What ever happened to firefox being lightweight?

R

Red Squirrel

[H]F Junkie
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Nov 29, 2009
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This is just ridiculous, it seems Firefox is just getting worse and worse every release. Just more and more bloated. Anyone else notice this?

Wonder if a lite version will ever come around the corner. I've thought about taking on such a project.
 
Seems like firefox has gone the "extensible and customizable route". Maybe you should look into Chrome.
 
If you want to talk about lightweight software becoming bloated, lets change the subject to Linux (Ubuntu specifically). The more you try to be like Windows, the more you become it.
 
bigdogchris said:
If you want to talk about lightweight software becoming bloated, lets change the subject to Linux (Ubuntu specifically). The more you try to be like Windows, the more you become it.
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I noticed this too.

I think Windows actually boots faster then Ubuntu now. I thought they were putting essence on boot time, but I recently tried the latest and I could not believe how slow at booting up it was. A good 30 seconds or so. It was not a high end machine (Core2Duo) but still. That's with no other apps installed so nothing extra starting up.

I'm hoping to eventually switch to Linux, but still need to give it some time, and I hope it gets better and not worse. Sadly, Linux GUIs freeze up too. You'd think they could do way with that. It's 2010. GUIs have froze and locked up since like 1995, you'd think by now someone, either MS, or the open source community, could figure a way to code a GUI that does not lock up.
 
Just your typical, yet normal software lifecycle. You start out with something lean and fast, then one by one features are added until it's a bloated pig. Eventually a streamlined, "lite" edition is branched off and the whole cycle starts over again.


Anyone remember when Nero Burning ROM wasn't a big, fat, bloated "suite" and all you could with it was burn CDs?
 
Haha yep, that cycle seems to be present in most software. You'd think they could manage to put in the features while still keeping it efficient. FF was going on the right route with the extensions idea that way you only put features you actually want with potential performance sacrifice, but even with no extensions, or only a few, it's still bloated and slow.
 
My Firefox folder is about 56MB in size, it's about as fast as it was when I first started using 3.x at release, and has been updated with each release in the same folder since that 3.x original release, currently sitting at 3.6.8, with 22 addons installed. What's bloated about it?
 
GushpinBob said:
Anyone remember when Nero Burning ROM wasn't a big, fat, bloated "suite" and all you could with it was burn CDs?
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Yep. Thing used to be a quick CD burning download, now its like a 2GB suite of useless software.
 
Dion said:
Firefox has gotten nothing but faster for me.
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me too.

furthermore, after all these recent security woes, I dont think I'll switch off firefox + noscript for a while --infact I think I'd better make a donation to the noscript guys a priority.
 
GushpinBob said:
Just your typical, yet normal software lifecycle. You start out with something lean and fast, then one by one features are added until it's a bloated pig. Eventually a streamlined, "lite" edition is branched off and the whole cycle starts over again.


Anyone remember when Nero Burning ROM wasn't a big, fat, bloated "suite" and all you could with it was burn CDs?
Click to expand...

Haha,
You could even say, just like life... you start young and fast, smart etc, and then you add experience to your life, and a few pounds.. and you end up like a bloated pig.
 
Bahamut said:
My Firefox folder is about 56MB in size, it's about as fast as it was when I first started using 3.x at release, and has been updated with each release in the same folder since that 3.x original release, currently sitting at 3.6.8, with 22 addons installed. What's bloated about it?
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It's true it does not use much disk space, but ram and cpu on the other hand... if you leave it open long enough it will be using almost a GB of ram. I've seen it use like 900MB. It's just overall slow at starting up too, and sometimes even rendering.. At least compared to when it first came out. IE opens way faster then FF. I often find myself using IE for a quick google search since I can have it opened and ready to use in under 5 seconds while firefox takes a good 30 seconds to load, and that's on any PC I've used it on.
 
