The Joel on Software Discussion Group

I have been having problems with FireFox ever since upgrading to v2.0. This is not just on one computer, but on 4 difference PCs/laptops that I use on a regular basis. Maybe it's the plugins I use? I don't know. Is it me, or is FF2.0 barely an improvement on the previous release, yet crashes more frequently and consumed way too much memory!!? To me it appears a real waste of a major release.

And of-course, MS is out to capitalize on this. IE7 is not bad at all, and after years of not using IE, I am now actually getting happy to use it again. It stays at about 20-25K on my PC, as compared to FF with up to 90K, it doesn't have sudden moments of deep thought (30 sec of dead-time when opening certain pages), and it doesn't crash.

So, what does this say about the state of FF, or am I alone here with these problems?

On other matters, while I do like IE7, it really annoys me due to a lack of plugins. This is a real annoyance, especially as I had the Flash blocker plug-in in FF, which I think is a necessity these days.

BTW, please excuse typos above (several of them), but I just got back from a long flight and can't think straight.

While FF2 has still a nasty memory leak issue (AFAIK), there is also a user issue. It is tempting to install any possible add-on and possibly not surprizing, that the 'light-weight' browser turns in some bloated, slow, unstable and monstreous thing.
This said, I'm pretty satisfied with FF, even after looking in IE7.
Give Zen a try, and rethink the things (add-on's) really necessary for you.

>30 sec of dead-time when opening certain pages

Sound like Firebug. Have you got Firebug installed. Try disabling it.

At the risk of this turning into a 'my favorite X' thread.
I always recommend Opera - I can't see any advantages Firefox has over it now that Opera is free.

Sometimes at work I have to view very large web pages. Firefox often chokes on these, sometimes crashing all together. IE 6, OTOH, handles these pages very well.

Firefox also has a much higher start up time on my computer.

Other than that, Firefox for me is better.

Sure, you can start using IE, after Five(5) years of silence it tries to catch up with Firefox now, but are sure there will not be another 5 years of silence from MS updating IE?

Plus - it still has terrible ActiveX options features. They have not changed the UI since IE 5.0, I think. How can I easy stop anything except JavaScript on IE? There is no such thing .

Between, if you really had a problem with FF you would  try to post some pages you have problems with it. You might try uninstalling some plugins you have. You might try to search why this happens to you. But what did you do? You start nonsense complaining!

I still prefer Firefox for my web browser, but I agree that there are many more memory leaks in version 2.0 than in the 1.x realm.  The only extension that I use is the ForecastFox, but even if I don't load it, there are still memory problems, where firefox is taking up to 130mb of ram.  I would assume that it is something to do with flash, but it's tough to tell. 

I wouldn't tell the poster to take their complaints elsewhere, because there definitely is something wrong in the newest version of Firefox that needs to be fixed.  I mean if you go to one website in Opera and IE6 or 7 and there are no such issues, but if you go into Firefox and there are issues, then I see this as a problem that needs to be fixed in Firefox.

+1 to the OP.
I've had most of these problems with my FF too. I actually thought it is just me with these problems!

>30 sec of dead-time when opening certain pages

  I get this too, but only on the JOS site.  I suspected a subtle MTU or TCP Window scaling problem on the JOS server setup, but every time I load WireShark the problem disappears.

  This was FF 1.5 and FF 2.0 with no plugins.

  I haven't tried it in IE to see if it has the same problem.  I just haven't spent much time tracking it down...

I was the last holdout at our office. 8 folks and one (me) hadn't yet gone to FireFox as the primary browser. Silly me <grin>.

But ...

Last week I gained a defector due to unspecified "issues with FireFox" and "Hey! That IE7 ain't so bad after all ...".

Now there's two of us.

You ain't the only one having problems.

"I always recommend Opera - I can't see any advantages Firefox has over it now that Opera is free."

What prevents me from moving to Opera is that it lacks a JavaScript step-through-code debugging environment. That feature is a big plus for web development.  Having downloaded Opera 9, I'm not aware of such; if I'm wrong then please give me the 411.  Thanks!

I also love Opera. I always found Firefox to be too slow and clunky, and I have to load it up with plugins to do what I do in Opera out of the box. Opera is really, really good these days. And now that it's free without adware it's even better.

After spending many hours chasing down information on various obscure about:config options I finally have FF consuming around 50Mb most of the time.

Out of the box it would like to grow to somewhere in the order of 300Mb+ memory (on my slow and ancient 512Mb PIII) in less than an hour and then to start getting slower and slower and slower...

I was quite happy with FF1.0.3 - until the day I installed FF2 in another separate folder to test something, and it promptly went and murdered all the extensions for my old FF installation - which I then discovered couldn't be reinstalled as they all want FF1.5+ now and the older versions are hard to find.

