I’ll Say It, Firefox Sucks!

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William T. Foxtrot 6.5.07 / 2am

Hi Arik, I just found your blog by searching “ruby on rails minneapolis” — I’m also from Minneapolis and I’m also a (budding) Ruby on Rails developer. Just thought I’d say hello.

As for Firefox, I use it every day and have no plans to switch. I tried Opera once for a brief period of time, and just found myself going back to Firefox every time I needed to actually get something done. I also like that Firefox is open source, but I can see how that might not be a big deal on most people’s list of important features.

I did compare the memory usage of the two browsers when I tried Opera, and you’re right — the memory usage of Opera seemed to always be less than half of Firefox’s. I’ve never seen Firefox’s usage go anywhere near 500MB though. What OS do you use? I’ve heard that Firefox is much more of a memory hog on Mac as opposed to Linux (which I use) and Windows.

If you are on a Mac, Camino might be worth trying, if you haven’t used it already. I used to run Mac OS X and I mainly used Camino. I can’t remember if it used up a lot of memory, but I do remember thinking it was speedier and more lightweight than Firefox on Mac.

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Alaa Salman 7.29.07 / 9am

Hi.
Just a few notes on Firefox memory consumption.

I totally agree first off, i have had similar experiences but in my case i won’t switch to Opera until they open source their browser.

The memory problems in firefox are related to three issues mainly.
-The javascript interpreter
-Some plugins people normally use. The main culprit being the flash plugin
-Another minor effect about the whole XPCOM architecture

The first problem will be fixed when mozilla uses tamarin’s memory manager and incorporate that into spidermonkey.

The second problem is a well known issue, but i am not sure how they will fix that. They do have some ways you can circumvent the huge memory consumption.

The third problem will be solved when they re-think the whole XPCOM approach and fix a few design issues they have. The whole architecture you know is still the one invented and used at netscape.

All of these problems will be solved in Mozilla 3 platform(at least this is what they promised). So unfortunately this means they will be in Firefox 4.

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juju 11.22.07 / 12pm

I found this blog while searching for “mac osx firefox huge memory usage” because I’m really turning mad with this !

I use Firefox since it ever existed, before I used mozilla, and before netscape. On windows, linux (suse, debian, and now ubuntu) and it just runs so perfectly, but since I go a mac. firefox became a nightmare.. as rails developper I always have a few tabs opened, with the API, some docs and blogs about plugins, my netvibes, my facebook…. and bam…. 1gb memory usage on firefox, everything hangs, crashes.. restart, restore session… but slows down everything, and eventually crashes again..

but I just can’t live without the developper toolbar, and mostly firebug… so I really hope that will be fixed one day !

can’t say firefox sucks, but it really pisses me off 😦

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Dan 4.6.08 / 12pm

After what seems klike forever, I have also given up on Firefox. As an early adopter, I personally converted 30 to 40 people over to Firefox. But over the past six months it has become unbearable. I was getting the XPcom error about once an hour, it locked my entire system and required a hard reboot via the on/off switch. I tried running it in safe mode, disabling all add ons, re-installing Firefox, after the first 50 lock ups I was convinced it was my operating system so formatted the hard drive and reinstalled Windows XP..and still can’t get it to run more than about an hour before it locks up. Even with 4 gigs of ram my machine apparently does not have enough horsepower to run Firefox. Very disappointing!

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enigma 4.10.08 / 7am

I suggest people look for enigma browser and download it from http://store.democratz.org

You can find the link just above the products and you can download it for free.

Engima runs faster than Firefox and you can easily run 32 tabs and not slow down the machine.

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Geneva 5.9.08 / 7am

Since all the computer geeks recommnded Firefox, I tried it and found it so user unfriendly comparer to Explorer, I went back to lack of security and ease of use.
I tried it again later and found it to be just as big of a pain as before.
One simple annoyance is the final straw. Browser history in the nav bar pull down is just whatever you last typed in, not what you actually went to. So Google stays at the bottom of your list and you have to scroll down to pick it up. While GertrudesGardenias website stays at the top like you are going to go there every day. STUPID design. If there is a setting to change it, I don’t even care. Why would it ever be set this way to begin with?

