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Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

jasonlefkowitz.net

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Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#81

Post by amalcon »

Permit wrote: post #26
fletchowns wrote: post #20

At least with Firefox you don't have to deal with things like this: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=41467 When Firefox dropped http:// at least they gave you the ability to turn it back on!

I'm impressed by the passion with which people want http:// back in their URLs. Perhaps it's tangential to the original thread, but why's it such a big deal?

Because https is still included. It needs to be, so that users know it's a secure connection. This makes https URLs appear more crufty than http URLs. This, in turn, can be used as an excuse to be insecure.

The fewer such excuses there are, the better.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#82

Post by azakai »

aphyr wrote: post #49
azakai wrote: post #38

> Firefox, on Linux at least, is busted. It’s busted so bad that it’s painful to use. And it’s been this way ever since Firefox 3 launched — three years ago. This is an odd statement, considering that many Firefox devs run Linux. I'm running Firefox on Linux right now, and it works great. I guess the author of the article is hitting a specific bug. It isn't a general issue that affects all users of Firefox on Linux.

Sure, the impact of any specific bug is limited--but the gestalt of Firefox is of a development process that values press and feature creep over performance and correctness. I haven't looked back since switching to Chrome. FF ignored obvious bugs for years . X pixmap freeing? Open since 2004. [1] I waited for six years , having to restart my browser every few hours, because it would leak over 2 GB from having a netwo…

> Sure, the impact of any specific bug is limited--but the gestalt of Firefox is of a development process that values press and feature creep over performance and correctness.

I'm not sure if you are just trolling or not. Assuming not, then since Firefox's development is done in the open, I assume you have some evidence for this - meeting notes or such that show that? Or some other evidence?

The evidence to the contrary seems overwhelming. Firefox's main focus in 4.0 was on performance, see arewefastyet.com for JS, and the major rewrite of the graphics system (Layers) that lets it use things like Direct2D on Windows as just two examples. And as a consequence of those huge efforts, Firefox just won Toms Hardware's speed test, beating Chrome, Opera, IE and Safari,

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firefox-7-web-browser,30...

Edit: Looks like I'm being downvoted. Please tell me hacker news isn't deteriorating into reddit, where opposing opinions are downvoted by reflex...

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#83

Post by zokier »

tytso wrote: post #70

The fundamental problem with Mozilla is that it is trying to do database queries in its UI loop, and it wants every single piece of state safely on disk after every single click. This results in a huge amount of disk space to get written to disk as you visit every single click. Now I don't know about you, but if my computer crashes, do I really care if everything up to the last click is safely on disk? I wouldn't car…

I actually was thinking the other day if Firefox performance would be improved if SQLite was swapped to a "real" RDBMS like PostgreSQL (or mySQL).

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#84

Post by kemayo »

jamesgeck0 wrote: post #33
kemayo wrote: post #3

I remember one of my co-workers telling me that Firefox was running great for him now that he'd upgraded from 4GB of RAM to 8GB. It finally wasn't slowly grinding to a halt any time he had more than a handful of tabs open for more than an hour or two. Seemed a bit like Stockholm Syndrome to me.

How long ago was this? There's been a number of memory usage improvements since 3.5. I had 40 tabs open for the better part of last week and didn't notice a performance hit; and I've only got 2Gb RAM.

Earlier this year. Can't remember exactly when. OSX.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#85

Post by tytso »

capnrefsmmat wrote: post #77
tytso wrote: post #70

The fundamental problem with Mozilla is that it is trying to do database queries in its UI loop, and it wants every single piece of state safely on disk after every single click. This results in a huge amount of disk space to get written to disk as you visit every single click. Now I don't know about you, but if my computer crashes, do I really care if everything up to the last click is safely on disk? I wouldn't car…

> The fundamental problem with Mozilla is that it is trying to do database queries in its UI loop, and it wants every single piece of state safely on disk after every single click No, this is not true. Since Firefox 3.5 they have avoided this entirely: https://autonome.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/front-end-performa... This approach has been largely replaced with asynchronous queries off-the-main-thread, since the tempor…

They are using asynchronous queries still, and the problem is that they aren't always asynchronous if there are any long-running queries happening in the background. That's the reason for the hang per the most recent bug.

If temp tables were causing problem, then there's something seriously wrong with SQLlite's in-memory temporary tables (or how they are being used). By definition they shouldn't be blocking...

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#86

Post by hoppipolla »

theshadow wrote: post #43
kemayo wrote: post #3

I remember one of my co-workers telling me that Firefox was running great for him now that he'd upgraded from 4GB of RAM to 8GB. It finally wasn't slowly grinding to a halt any time he had more than a handful of tabs open for more than an hour or two. Seemed a bit like Stockholm Syndrome to me.

I'm running Firefox 7.01 on a 4 year old machine with Ubuntu 11.04. I routinely have 30+ tabs open an never had a problem with speed. Maybe your friend's computer has other woes

These "I have X tabs open" comparisons are very unhelpful. Different sites take hugely different amounts of memory in just the same way that different desktop applications do.

If you want to make a even-slightly quantitative comparison you need to at least start by loading the same set of sites. Then you need to worry about them sending different content (e.g. different adverts) to different browsers.