Firefox - in my experience - does not have a memory leak issue, it never has in the many instances and builds I've used over the years, and I have a tendency to reboot infrequently on my primary machine, maybe once a week but typically not even that frequently. My current uptime is about 7.5 days at this moment and the particular instance of Firefox I'm using to post this response has been running about 95% of that time, RAM usage is as follows:

Working Set: 123MB
Peak Working Set: 316MB
Memory (Private Working Set): 91MB
Commit Size: 98MB

And that's with zero files cached on the hard drive, all data cached in RAM, and Firefox itself running from RAM (it's on a RAMdisk since it's the portable version but that has no bearing on anything at all). At one point or another I've had 40+ tabs open, with a wide variety of content including Flash videos (multiple ones loaded simultaneously for playback but paused), and of course I've got those 22 addons installed and operational as well.

It simply doesn't have memory leaks as most people lay claim to. In my experience, when someone notices excessive memory usage (when it happens for them) it's because of Flash or some errant plugin that has basically shit itself but not because of Firefox itself. Seems like I post this same stuff almost weekly nowadays because that's about how often some complaint about Firefox being bloated comes up.

It's not, and it doesn't, and that's about all I can say about it. If it does in other people's specific situations/configurations, then I'd point a finger and say something is borked in their configurations someplace... guess I must be fortunate or something 'cause I never have such problems at all. Weird.
 
Then why is it that yesterday my firefox was using around 90MB of ram, now it's using 128MB of ram. It just grows. This is at work, so no flash videos or anything. I will close it and reopen and the ram usage will probably go down. Thats with one tab open. I had tabs open but I closed them, the ram usage does not go down. In fact, it went up. It was at 119MB before I closed the tabs.

Edit: Closed it, came back here, it's now at 53MB of ram.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Then why is it that yesterday my firefox was using around 90MB of ram, now it's using 128MB of ram. It just grows. This is at work, so no flash videos or anything. I will close it and reopen and the ram usage will probably go down. Thats with one tab open. I had tabs open but I closed them, the ram usage does not go down. In fact, it went up. It was at 119MB before I closed the tabs.

Edit: Closed it, came back here, it's now at 53MB of ram.
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Browsers do all kinds of caching that's not released when you close the tab. And, some memory used by plug-ins is never cleared until you close the browser. This shit builds up after a while.

Firefox now puts plug-ins in their own process. But, that comes with some overhead that really causes performance issues if you don't have a lot of memory. But, you can kill the plugin container process without killing Firefox and it will release all the memory. You can also turn this off to make Firefox behave like it used to. Just set the ipc stuff to false in about:config.

If you want a browser that clears things up completely when you close a tab, use Chrome. This is even great for older systems. (On older systems though, you just can't open a lot of tabs at once, but that can be an acceptable trade-off)

In Opera, you can cut down on the caching by turning off the memory cache in "Ctrl + F12 -> advanced -> history" and by clearing the list of closed tabs a lot, and by opening stuff in private tabs. But, it's nowhere near as close as having tabs and plug-ins in separate processes.
 
I never had an excessive memory usage issue with Firefox either and i've been using it since early 2005. I recall all the complaints about the memory leaks a few years back and I would always check the memory usage out on my own machine and never noticed it being out of line, at least IMO. It's crashed maybe five times in the same amount of years, I can't complain. Also it opens quickly on my system and other systems I have installed it on. Still my favorite browser five years later.

Don't know what the fuss is about.
 
The only extension I use is noscript and youtube downloader, could maybe one of these be the culpit? I'm obviously not the only one having these issues, yet some people don't have them at all. So maybe there is one extension or setting that causes it, or something. It seems to be very inconsistent though. Right now I'm at home and it's using 60MB after opening a fresh browser. 60MB is still a LOT of data when you think about it. What in the world could it need to keep in memory? This page for example is 24KB, what else could a browser need to put in memory other then the page it's displaying? Plugins are code, so I can't see why plugins themselves would use memory.
 
GushpinBob said:
Just your typical, yet normal software lifecycle. You start out with something lean and fast, then one by one features are added until it's a bloated pig. Eventually a streamlined, "lite" edition is branched off and the whole cycle starts over again.


Anyone remember when Nero Burning ROM wasn't a big, fat, bloated "suite" and all you could with it was burn CDs?
Click to expand...

Yes. I loved Nero back in the day. I hate it now.
 
