Slashdot Mirror

How does IE10 do with the acid tests? Never mind - I'll look for myself . . . .

This link seems to be a little dated, with FF3 and IE8:
http://devseo.co.uk/blog/view/the-acid-3-test-the-latest-browser-results

Another dated comparison:
http://cybernetnews.com/browser-comparison-internet-explorer-firefox-chrome-safari-opera/

Some dude on Youtube claims that IE10 passes with a score of 100 - I'd rather see a review from a reputable source. The video shows him RELOADING a page with the score of 100 - that's not exactly the way to run the test.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgVD7fdyR4o

Wikipedia seems to believe that IE10 passes the acid test:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid3#Internet_Explorer_-_4th_time

Maybe it does - but it was a long time coming!!

However, a group representing the wireless industry was less enthusiastic, arguing the new rules would oversimplify a complex issue.

“We are concerned that the bill proposes to add a new layer of regulation to a new and exciting set of services, while ignoring the fact that wireless is an inherently complex and dynamic environment in which network speeds can vary depending on a wide variety of factors," said CTIA—The Wireless Association vice president of government affairs Jot Carpenter.

"Congress should resist calls to impose new regulations and instead focus on the real issue, which is making sure that America’s wireless carriers have sufficient spectrum to lead the world in the race to deploy 4G services.”

We're not leading the world in anything when it comes to internet-based services, and surely not 4G when our carriers don't even use the proposed standard for wireless 4G yet.

There is very little competition among the wireless providers aside from the phones they carry and for all intents and purposes that "competition" is completely contrived. The prices are roughly the same, the services offered are roughly the same. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that AT&T and Verizon are colluding with one another given how once AT&T dropped unlimited data plans, Verizon followed suit. And now Verizon is calling 5 GB "unlimited?" And if you use more your usage is considered unacceptable and your contract is terminated?

Wireless carriers should be held to the same (unacceptable) standard that wireline ISPs are held to.

If you want, you can have it automatically empty on a schedule (or logout or whatever)

http://cybernetnews.com/empty-the-recycling-bin-at-startup/ No point in disabling the thing entirely if your only problem is that it doesn't automatically empty.

While true, there are some things you leave out. First, notice the presenter view on the iPad. It displays slide number and.... well that's it. I'm used to the power point presenter view, which displays the slide, your slide deck, notes, a timer, and drawing tools. For the iPad you have to constantly turn around to see the screen. Also you can't annotate the screen. These are seriously limitations to presentations.

Further, as I mentioned, VGA output is enabled on a per app basis. For example, you can't plug the iPad into a TV and watch shows using the ABC player, while this functionality is standard on any netbook with a web browser. For presentations, this means you can't open a web page to show your audience, a common enough task, as safari doesn't support VGA out.

So, while you assume the parent was referencing an inability to connect his iPad to a projector, he was actually alluding to the anemic presentation functionality it offers.

Until you forget to wind it.

We all know that forgetting things leads to Post-It Note Nightmare No, this is not a solution.

Even Slashdot users don't know about CyberSearch? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7931/ or http://cybernetnews.com/cybersearch/ . This has been public at AMO since June 2008 and at their site earlier than that.... Granted, this one really ought to be built into Firefox (like Tree Style Tab) so more know about it, since it's not just a niche use.

One particularly handy tip you might miss about the add-on: type "^" and then your search term to instantly search the site already loaded in the same tab (no need to define a keyword).

I'm not smoking anything. I'm just describing my personal experience, as well as that of various people who've sat down and meaured this. See for example:

http://cybernetnews.com/browser-comparison-internet-explorer-firefox-chrome-safari-opera/ (search for "memory usage tests" in the page).

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/browser-memory-usage-the-good-the-bad-and-the-down-right-ugly/2024

http://www.favbrowser.com/browser-memory-ram-usage-firefox-35-rc-safari-4-opera-10-beta-google-chrome-30-dev/ (ignore the Chrome bit, because they were adding up memory used by processes that actually have some memory mappings shared)

http://lifehacker.com/5457242/browser-speed-tests-firefox-36-chrome-4-opera-105-and-extensions (seach for "memory use, no extensions" and "Memory use with extensions") as well as the other tests lifehacker has done (e.g. follow the "last batch of browser tests" from that page)

So you tell me, what am I smoking and how did I get the rest of the world to smoke it too?

Firefox 4 isn't due out until November

Firefox 4 beta 3 supports WebGL

I am aware of that. But what is the installed base of Firefox 4 beta 3 among one's web site's audience, especially given that Firefox 4 is reported to break extensions designed for Firefox 3.6.x? Until the Flash whitelist plug-in, which states that it works with "Firefox 1.5 - 3.7a5pre", is updated for Firefox 4, I do not feel ready to give it up just to try WebGL, and I'd bet that a lot of other Firefox users agree with me.

Is that in FireFox by default?

No. FireGestures is an addon like many other things people take for granted in firefox after long use.

I used to use StrokeIt (yes yes, get your jokes in now), a free program that basically allowed mouse gestures to work in Windows and any program opened in Windows. Unfortunately, when I went from XP to Vista it was incompatible, forcing me to grab FireGestures instead as an alternative for at least internet browsing.