In the end most people go by metrics like "how responsive does the UI feel", which is fine, although since it's a perception thing it can be influenced by factors other than the actual speed e.g. preconceived notions set by marketing.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#87

Post by DrCatbox »

bad_user wrote: post #71
thaumaturgy wrote: post #47

Now that AdBlock Plus is fully functional in Chrome/Chromium, we've been moving all of our clients -- a few hundred individuals and businesses -- off of Firefox. So far, everybody's been a lot happier with that. Firefox is terrible . It's embarrassing. And, I've completely lost interest in arguing over it anymore. The responses from Mozilla, Asa especially, have either been, "We don't think that's a problem", or some…

Firefox is terrible. It's embarrassing. I do have Firefox occasionally choking, which annoys me as hell, but I'm on Firefox 8. I do get frustrated, but criticizing a software package that you get for freaking free, especially one that you ow so much to, with such a harsh tone really is unwarranted. And it really is free in a not-for-profit way. The Awesome bar that the article mentions really saves you from making us…

Chrome is a product that treats its users like idiots.

Many, many products do that these days.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#88

Post by hoverkraft »

It's endearing that for each comment presenting a criticism of some aspect of Firefox, there's at least one reply from somebody saying, "But /I/ don't have that problem" (see thaumaturgy's top-ranked post).

So great. You don't run into problem x or problem y.

But a LOT of people do. And when I sit down at somebody's computer, and they use Firefox, and they have more than a couple tabs open, it's slow. Inconceivably slow. Especially in light of how snappy Chrome manages to be with a big stack of tabs open.

And then on a modern computer, a nice shiny new computer, things are pausing erratically, and there's lag, and it's slow, and it feels like 2005.

I can hear you leaping to Firefox's defense now: "Sure, but that was only true until 5.323, when they fixed the 'FF is slow as shit' bug!" Or, "yes, but that has never happened to /me/, and I run Firefox on a Pentium I that I spilled a bunch of grape juice on and kick every day."

Congrats, you're either an anomaly, incredibly fortunate, or you limit your number of tabs, restart Firefox regularly, and clear out your history daily. All things that I can assure you, ordinary, non-technical people NEVER DO.

Chrome managed to make a browser that doesn't become unbearably slow under normal usage patterns. Firefox, for all its moral superiority (and I gladly concede that point), has never managed to do that.

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#89

Post by InclinedPlane »

bad_user wrote: post #71
thaumaturgy wrote: post #47

Now that AdBlock Plus is fully functional in Chrome/Chromium, we've been moving all of our clients -- a few hundred individuals and businesses -- off of Firefox. So far, everybody's been a lot happier with that. Firefox is terrible . It's embarrassing. And, I've completely lost interest in arguing over it anymore. The responses from Mozilla, Asa especially, have either been, "We don't think that's a problem", or some…

Firefox is terrible. It's embarrassing. I do have Firefox occasionally choking, which annoys me as hell, but I'm on Firefox 8. I do get frustrated, but criticizing a software package that you get for freaking free, especially one that you ow so much to, with such a harsh tone really is unwarranted. And it really is free in a not-for-profit way. The Awesome bar that the article mentions really saves you from making us…

Free doesn't play into it. Either something is good or it's not. One of the best aspects of OSS is that there are so many examples of products that are every bit as good, if not better than, their commercial competition. If I give you a free durian sandwich you are not obligated to like it or to hold back your criticism, you should be free to say "dude, this tastes like garbage water."

Indeed, that line of reasoning has even less standing in regard to browsers since the top 4 browsers are all free. Encouraging people to stiffle their very real complaints will only serve to lower the quality of firefox, who does that benefit?

Re: Dear Mozilla: Fix Your Damn Browser

#90

Post by shantanubala »

bad_user wrote: post #71
thaumaturgy wrote: post #47

Now that AdBlock Plus is fully functional in Chrome/Chromium, we've been moving all of our clients -- a few hundred individuals and businesses -- off of Firefox. So far, everybody's been a lot happier with that. Firefox is terrible . It's embarrassing. And, I've completely lost interest in arguing over it anymore. The responses from Mozilla, Asa especially, have either been, "We don't think that's a problem", or some…

Firefox is terrible. It's embarrassing. I do have Firefox occasionally choking, which annoys me as hell, but I'm on Firefox 8. I do get frustrated, but criticizing a software package that you get for freaking free, especially one that you ow so much to, with such a harsh tone really is unwarranted. And it really is free in a not-for-profit way. The Awesome bar that the article mentions really saves you from making us…

"Chrome is a product that treats its users like idiots."

I found myself agreeing with some of your points, but that comment was unnecessary. It's just two different design philosophies: Firefox allows extension of the browser itself at the cost of completely-silent upgrades and sandboxing, while Chrome treats extensions like miniature web pages.

I agree that Chrome is a strategic move for Google, but it has made some definite contributions (like V8!) to free software. Not to mention it had a very unique interface when it was first launched (very well designed).

Chrome was part of the reason why Mozilla is hustling to improve Firefox. If anything, appreciate Chrome for giving people more options and placing pressure on Mozilla to innovate.

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