I'm still using Nero 7 Lite, have been since the day it appeared about 3+ years ago, never had issues, works in any version of Windows (32 or 64 bit) and is quite tiny compared to the monstrosity that Nero has become.

Hell, there's even a completely free ad-driven version of Nero nowadays, I gave that a shot a few weeks ago but it was like 450MB+ to download and install so that was gone 10 minutes after it was installed and Nero 7 Lite went right back on... ;)

I use Nero primarily for burning DVD videos (VIDEO_TS folders for proper DVD playback) and ImgBurn for most everything else.
 
Considering that we now have machines with 2gb+ of ram, I don't think the fact that Firefox now uses 100mb+ of ram rather routinely is really that big of a deal, but whatever. :eek:
 
I don't mind nero, but I only use like 10% of it. I don't see why they have so many options and buttons. I actually prefer CD Burner XP for it's simplicity but there are some things it wont do such as burn video DVDs so I use nero for that. Only thing I hate about nero is when you are done burning it auto ejects the CD, which locks up the machine for a good 10 seconds (that's more of a windows thing). I would rather it not eject, so I can eject it at my own leisure, like before a bathroom break. I don't get why windows has so much trouble with CDs though. Even inserting a CD has always made it lock up for a bit especially when it's an unreadable disc. Wonder if they fixed that in windows 7.
 
Ubuntu still boot fast until you get all of the updates that pretty much break all of my VM's:(.

A native install, any linux distro I've ever used basically boots really quick.
 
All the shit they added to it. No platform can stay lightweight otherwise it's dead, things have to bee added as technology evolves, GPU rendering, HTML 5, more and faster Javscript, plug-ins, etc.
 
zero2dash said:
Considering that we now have machines with 2gb+ of ram, I don't think the fact that Firefox now uses 100mb+ of ram rather routinely is really that big of a deal, but whatever. :eek:
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Just because computers are better is no excuse to skip on application efficiency. The whole point of faster computers is to be able to do more, faster, but the way most software is going today, a top of the line computer with today's software is not really any faster then a top of the line computer in 1995 with 1995 software on it. Computers have gotten faster, software has gotten slower and more bloated. Windows is a prime example of this. The requirements for Vista/7 are insane when compared to windows 2000. They basically do the same task, why should one use so much more resources?

The issue with firefox is not just the huge memory leak issue, but the fact that it is much much slower then before. They just added tons of junk processing that probably could be written more efficiently, or not even put there at all.
 
heatlesssun said:
All the shit they added to it. No platform can stay lightweight otherwise it's dead, things have to bee added as technology evolves, GPU rendering, HTML 5, more and faster Javscript, plug-ins, etc.
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I'm sure there are ways to add those things without affecting the entire application at all times though.

For example, if loading a page with no HTML5, then the fact that the browser supports it should have zero effect on it's performance durring that load - there's no HTML5 code to process.

Plugins should also be ran as their own process as they are basically external applications which can't really be trusted to be stable, that way they don't hog CPU cycles from the browser if they are bloated themselves. Flash is real bad for getting firefox to grind to a halt. While it's not directly the browser's fault, it should handle it better.
 
GushpinBob said:
Just your typical, yet normal software lifecycle. You start out with something lean and fast, then one by one features are added until it's a bloated pig. Eventually a streamlined, "lite" edition is branched off and the whole cycle starts over again.
Click to expand...

Sums it up perfectly.
As time goes on, and software bloats up....our hardware has gotten more powerful. Multi-core processors and at least several gigs of RAM, it doesn't bother me that Firefox is using around 300 megs of RAM right now.
 
Red Squirrel said:
snip
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I agree with your points but you're fretting over a hundred+ MB of memory use on a computer with 1,000+ MB of memory available. Fx could and should trim the fat but there are alternatives out there.