I love and recommend Opera, as well... but I have to make note of what Green Eggs mentions:  The plugin selection for Firefox is unmatched.  The developer tools, as well.  Firefox is almost a requirement for JS development.

Opera has most of the 'plugins' you want built into the core.  But if you can't hack a feature in using User Javascript (Greasemonkey to the rest of you), then you probably just don't get the feature.

I use Firefox on a wide range of PCs. Not only do I -almost- never see crashes, the memory consumption between IE and Firefox is extraordinarily similar (with 4 tabs open right now in Firefox, and a long history of in-memory cached pages given that it's trying to use the memory I have available to optimize my experience, it's using 90MB. I just opened IE, and with no history and simply opening the same 4 tabs, it uses 70MB). The "memory leak" meme is ridiculous -- Firefox uses available memory, no more leaking memory than SQL Server does (e.g. SQL Server will keep using more and more if it's available, releasing it when other apps start demanding memory). I'm sure Firefox has minor real memory leaks, but the constantly repeated "Firefox memory leak" thing is just irritating.

Firefox is astronomically more extensible than IE, and is far richer featured out of the box, so yes, lots of people attribute every malady to Firefox when it could be extensions, etc. They go clucking back to Microsoft where Microsoft can limit your control of your own browser, and again let the browser rust while they continue to try to push Microsoft lock-in alternatives.

Win/Win? No, Lose/Lose.

As an aside, if you don't like Firefox, or if you don't need the extensions, use Opera. IE as a default fallback of laziness just kills this industry (yes, it really does).

> The "memory leak" meme is ridiculous

Hardly:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=specific&order=relevance+desc&bug_status=__open__&content=memory+leak

>>While FF2 has still a nasty memory leak issue

The memory leak has been in the code base since NetScape in 98...its the reason I switched.

Gee, a bunch of user-contributed "bugs" use the common terminology of memory leak. I guess you've proven it.

And note that I'm not refuting the fact that there are many minor memory leaks, as there are in virtually every large scale projects, but what most people are calling a memory leak is absolutely nothing of the sort. It's perpetuating, recursive ignorance.

i have a nasty bug where typing the apostrophe (just did it) starts up quick find and moves focus there.  i have tried every about:config change solution I can find and it seems to come and go. ff also sometimes forgets what the direction keys are for and does nothing.

now.. if i open the tools option box (just did it) and click ok, the ' and direction keys start to work again.  the same behavior affects ctrl+ keys as well.

i have just about had enough with the POS...  may be time to go back to opera.

I was reading a blog/forum last week where folks were discussing Firefox 3 and they were all concerned that Firefox is repeating what Mozilla did, and that is turning into bloatware. They also pointed out why Firefox was started in the first place, and that was to produce a lean browser. I found the discussion interesting in many ways.

Dennis, I'm writing software for more than 10 years (and some reputable one). I think to know, what a memory leak is, because my main language is C++ for the whole time.

And I even recognize quickly (mainly for the habit of insulting people) evangelists unable to deal with criticism, for whatever reason they have...

Periodic bugs with copying and pasting and the apostrophe key suddenly opening the find dialog instead of the slash key doing it are bugs I've noticed. Irritating but a restart sends them away, and somebody above has suggested an even simpler solution.

The memory leak question is interesting. I find that Firefox will go up to 300MB of memory after you've opened about a hundred tabs, but IE would do the same after you had opened a hundred windows, and in both cases the memory never went quite down to what it should. In both cases a restart solves the problem immediately.

I find IE7 much worse on the usability front. The limit of ten visible tabs is a nuisance as I open fifteen when I start firefox, and then load another twenty or more as I flick through the sites and open the links.

I also find firefox 1.5  better than firefox 2. May just be a question of what I'm used to though.

Micha,

>I think to know, what a memory leak is, because my main language is C++ for the whole time.

You've applied your professional experience to the specific bug reports, independently verifying that when people see 100MBs used, it's because of the notorious memory leak?

>and I even recognize quickly (mainly for the habit of insulting people) evangelists unable to deal with criticism

I'm not a Firefox evangelist my friend, and I personally don't -care- how much you might want slam or love-in with Firefox. The fact remains, however, that the memory usage that most obsessive-compulsive taskview-checker people see is the program doing exactly what it's supposed to do. And if it makes them feel better to frequently cycle the app, flushing all buffers, caches and memory mapped files, then more power to them.

It doesn't diminish the fact that it's largely FUD, though.

>> I'm sure Firefox has minor real memory leaks, but the constantly repeated "Firefox memory leak" thing is just irritating.

Wow, so just because you never experienced the leak, it doesn't exist?  Your customers must love you when they have a problem.

