No longer using Firefox

[Crazed Rabbit]

I come to you today from the wonderful world of SRWare Iron, a open source version of chrome that's stripped of google's data mining.

I recently downloaded the latest version of firefox and it's just terrible. Playing media like youtube means a new program - plugin something - that takes up as much memory as firefox. To top it off, watching videos will occasionally cause very hard crashes to a complete restart.

After that happened twice today I started looking for something new and happened upon the Iron browser.

Hopefully it works better. Worryingly, it looks like it starts a new process whenever you open a new tab. The memory usage per tab is 34-63,000 K.

At least no crashes so far.

CR

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Iron sounds like a good alternative without being part of Google's empire (or at least being a sort of semi-autonomous region of it). I'm waiting for Firefox 4 though - I tried an early beta and it seems much faster (though it didn't have half my usual addons...).

Tried Opera but couldn't get into it without my addons.

[caravel]

I recently downloaded the latest version of firefox and it's just terrible. Playing media like youtube means a new program - plugin something - that takes up as much memory as firefox. To top it off, watching videos will occasionally cause very hard crashes to a complete restart.

Odd, you always need a flash plugin (required for all flash including flv) for Mozilla browsers. The only time I have seen flash problems similar to those you describe is under Linux. Are you running Linux/BSD/OSX?

[Beskar]

Iron sounds like a good alternative without being part of Google's empire (or at least being a sort of semi-autonomous region of it). I'm waiting for Firefox 4 though - I tried an early beta and it seems much faster (though it didn't have half my usual addons...).

Just tried the new beta. It looks so pretty. Though it looks very similar to chrome. Is that intentional / is it using chromium?

[naut]

Hmm. Yeh, Firefox seems to have got bloated. I don't run many add-ons and don't use fancy themes, so I'm not sure how that happened. I love Opera, but I can't get used to it, and I can't find a no-script add-on for it, is there one? Chrome... dislike, so Iron-thingy probably won't be up my street. My brother uses Ice Weasel, but I can't see the point. If I use another browser it's Opera.

[Lemur]

Hmm, Iron looks pretty good. I guess I'll DL and check it out. See how it plays with my favorite plugins ...

Worryingly, it looks like it starts a new process whenever you open a new tab. The memory usage per tab is 34-63,000 K.

That's not a bug, that's a feature. Srsly.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Hmm. Yeh, Firefox seems to have got bloated. I don't run many add-ons and don't use fancy themes, so I'm not sure how that happened. I love Opera, but I can't get used to it, and I can't find a no-script add-on for it, is there one? Chrome... dislike, so Iron-thingy probably won't be up my street. My brother uses Ice Weasel, but I can't see the point. If I use another browser it's Opera.

Ice Weasel is Firefox minus the Firefox brand (name, logo etc. etc. cannot be used without Mozilla's explicit permission). The “use a new process per tab” probably means that you visit sites which use Flash/Java/etc.: the idea is that these plugins run in their own process so if a flash or java program crashes (which especially flash programs are wont to do as the flashplugin is not quite as stable as one would like...) the browser is otherwise unaffected.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Just tried the new beta. It looks so pretty. Though it looks very similar to chrome. Is that intentional / is it using chromium?

It's still all it's own code. I think the new look is intentional, which is a little disappointing that they feel they need to jump on the bandwagon. It still feels like it has more interface than Chrome, which is good because Chrome seems too bare to me.

I love Opera, but I can't get used to it, and I can't find a no-script add-on for it, is there one?.

I looked and looked but I couldn't find a good one. There's some sort of crude system that does something like it, but it's not the same as well as having a terrible interface. And the smug Opera fanatics told me that it didn't matter because you can manually disable all javascript on one page at a time. Which isn't what noscript does at all.

[Xiahou]

I'm on FF version 3.6.8 and I don't have any major issues with it. FF+ABP+NS = win

[LeftEyeNine]

Firefox is one big bloatware. I never liked it from the very start, tried so hard to overcome, but just didn't like it in the end.

Google Chrome is my favorite currently. Oh yeah, I could be the Maxthon-monger of the TWOrg, yet their 2.x is a smoking pile of assorted daisies, so I arrived at the hands of Chrome where I'm feeling quite comfortable.

Let's see what that Iron is up to. Sounds promising.

[caravel]

Ice Weasel is Firefox minus the Firefox brand (name, logo etc. etc. cannot be used without Mozilla's explicit permission).

Iceweasel is the Debian GNU/Linux specific version of Firefox, without the logo and branding. The GNU version of Firefox is called IceCat. Both are the same as Firefox.

Firefox started out, light and fast, it's gotten more and more bloated through successive versions.

[vartan]

Iron sounds like a good alternative without being part of Google's empire (or at least being a sort of semi-autonomous region of it). I'm waiting for Firefox 4 though - I tried an early beta and it seems much faster (though it didn't have half my usual addons...).

Tried Opera but couldn't get into it without my addons.

I don't know what everyone is about. I've run IE, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, you name it. I don't know what I'd do without the latest FF beta along with ABP. It runs just fine, and that's just silly all the talk about GUI similarities between Chrome and FF. That's like the dress-related gossip you hear down here on the red carpet. Just silly.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Odd, you always need a flash plugin (required for all flash including flv) for Mozilla browsers. The only time I have seen flash problems similar to those you describe is under Linux. Are you running Linux/BSD/OSX?

Yes, the adobe plugin isn't the problem, I don't believe. I've downloaded it before without an issue. But I downloaded the newest (3.x) firefox, and I believe that's the problem. Whenever I watch video, a new exe shows up in task manager, called "plugin-container.exe", which eats up as much memory as the firefox.exe.

if Firefox 4 is really new code and faster, I'll take a look at it. Though I'll admit I'm not a fan of the minimal GUI of chrome and Iron.

CR

[vartan]

You guys shouldn't worry about 100 MB RAM here and 100 MB RAM there. Don't you people have 2 GB of RAM? That should be plenty, combined with a standard page file.

[caravel]

Yes, the adobe plugin isn't the problem, I don't believe. I've downloaded it before without an issue. But I downloaded the newest (3.x) firefox, and I believe that's the problem. Whenever I watch video, a new exe shows up in task manager, called "plugin-container.exe", which eats up as much memory as the firefox.exe.

if Firefox 4 is really new code and faster, I'll take a look at it. Though I'll admit I'm not a fan of the minimal GUI of chrome and Iron.

CR

plugin-container is simply a means of loading the flash plugin in a separate process, so that when it crashes it doesn't take the whole browser down with it. It's been around since at least 3.6.4 IIRC. When it comes down to memory usage vs stability, the trade off is worth it IMHO.

[vartan]

More than worth it Asai. I remember crashing IE 5.0 so many times...

[Crazed Rabbit]

Except that it isn't stable. I switched from firefox because it kept on crashing while I watched videos. And when I tried to watch videos, the screen and program became sluggish. If it was fast and stable, I wouldn't care if the memory was 600 MB or more.

CR

[caravel]

Interesting CR, I've rarely ever had Firefox/Iceweasel crash and I've been using it since the days when it was called "Phoenix". The times when it has crashed have always been down to some dodgy flash or java.

Good luck with SRWare Iron/Chrome.