Firefox Going the Big and Bloated IE Way?

abhinav_pc writes "Wired is carrying an article pondering whether Firefox has become big and bloated, much like IE. As the browser's popularity has risen, the interest in cramming more features into the product has as well. Slowdowns and feature creep have some users asking for a return to the days of the 'slim and sexy' Firefox. 'Firefox's page-cache mechanism, for example, introduced in version 1.5, stores the last eight visited pages in the computer's memory. Caching pages in memory allows faster back browsing, but it can also leave a lot less memory for other applications to use. Less available RAM equals a less-responsive computer. Firefox addresses this issue somewhat, setting the default cache lower on computers with less than a gigabyte of RAM. Though the jury is still out on where the perfect balance between too many and too few features lies, one truth is apparent: The new web is pushing our browsers to the limit.'"

Comments

Re:Opera!

[Kesshi]

i use opera as my primary browser, and haven't had it crash on any flashes ever, although getting shockwave to work appears to be hard

I will be the first to admit that I am far less geeky than the average /. user, and I have to ask.... What's the difference between flash and shockwave? I've almost always head the two terms used together a la "Shockwave flash!" Sometimes with "Macromedia" attached at the beginning.

Perhaps my old Opera woes were from macromedia and not flash. Though now I'm assuming and I don't like that.
Also, do you know how well does Opera works on YouTube & Google Videos? Those are two of my favourite places on the internet. Chances are I'd stop using Opera if it doesn't work on as little as 10% of those videos.