And...looking it up thanks to being reminded by your post, I found this.

StrokeIt Updated After 4-Years; Works on Vista & Windows 7

Oh thanks god, now I don't need to click to open any programs ever again and I can get rid of FireGestures.

• Choose as much memory as you can, at least 3Gb (you won't be able to add more later)
• Get a medium CPU. Never get the celeron/sempron economic lines (useless) and never choose the top of the line CPU for office computers, they costs double and you won't need more than 10% of their speed).
• Choose motherboards/cabinets with many USB ports, choose one that has USB 3.0 ports if available. Also see that it has many PCI slots. Economic motherboards have only two or three.. and it really complicates your life when you want to add a new Wifi card, a new USB 3.0 adapter card, a new soundcard (you can workaround a burnt internal sound with a new soundcard).
• Choose a motherboard that includes an onboard Nvidia or Ati GPU. Never choose intel graphics. If you need more than onboard graphics (you don't) you can always add a graphics card (maybe you don't need this except in one or two computers for the few users that really need it).
• Hard drive: choose 300Gb. For office uses, you actually only need 20Gb, but 300Gb is not expensive now, and the extra size it may come useful for when micro$oft decides to push another bigger OS. Also, it may come handy if you dualboot to linux, to ease a transition.

The rest does not matter. Chose the vendor that gives you the best warranty and the best price.

It is really really really pointless to see benchmarks or tests when buying new computers, if you want the fastest, then get the most expensive, thats it.

If you are a gamer or a computer scientist focused on algorithms, you might want to optimize the best combination of CPU, RAM, Motherboard (and GPU and HardDrive). Otherwise you just don't.

AND... never buy just looking at the brand that assembles the computer, that's stupid :-) You have to look at the components that the computer has.

Firefox actually uses the least memory of all modern browsers once you've got tabs open (ie: you're using it): http://cybernetnews.com/browser-comparison-internet-explorer-firefox-chrome-safari-opera/


Even straight after launch, it's competitive.

See here; at least newer versions of Process Explorer have that feature built-in.

I definitely think the address bar should become more of a portal to overall functionality. I loved the Cybersearch extension (while I still used Google), and just the other day I was wishing that I could enter math problems and unit conversions into my Start button search box.

I think it's important to offer full functionality for both the keyboard and the mouse. That's why I don't like the idea of requiring a keypress to unobscure important features like a tool bar. I'm sure Mozilla will come up with a very usable UI in the end. The Awesome Bar was a great start and there's nowhere to go but up from the foundation they laid out there.

Yeah, they should have just put the song on a Russian MP3 site and sued them for $1.65 trillion

Whatever judgment goes against M$ they simply tack the cost of it onto the next version of Windoze and their customers wind up paying for it. I don't really see how this would trouble M$ beyond the bad PR, and even that would be lost in all the other bad PR they are getting - over Windoze 7, for instance Link

did firefox open with a bang? it sure as hell did not. do u remember what phoenix 0.1 was like? i sure do. People are expecting a hell of alot from a first release, and thats just not how it works... Have a look here in case uve forgotten just what firefox looked like back in 2002 :)

How do you "know what you're looking for" without searching the web exactly?

If I am not aware of how this program is called I would also need to search for it first.

Compare it with something like http://cybernetnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/opensuse-gnome.jpg where you have the explanation of what the tool does and the fact that most is either pre-installed or very easily to be found in one location.

Do any other "commonly used" programs soak up that much...

The "normal usage" for Firefox is using less memory than other browsers. This has been repeatably verified, not just by Mozilla developers:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080317-firefox-3-goes-on-a-diet-eats-less-memory-than-ie-and-opera.html
http://www.thebrowserworld.com/2008/03/29/firefox-30-beta-4-vs-opera-950-beta-vs-safari-31-beta-multiple-sites-opening-test/
http://cybernetnews.com/2008/03/26/cybernotes-browser-performance-comparisons/
Now, again, if you see any memory problem, you'll have to be specific about what it is. The rest of us don't see it. It's not "denial," it's just the truth.

Yes
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080317-firefox-3-goes-on-a-diet-eats-less-memory-than-ie-and-opera.html
http://www.thebrowserworld.com/2008/03/29/firefox-30-beta-4-vs-opera-950-beta-vs-safari-31-beta-multiple-sites-opening-test/
http://cybernetnews.com/2008/03/26/cybernotes-browser-performance-comparisons/

I can see how it might be confusing to have an "updater" give you new software but the text of the message is clear. In bold letters it says, New software is Available from Apple. Between that and the fact that you know you don't have Safari installed, anyone who's had their morning coffee would have done OK.

I also expect Apple will continue to make this available in their updater because the updater is really a package manager. If the package manager can get Safari, why should the package manager hide it?