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Game Over 6.20.08 / 3am

Firefox 3.0 is STILL a horrible memory hog. I don’t use FF personally, but this is a total pain in the ass when trying to “do the right thing” in building ajax enabled web apps and minimizing memory usage. Not matter what you do clean up javascript references Firefox just keeps eating more and more memory. Their javascript implementation is unbearably slow compared to anything else even with code specifically optimized for Firefox.

Firefox was great in a political sense, as it brought the web back from the clutches of Microsoft. Unfortunately, as a technology it’s a sad joke. I don’t know what these people who think FF is fast are smoking, in the real world Opera and Safari are light years ahead.

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Alaa Salman wtf?? 7.21.08 / 2pm

Alaa Salman “i won’t switch to Opera until they open source their browser.”WTF ??? lol… So you saying that all the programs you use are open source?? People like you just make me laugh with your narrow minds.

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Gubinsky 7.26.08 / 6am

Ever since Firefox 3 on Leopard OS X the browser is slow slow slow and hangs up frequently. Seems to be taking other apps down with it and I can’t even reboot. Switched to Safari and it’s fast and doesn’t crash or hang. Sad to see Firefox become bloated and slow but it has.

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firefox or IE 8.26.08 / 11am

There is this post that discusses the 10 Reasons Why You Should Not Download FireFox

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Hello 9.17.08 / 11pm

What the hell is wrong with you Firefox people? USE OPERA FOOLS. It’s FREE. Got it? GET OVER the learning curve. Of course you won’t like it as much at first, because you’re not used to it. FIREFOX SUCKS. It sucks in every way, even IE beats it in many areas. WTF? You won’t use Opera because it’s not open source? WHO CARES! You CAN write plugins, you OSS snobs. That’s enough.

Stop drinking the Firefox coolaid and lies. It’s not faster (Opera is). It’s not more secure (Opera is, Firefox has tons of unpatched vulnerabilities). It’s not most compatible (IE is). It’s not standards compliant (Opera is). It’s a memory hog (Opera is much better). It’s slow to startup (IE is faster and even Opera, with no OS integration, is faster).

Firefox is a RELIGION. You know, like those people that most OSS snobs love to hate? Yep, that’s the only thing to call it when you can’t admit that OSS BLOATWARE sucks, and you continue to use it simply because it’s “free and open”. I guess “free and working” like Opera (or even IE, or Safari?) isn’t good enough.

OSS by it’s very nature will always have poor performance, poor reliability, just about poor everything, when it comes to highly complex software like this. Why? Because it takes ALOT of time and investment to create and maintain a quality product. Time and investment that Opera software put into Opera when it was pay-for.

Now get the latest FREE version, get over your picky little concerns, and reap the benefits. Besides if there’s something you don’t like about Opera, good chance there’s a way around it. But you have to give it an actual chance first Geez.

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blah 1.10.09 / 10pm

oprea sucks egg chells

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blah 1.11.09 / 3am

Firefox sucks.

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anon 1.14.09 / 11pm

Works fine on my XP Dell. Use Firefox 2 portable, then hack the FF3 updates away. Besides, The Firefox devs gross about 70 million dollars a year from Google…

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Daniel C. 2.19.09 / 5pm

I’m pretty much fed up with Firefox’s slowness as well, which is why I make Opera my primary browser. I think most people who use Firefox think it is “the” alternative to IE, but there are other standards-compliant browsers that can read any webpage without being a resource hog.

I still have to use Firefox for some business sites that won’t let me log in with Opera because “your browser is not secure”. But they’ll let me use IE! What a joke! Fortunately, the web standards movement has made these sites increasingly rare.

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