The Inefficiency Of Firefox

[sam fisher]

I know firefox is supposed to have superior speed and stability compared to IE. But using the IE Beta 2 rendering engine, via firefox I get, on average, .250 seconds for the rendering of a page. Where as, with firefox, even with the fasterfox rendering tweaks, that give me a 25-50% increase in the speed of page loads compared to before. It takes, on average, 1.250 seconds to render the page.

The tests I did were using cached files so it was nothing to do with my internet connection speed etc.

Why is firefox so much slower?

 

[Mudi]

Out of curiosity, what version of Firefox are you running, and what extensions? Page rendering is very fast on my computer...

 

[sam fisher]

Version is 1.5.0.5.

I can't be bothered to list my extensions but I have 13, among them are faster fox and IE Tab.

 

[Vimacs]

well, firefox is pretty memory hungry, try opera.

 

[craigix]

Also on firefox: The crazy pause when clicking to download a file.

The URL bug when it fails to auto complete and uses google to take you to a website which matches your half typed ULR - and while doing this the stop button does not work, so you are going to the mystery website no matter what you do.

The popup blocker seems to be easily beaten by java code, resulting in popups appearing even when firefox said it had stopped a popup.

Shit.

My advice is also: Use Opera.

 

[sam fisher]

So.

IE is bashed and people are told to you firefox.

Firefox is bashed and people are told to use Opera. Due to me never turning off my old pc and using hibernation. I had firefox on long enough to occupy just under 300 megs of memory. It must of been 6 months or so!

 

[grahf]

I love Opera, ive been using it since version 2.5 or 3.0, around there.

 

[Shikaku]

There is a 2.0 you know... try that?

 

[Blah]

I've had no problems with Firefox (1.5.0.5), although I have noticed its a bit faster in linux (I've tried Ubuntu and DSL) than in windows. Rendering time is a little (not a big deal) slow (who cares when the dialup is slower), but thats the price you pay for stuff like SVG rendering and such.

Extensions:

DOM Inspector 1.8.0.5
Talkback 1.5.0.5
Adblock Plus 0.7.1.1
Adblock Filterset.G Updater 0.3.0.4
Dutchblock 0.31 (blocks ads, not the Dutch)
DownThemAll! 0.996.2 (great download manager)

Only ad I've seen so far is the www.GP2X.de one, but that *may* change as I've just installed Java Runtime Environment.

 

[Wite_Noiz]

I say: Each to their own.

I've had no problems with Firefox since I started using it from 0.7, but I wouldn't make other people use it if they're happy with *shudders* IE.

I tried Opera, but I didn't like the shortcut keys and couldn't find a way to change them.

 

[clarky2o2o]

I never really had a "major"problem with firefox. however on Windows vista (on on now) I cant load up ie7 or fix it.


so i got no choice (dont like opera or the others)


edit: Saying that I cant install active X on it.

 

[Rayek]

I have no problem with Firefox at all, other than the occasional old-page-not-formatted-correctly, where i visit a page that's years old and down at the very bottom in tny letters, it says 'Works best with Internet Explorer 5'.

From someone who was using Maxthon up until a year ago... Firefox is fine.

 

[Goity]

It's not a bug- it's a feature!

EDIT: Although the cache Firefox uses can be really daft at times.

 

[LHC]

Opera is lovely.

 

[RiX0R]

From someone who was using Maxthon up until a year ago... Firefox is fine.

Maxthon is great!

It has two features I've become so addicted to I can't do without anymore: one is double-clicking to close a tab, and the other is that the buttons on the "quicklinks bar" (for lack of a better name) open a new tab by default. I won't even consider Firefox until it can do both of these things.

And of course it loads faster than Firefox, since it's IE-based.

Only thing that sucks about it is the history pane. Damn near unusable .

 

[iignotus]

From someone who was using Maxthon up until a year ago... Firefox is fine.

It has two features I've become so addicted to I can't do without anymore: one is double-clicking to close a tab, and the other is that the buttons on the "quicklinks bar" (for lack of a better name) open a new tab by default. I won't even consider Firefox until it can do both of these things.

Uh, firefox does (or more precisely, can do) both of those things :lol:



Firefox and Opera. Use them both, and have no reason to use anything else.

 

[Mudi]

I'm pretty sure you can do both of those things with one of the extensions. In any case I just use the "TabX" extension that puts a close button on each tab.

*bah, new page that I didn't see, of course*

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

I think someone already said this, but a browser is down to personal preference. I have tried Netscape Navigator, Opera, Firefox, IE6/IE7 and Mosaic. I have settled on Firefox, as I have found it the quickest, most stable and easiest to use of the bunch. I'm not stating a fact, it's just my opinion as I happen to like firefox.

Opera came a close 2nd but I hated that damned toolbar thing that kept opening on the side cluttering up my browser space. the latest beta of IE7 is a good 3rd but it's printing features for some of our works applications are useless. Firefox does a much better job on that score. Netscape browsers seem to be bloatware and slooow, which is surprising as once upon a time I remember Netscape and IE being the two main browsers. Mosaic is just naff.

Unfortunately I have to have all of these on my system for testing purposes :huh: .

 

[nickspoon]

I'm running Ubuntu Dapper, so FF comes as standard. I used FF on Winblows too, and because the interface is the same, I'm perfectly happy with it. It can be a bit slow and memory-hungry at times, but I can live with that, and it's better on Linux than it is on Windows.

Although this topic has reminded me to try Opera for Linux... apt-get, here I come

 

[LHC]

Opera came a close 2nd but I hated that damned toolbar thing that kept opening on the side cluttering up my browser space.

I don't like browser wars but I think it may be worth pointing out that it's really easy to turn this off.