Finally, this would not be a problem if Microsoft had it's act together. Why is it that every company has to make it's own custom package manager for Windows? Apple, Mozilla, Adobe, AV companies, freaking everyone has to include their own custom package manager on Windows. You would think that all of these companies could get together and agree on a standard repository system that gives users control. There are two big reasons that won't happen. No one trusts Microsoft and Microsoft would rather die than give users real choices. More on topic, if it were not for the games Microsoft plays, people would not be afraid to install another browser. I've got three or four on my GNU/Linux computers and all of them work well. Through Wine, or virtual machines, I could have IE if I wanted it but I have not needed that in more than five years.

I was just over at the OpenOffice site browsing through some of their marketing materials to see if there was anything interesting. I came across a presentation that was given on September 19th at the OpenOffice 2007 Conference. The presentation was called "OpenOffice.org 3.0 and Beyond," and it walked through some of the most notable features that are expected to be released in the next big OpenOffice milestone. The presentation was actually pretty interesting to flip through, but the one thing that really caught my attention was their reference to including a Personal Information Manager (PIM). More specifically the presentation mentions bundling Thunderbird with their Office Suite, and refers to it as an "Outlook replacement." This is all assuming that Thunderbird recently losing two of it's main developers doesn't affect the decision, because I'm sure OpenOffice wants to ensure that Thunderbird will continue to progress before including it. A post that I made earlier this year regarding Thunderbird as an Outlook replacement really sparked some heated debates in the comments. People were saying that it will never happen, yet this is the direct goal of the new OpenOffice. They plan on including the Lightning add-on for Thunderbird so that in addition to email support, users will also be able to manage their schedule and appointments. http://cybernetnews.com/2007/10/13/openoffice-30-wants-to-compete-with-outlook/

Firefox and Opera render accurately, too. Firefox used to be a JavaScript slowpoke, but with the latest performance improvements, Firefox 3 is fast at JavaScript, too. I'm not trying to advocate one browser over another, just point out that there are at least three good, fast, popular browsers out there. It doesn't seem like one is generally better or worse than the others overall.

What? Firefox has always had tabs, The very first release (back in the days when it was known as Phoenix) had this feature built in (i.e. not a plugin).

http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2006/07/26/cybernotes -a-look-back-at-firefox-phoenix-01/

And you would be downloading Linux ISOs via your cellphone's Internet connection because...?

They invented RTFA for people like you. Hell, you didn't even need to read it, just look at the pretty picture to realize this has nothing to do with cellphones.

Nice! You say "Windows One Care has never tested well" -- NEVER??

Then you point us to a page which contains a link that reads "Windows one care gets icsa labs approval"

http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2006/05/26/windows-on ecare-gets-icsa-labs-approval/

This has nothing to do with Vista, and everything to do with crappy anti-virus products. Neither OneCare or McAfee for XP have ever tested well, so why would anybody think that they would test well on Vista?

If you read the entire article, you'll notice a little blurb at the end that several vendors passed the test, one of which was Kaspersky. Another excellent vendor for Vista is AVG.

Kaspersky consistantly beats all the other major anti-virus vendors, but I guess the story wouldn't be quite as Slashdot-worthy if it ready "Kaspersky Anti-Virus on Vista Works Great!".

http://tech.cybernetnews.com/index.php?s=Alpha%20F irefox%203%20ACID%20test&submit=

Heard that the new Gecko engine passed Acid2, but seems like the patch wasn't included in this build.

Check this link here:
http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2006/11/12/zune-softw are-available-for-download/

Now count the days left until the 3-limit plays are disabled and everybody will share endlessly :)

You can tune most of those settings and hopefully come up with a layout you like... Take a look over here: http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2006/07/09/how-to-twe ak-firefox-20-beta-1/.

I hope they make single button an option a least.

For those of you that want to test this out without installing it, consider a portable version of Firefox 2 Beta 2.

http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2006/08/31/download-t he-portable-version-of-firefox-2-beta-2/

CyberNet just posted this article today which points out a lot of the nice features from every browser. Extremetech did a nice job on that article though.

Here's the URL I got it from:
reclaim leaked memory

In case this poor bastard's site gets Slashdotted, here's the trick:

      1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
      2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
      3. In the box that pops up enter config.trim_on_minimize. Press Enter.
      4. Now select True and then press Enter.
      5. Restart Firefox.

Once you've restarted, and been using FF awhile, minimize it, then bring it back, and the system (under Windows, anyway) will have reclaimed leaked memory (often LOTS of it). A new notice on that page says this works with Thunderbird, too, so I'll have to try that when I get to work.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_memory_usage_(F irefox)#Settings_that_reduce_memory_usage http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2006/04/04/reducing-y our-memory-usage-in-firefox/

Here is a list of extensions that have memory leaks:

http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2006/04/04/reducing-y our-memory-usage-in-firefox/

A portable version of this build was just posted for those that want to use this with a separate profile:
http://www.cybernetnews.com/?p=417

http://www.cybernetnews.com/?p=411

since the alpha appears to have unistall "Issues" i would strongly suggest using the portable build if you wanna try it out.

There's a "portable" version available here:

http://www.cybernetnews.com/?p=411

Definitely a plus b/c it let's you avoid dealing w/profile incompatibilites/conversion between the different versions of firefox and instead stores it in the directory with the portable firefox program