If you want something leaner, try Chrome. The issue I have with Chrome is half the Fx extensions are not available in Chrome, some of the ones that are don't work properly (ABP especially), and I get pop unders in Chrome as well on some sites. If the choice is bloat of Fx and happy browsing or the lean of Chrome and missing a lot of features I'm used to, well I'll deal with the fat of the stuffed fox. :D

FWIW I don't have issues with Fx "ram leak" anymore, I haven't had problems with that in the last few versions on the Windows side, actually. Seems like they fixed that pretty well. Obviously YMMV. Maybe Fx4 will be leaner to your liking, however I know that the way they changed the default theme up and added that stupid "Firefox" button they really uglied it up. I'm just hoping I can keep using Chromifox Basic once 4 comes out.
 
zero2dash said:
If you want something leaner, try Chrome. The issue I have with Chrome is half the Fx extensions are not available in Chrome, some of the ones that are don't work properly (ABP especially), and I get pop unders in Chrome as well on some sites. If the choice is bloat of Fx and happy browsing or the lean of Chrome and missing a lot of features I'm used to, well I'll deal with the fat of the stuffed fox. :D.
Click to expand...

Also sums it up perfectly. I still use FF because of ABP....and I have some compact firefox theme which gives me a very skinny bar up top.

The latest darling browser is Chrome....but like others..give it time, it too will bloat up over time.
 
zero2dash said:
I agree with your points but you're fretting over a hundred+ MB of memory use on a computer with 1,000+ MB of memory available. Fx could and should trim the fat but there are alternatives out there.

If you want something leaner, try Chrome. The issue I have with Chrome is half the Fx extensions are not available in Chrome, some of the ones that are don't work properly (ABP especially), and I get pop unders in Chrome as well on some sites. If the choice is bloat of Fx and happy browsing or the lean of Chrome and missing a lot of features I'm used to, well I'll deal with the fat of the stuffed fox. :D

FWIW I don't have issues with Fx "ram leak" anymore, I haven't had problems with that in the last few versions on the Windows side, actually. Seems like they fixed that pretty well. Obviously YMMV. Maybe Fx4 will be leaner to your liking, however I know that the way they changed the default theme up and added that stupid "Firefox" button they really uglied it up. I'm just hoping I can keep using Chromifox Basic once 4 comes out.
Click to expand...

Actually I had switched to chrome but it has too many weird bugs, like vanishing check boxes (very annoying when doing web coding and you're trying to test your own software) but yeah it was way leaner, and I liked how when (not if lol) flash crashed, it did not take the whole browser with it. I may retry chrome again once it's more polished.

I'll wait to see what FF4 will have to offer though, maybe they'll finally fix the memory leak. They are still ahead of IE in my taste. It only took IE 8 versions to support PNGs, and they still don't work correctly. :p
 
Thats because all of nero's users use a different 10% of their features.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/09.html

Red Squirrel said:
I don't mind nero, but I only use like 10% of it. I don't see why they have so many options and buttons.
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The ratio of hardware to software with respect to speed has not slowed down, and we can do a hell of a lot more with today's computers. You just aren't seeing the whole picture, and you are not seeing the vast majority of new stuff you are constantly using.

I can do considerably more with my workstation now than I could do with my workstation 5 years ago. Today I can compile and execute programs that back then were quite complex within seconds, and can immediately debug issues. What took me 15 minutes to do then I can do in about 30 seconds now. I used to have to send complex SPICE simulations and data analysis programs to the supercomputing cluster and get results later in the day. Now I can run them on my PC and have the results in a few moments. I not only save the time of processing, but now I don't have to prepare my stuff for the cluster and I don't have to re-remember what I was doing once I get the results back. And as a result, the size of data sets processed and the complexity of simulations have increased. It still takes just as long today to run a simulation because the level of complexity I can now handle in my head has increased through the power of the faster computers.

You haven't realized this because your standard of complexity in the tasks you are performing and your expectations have increased along with the hardware. You expect your software to run faster, but it doesn't because its newer and is tackling increasingly complex problems. Back in 1995 web pages were just text and pictures. Today you expect much more. Back in 1995 having a couple albums of music on your computer was a big deal. Now its not uncommon to have hundreds or thousands of songs. Back in 1995 your computer probably wasn't even networked with anything beyond a dialup modem.