>You've applied your professional experience to the specific bug reports, independently verifying that when people see 100MBs used, it's because of the notorious memory leak?

No and I never said so (you recognized the 'AFAIK' in my first posting, didn't you?). Remains the fact, that also my FF's memory consumption increases after long use, be it for some add-on's or FF's  core.
But please, don't try to put me in the area of the unreliable, because I didn't checked any bug report myself. Did you so and did you provide your insights here? 

>It doesn't diminish the fact that it's largely FUD, though.

Thank you for proving my point.

">30 sec of dead-time when opening certain pages.  I get this too, but only on the JOS site. "

JOS has a bunch of really flaky JavaScript in it. Sometimes I start typing and it will just wipe out what I've typed. Other times I will click a hyperlink and it will bring up the job board listing from the top of the screen instead. I think Joel is just trying to be a little too clever instead of giving us a simple forum. Heck, the rest of it is certainly made with a simplistic design. You'd think that he wouldn't spend so much time on behind the scenes trickery that just screws things up.

RE: SlackerHacker's problems with FF

I hate to break it to you, but Opera's got the same focus problem from time to time.  If you ASSUME that you're in a text box and start typing away, Bad Things will happen.

Opera will assume you're hitting hotkeys, and before you know it, you've totally messed up the rendering with no idea how to get back.  Your graphics are turned off, you've selected some bizarre CSS, and you're now at 120% zoom on a print-preview.

It is even worse because of the Eolas patent workaround.  You click on a field in a flash applet, but you haven't activated focus on the field, you've only activated the applet.  You might have to click twice to be SURE you've actually got the keyboard focus in the right place.

Not that I'm trying to steer you away -- as I've said plenty of times, I love Opera, and I think everybody should use and enjoy it -- but I think you need to be careful about your glass house when you start throwing stones around.

d>No and I never said so (you recognized the 'AFAIK' in my first posting, didn't you?).

Then how in the world does your C++ experience have anything to do with your statements about Firefox? Why did you feel it necessary to say that?

And yes, I actually -have- put some time into the memory leak issue on Firefox. You see everyone keeps repeating it like a mantra (including claims that it has been around since a code base it didn't even inherit), so I just had to know -- are the developers really so dumb that they can't find and fix what seems to be the most commonly claimed deficiency of Mozilla cum Firebird cum Firefox? I just had to know if they were really that dumb.

Turns out that there isn't actually such a low-hanging fruit "big memory leak" oozing through the code. Turns out that the developers actually have some idea about what they're doing.

>Thank you for proving my point.

That doesn't even make any sense in the context. Weak.

I hate to break it to you, but Opera's got the same focus problem from time to time.  If you ASSUME that you're in a "text box and start typing away, Bad Things will happen."

thanks for the heads up.

i don't ASSume that i am in a textarea or textbox when i have this issue.  i know i am.  i understand that if you are just sitting on the page and hit the hotkeys then the find starts up, but that is not the issue i experience.  perhaps i am misunderstanding your point.

i have never experienced the issues that i am having with ff with opera, granted i have not used opera since i moved form linux back to windoze.

I prefer Opera or Safari.  They do all I need a browser to do, and can run circles around Firefox.  I think it's a good argument for using compiled language (C++) over interpreted language (JavaScript) when performance matters.

Firefox is a shameless pig when it comes to memory.  Some days, it'd grab upwards of 300 MB!  There's just no reason for that.  Yes, yes, I know it can be configured, but it's the point that I *have* to configure it at all that ended up getting to me.  So I went back to IE, specifically to 7. 

It's a decent compromise, and it does crash occasionally (grr), but at least it doesn't bring everything around it to a screeching halt the way FF does.

Firefox 1.5 totally converted me from IE -- I loved it.  But 2.0 completely lost me.  Now I pretty much use it only for the FireBug. :(

Chris

Go back to 1.5. They keep producing updates for it, so I can't see any reason to change to 2.0 until they've got enough extensions sorted out.

Memory goes as you keep opening more and more pages; same problem with IE. In both cases closing the application once a day does the trick.

50 lashes with a wet noodle for the apostrophe / find bug alone.

Switch to IE7.

Actually, for me Firefox 2.0 is much better than previous versions. I use both browser Firefox and IE. I agree that the memory issue that is portrayed by the poster is FUD. It does use a lot of memory (100MB) after 2-4 days of browsing but a quick restart of the browser will fix it, which is a good thing to do anyway because at this point I'll have too many tabs opened.

IE does try to manage its memory usage, I'm guessing by writing it to a file cache, but it will make alt-tabbing to IE slower after not using it for awhile. Especially, while doing a long compile, I prefer to use Firefox.

Oh yeah, and I can't live without my Web Developer, NoScript, and del.icio.us extensions.