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Is Firefox 1.0 Less Stable than Firefox PR1.0?
An anonymous reader wonders: "I had Firefox 1.0PR running smoothly on three different machines and it hardly ever crashed. After upgrading to 1.0, I seem to have at least one annoying crash a day. On one of the machines, using the 'self update' feature caused Firefox to crash in middle of the upgrade and left it in a completely unusable state. Eventually, I had to uninstall it and resort to using IE to download the full installer, again. Is it just me, or are other heavy Firefox users noticing this sort of behavior?"
I had the opposite occur. With 1.0PR I was having rather regular crashes when I opened the browser, and an annoying one that occured everytime I attempted to open any sort of streaming media. (I resorted to IE to watch the SpaceShip One launch).
However, with the full 1.0 I haven't had a single crash yet, and I've been using it a lot since the first day it was available.
This is not a sig.
I've had random crashes browsing MapQuest. It seems around one out of every ten times I refresh a map, Firefox goes boom. I actually suspect it may be some Javascript/Java/DHTML/etc. in an advertisement that's in their rotation.
-Z
While I'm not going to disagree with you, I fail to see how this absolves the developer's responsibility to build the application such that it doesn't try to absorb all the system's resources in the first place.
I'm currently using FireFox PR1.0, it's been open for about 5 days straight, running on Win2KPro. It's using 104MB of RAM. Why I don't know... I only have 4 tabs open at the moment and no flash or java running, and no third party plugins... but it's using 104MB or memory right now. It probably would have locked up if I didn't have a gig of RAM in this machine...
Went up to 108MB when I hit preview, and it's not going down...
=Smidge=
I'm a gamer on occasion. And when I play an FPS, I don't like frame loss. I recently noticed I was losing frames on occasion. I brought up task manager to see what was doing it, and firefox is using significant CPU power even when it's doing absolutely nothing. (Thus, closing firefox caused a perfect framerate to occur again). Anyone else have this issue? Why does the web browser need CPU to idle?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
1) Why is your faith in open source so great that you are unwilling to humor the idea that there is a bug in the application? I am a professional software developer, and most of us LAUGH at the idea of "bug free" applications. It is considered, in some circles, so laughable, that one is considered a bit of a neonate to tout that their software is bug-free [that, or not connected to reality (at least, with respect to the technology)]. The first time I ran Linux (late 90's) I had plenty of core dumps.
/. not Coast to Coast AM.
2) Are you proposing that Microsoft has a "black ops" department, whose sole purpose is to cause Windows to behave incorrectly when 3rd party software is run? Additionally, this department is exceptionally good at keeping a secret. So good, in fact, that the only way to detect their work is by running open source (patently bug-free) software on their OS, to uncover these flaws? Given that open source software is bug-free, wouldn't such a department fear discovery when performing such an act?
I'm not saying that there aren't reasons to dislike Microsoft, but goodness, this is
I'll tell you the single source of all of your Microsoft woes... the market. If the market will pump billions of dollars into a company, they have little right to complain about that company's software. There is competition. There was a lot more of it before all of you gave them all of your money. If you dislike Microsoft's product line, then download a Linux or BSD ISO, and install it. If you vote with your pocketbook, the company will listen. Hit companies that break the law with the law, and if you dislike the lack of competition, then purchase a competing product, or compete with them.
Maybe this is just a poor attempt to generate some "bad" Firefox press.
I smell a rat. Or a troll. Or both.
[*] I don't get the NYT, and I won't accept their privacy policy (thphhht!) so I have no idea if it's already come out.
-- This
A few years ago, when Phoenix was first released, I was among the first to try it. Pleased by its relative stability, speed and overall lightweight character, I started using it as my primary browser. Later releases brought further improvements, like extensions. Fast forward to 2004:
Improvements:
- Auto-update
- Improved search
- Skin
- Download manager
Side-effects:
- Firefox is very unstable compared to Phoenix
- The development team has started linking Firefox against glibc 2.3
The improvements are of little to no benefit IMHO:
- Auto-update is too unreliable and impractical when you're not root. It's actually quicker to do it the old-fashioned way
- Being a slightly conservative bastard who can't appreciate eye candy if it isn't female, I've never used skins.
- The improved search is an exception. The colours are handy if you're visually scanning a large document and it eliminates the window blocking your view. It's actually a bit like vim's search.
- The download manager is not very practical. It gives clueless lusers a harder time infecting their PC's, but it's "hidden" into the browser and the actions surrounding a download take more time now than ever before.
The decay which has been accompanying all this development is quite severe:
- The stability issues cause two crashes on an average day for me. Some sites actually cause crashes whenever viewed. In most cases the sites contain buggy html and javacrypt, but that should not crash the browser. Notable examples include WebCT and requested popups.
- Although most modern distros use glibc 2.3, I'm not going to switch for a while.
I've tried setting up a chroot for it, but the latest version of gcc appears to be unable to compilethe latest glibc.
According to the gcc maintainers this is a bug in glibc.
According to the glibc maintainers this is a bug in gcc.
blah rant rave curse slap stab blam, etc
Even though there's a hack to get it working, I'm staying with glibc 2.2 until both groups have stopped trying to break eachother's code.
But there's always PLAN B. And after three hours of compiling firefox 1.0, it turns out that the degradation curve since 0.8 has not changed course.
Some common sense inhibitor snaps in my skull and I ditch firefox. Alternatives:
Konqueror toy
Dillo incomplete
Links rules my console, but it has some
inherent disabilities
etcetcetc.
But there's always the "dead" Mozilla. It turns out that Mozilla is not as dead as commonly thought.
Mozilla has become much lighter nowadays. The e-mail, news and chat is seperated from the browser package now and doesn't swallow memory anymore and it's noticeably faster than before.
It can also use extensions, block popups and evil javascript code, and some other features we've started to like about Firefox. Among the differences are a more intuitive download manager and unfortunately the old text search. But the most important differences are its much greater stability and the fact that it is backwards compatible with glibc 2.2 and possibly even older versions.
So, contrary to the mainstream momentum, I've switched back to Mozilla. Getting it working took a few mouseclicks instead of a full compile and minutes instead of hours. I live happily ever after.
If you're having nervous breakdowns with firefox, consider this move.
Steven.