IE, how long it takes to display a given amount of CSS, was the real focus of Firefox until pretty recently). Now that Firefox has a wicked fast rendering engine they're focusing more on memory management. Firefox for me under Suse 10.2 and Vista doesn't show any memory leak even after days of use.

 

[bbz_Ghost]

*snip* Now that Firefox has a wicked fast rendering engine *snip*

It does? I've got 2.0.0.3 installed with all the FasterFox trimmings and, well... compared to Avant which is my browser of choice, Firefox is dog freakin' slow... interesting. Opera smokes it too in my own testing, and I use a RAMdisk for all my temporary files with all the browsers so any Internet info is sent to RAM and then drawn by the browser.

Very interesting... I keep seeing people say it's a fast browser and in my own experience it simply isn't. Weird...

 

[osalcido]

Steve can post about anything and
You people will argue about anything,lol

"My Internet Feels Kinda Slow Today"

God damn Internet neutrality!
Its a Bug in Windoze!
Shouldve gone with Linux!

 

[Xer0_P0INT_Xer0]

well, heres my view

Internet Explorer crashed randomly ergo i don't like it
Opera is different and the interface is different from both IE and FF ergo it is scary ergo i dont like it
Firefox has great customisability and yet remains simple, solution to memory problem: dont leave firefox running when you are trying to run a game or any other program.

 

[GJSNeptune]

Luckily Steve's headline is a question and not a statement. Of course, that didn't prevent the bout of long quote-and-refute posts.

Me? As long as it's free and has a large community, Firefox has my support 'til the end.