If you want speed and no "bloat", its easy: just go ahead and install software from 2000 and see how you like it.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000023.html

Red Squirrel said:
Just because computers are better is no excuse to skip on application efficiency. The whole point of faster computers is to be able to do more, faster, but the way most software is going today, a top of the line computer with today's software is not really any faster then a top of the line computer in 1995 with 1995 software on it. Computers have gotten faster, software has gotten slower and more bloated. Windows is a prime example of this. The requirements for Vista/7 are insane when compared to windows 2000. They basically do the same task, why should one use so much more resources?

The issue with firefox is not just the huge memory leak issue, but the fact that it is much much slower then before. They just added tons of junk processing that probably could be written more efficiently, or not even put there at all.
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Red Squirrel said:
Just because computers are better is no excuse to skip on application efficiency.
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I agree 10000%. Unfortunately, devs are using that as an excuse.

Part of that is the false assumption that everyone (or even the majority) are using a brand spanking new computer with lots of memory, lots of hard drive space, a fast video card and the latest OS.

Make things run apeshit wild on old hardware and see how fast things run on new hardware. Then, *if* there's a major slowdown on newer hardware caused by making something fast on old hardware, adjust things and favor the newer hardware if desired. But, also note that it's the older hardware that usually needs the better efficiency, not the new hardware, so favoring the new hardware is not always wise.

It's not enough for QA and users to test on old hardware and report back. Need to have the devs do the little testing they do on old hardware as an eye-opener. I love the "It works fine on my dev machine" comments.
 
But people want "fancier, more features, more bells and whistles, thicker and sweeter icing on the cake".

Competition will draw the crowd to the latest flashiest product. If you don't keep up with, or ahead of, your competition...your users will go elsewhere.

Lets look at todays current crop of first person shooter games, and the interactive 3d environment you play in, versus the very basic 2 1/2D or primitive blocky 3D world from Duke Nukem and Quake 1.
 
It seems perfectly light weight to me. I have mine loaded with extensions and it's rocket fast.
 
I started using Opera many years ago. FF has been on a downfall for a long time, even during its glory days. I use Chrome now. People always say as a shun, does it have noscript or adblock and I say no it does not but lets be real, how much attention do I really pay to ads? Zero.

The one extension I do use is LastPass and they have had that for all the major browsers for years (well not Opera if you consider that a major browser, I think Opera the company are the only ones who consider themselves major competitors).
 
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There are three things I would like to say....

1) Chrome uses more memory than Firefox.

2) If Firefox takes longer than a second to load then your system is slow or misconfigured.

3) 3D acceleration in Firefox 4 Beta 4 is the shiznit.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Just because computers are better is no excuse to skip on application efficiency. The whole point of faster computers is to be able to do more, faster, but the way most software is going today, a top of the line computer with today's software is not really any faster then a top of the line computer in 1995 with 1995 software on it. Computers have gotten faster, software has gotten slower and more bloated. Windows is a prime example of this. The requirements for Vista/7 are insane when compared to windows 2000. They basically do the same task, why should one use so much more resources?

The issue with firefox is not just the huge memory leak issue, but the fact that it is much much slower then before. They just added tons of junk processing that probably could be written more efficiently, or not even put there at all.
Click to expand...

yeah ok, use windows 2000 from now on, let me know how that goes.
 
gtg465x said:
There are three things I would like to say....

1) Chrome uses more memory than Firefox.

2) If Firefox takes longer than a second to load then your system is slow or misconfigured.

3) 3D acceleration in Firefox 4 Beta 4 is the shiznit.
Click to expand...

1) That's a given.

2) I've got a Core 2 Duo at 2.4 GHz with DDR3 1066 dual channel RAM on a 7200 rpm SATA II hard drive... but Firefox is entirely in RAM and loads from RAM and caches from RAM and... well, it doesn't touch the hard drive at all and when I start it cold after a reboot it takes 3 seconds so, this machine ain't slow by any meaning of the word. So if I'm running Firefox from a RAMdisk and it doesn't load in 1 second so I seriously doubt it'll load in 1 second (cold start) on any machine out there given how I use it.

3) It's not 3D acceleration, it's Direct2D writes, 2D acceleration of the content on the pages, most notably the text.
 
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