Yes, I love Firefox — which self respecting nerd doesn’t?
But like many others, there’s one thing about Firefox — regardless of the version — which I absolutely detest. It curls my toes. It makes my hair stand on end. It makes me … (shudder), hate Firefox.
Its a love-hate sort of thing, I guess. ;)
That “thing”, of course, is how much of a memory hog Firefox is.
Now, I’ve read all kinds of things — it depends on the number of tabs you’ve opened, the kinds of extensions you’re using, and even the entirely specious argument of “well, that’s what you have RAM for!” All of It all may or may not make a difference.
What I DO know (and what makes that argument so specious), is that when it starts taking up 250 - 500 megs of RAM, it starts S-L-O-W-I-N-G things down to an utterly unacceptable rate.
After all, the same behaviour that allows me to use multiple tabs is the same behaviour that allows me to have Messenger, Photoshop, Pando, Mozy, and Picasa open at the same time.
Anyway, I’m glad that with the release of IE7 and all of the hoopla surrounding its release, someone has finally mentioned what I think is the great unmentionable when it comes to these two browsers:
No matter what you think about Internet Explorer it uses less memory. And for me, personally — it also boots up faster, closes faster, and doesn’t crash as often.
Sacriligious? A little. ;)
At the end of the day, there are a whole lot of reasons to chose Firefox, but I’m glad someone has mentioned the unmentionable — because Firefox is far from perfect.
And this “imperfection” has been in Firefox for many many versions.
October 20th, 2006 at 9:31 pm | Permalink
I’ve not seen a test yet, but FF 2.0 RC2 and 3 (just updated to 3 yesterday) don’t seem to hog as much memory as the last version from my use of it, where as the last version of FF…well, you’re 100% right :-)
October 20th, 2006 at 9:49 pm | Permalink
You know, its like the giant elephant in the room that no one likes to talk about it.
I’m glad some other folks have noticed it. ;)
Always a pleasure Duncan,
t
PS I’ll have to try FF2.0 soon … I’m never sure how my favourite extensions will do with the upgrade. Sort of like a wp upgrade. ;)
October 20th, 2006 at 10:00 pm | Permalink
So far all bar one of my favourite extensions worked in FF2, and the one that didn’t I found an alternative for anyway.
October 21st, 2006 at 12:18 am | Permalink
Good to hear it! ;)
One more reason to upgrade, I suppose. I’m keeping my fingers crossed to see if it indeed leaks less memory (although I’m not holding my breath by any means).