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Firefox Lite And Old PCs Could Crush IE

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the we-don't-play-to-bake-bread dept.

Eatfrank writes "A recent CNet article suggests that Mozilla should pipe a lite version of Firefox into older PCs to further attack IE's dominance: 'Firefox supporters, take note. A bare-bones Firefox will get the browser into more houses, increasing the Fox's market share and keeps it in novice users' eyes for when they get a new PC ... a truly great super-lightweight browser would have the security of Firefox, without the add-ons, without the tabs, yes, even without favourites, history lists and customisability. The Firefox name is synonymous with security and Web-browsing vigilance. Why not give this to the processing lightweights of the PC world?'"

8 of 434 comments (clear)

  1. They've had this idea before... by gowen · · Score: 5, Informative

    Produce a stripped-down Mozilla light, that will be faster and have a much smaller memory footprint, and will run well on old hardware.

    If my memory serves me well, it was going to be called "Firefox".

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    1. Re:They've had this idea before... by hkmwbz · · Score: 5, Funny

      Actually, it was going to be called Phoenix. Then Firebird. THEN Firefox ;)

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    2. Re:They've had this idea before... by Mike89 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think this comment is just silly. What evidence is there to support this? I mean, Firefox isn't that big as it is. Plus, does hard drive space even matter anymore? The smallest hard drive you can find if you stolled into a best buy is like a 160 GB so what's the point.
      It's not about the size of the installation, it's about memory and CPU usage. Firefox is ridiculous in both of these categories. Good luck running it on old (heck, even old-ish) hardware.
    3. Re:They've had this idea before... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When the local Wal-Mart is selling new PCs for $280, who cares about old machines?
      That's a horrible attitude to have about software development, and unfortunately I see it all the time from programmers.

      Just because machines are faster and have more RAM shouldn't give programmers a blank check to write programs that hog memory and CPU cycles. People should write software to take advantage of that extra performance, not penalize those who don't have it.

      If we write inefficient and, honestly, dumb software, on the assumption that hardware will compensate for our bad choices, how is the new hardware an improvement at all? It's like you're purchasing upgrades every year to keep up with the increasing laziness of bad programmers.
    4. Re:They've had this idea before... by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If C|net really thinks that removing trivial user-interface functionality like bookmarks and history is going to significantly reduce Firefox's memory footprint or CPU usage, then I would suggest that C|net is not qualified to be giving advice to the Mozilla team on this subject. This guy is C|net's "expert on digital music and portable media"; has he ever even written a line of code?

      Let's look at his other suggestions. Removing tabs would probably result in people opening fewer pages at a time, but people are already free to ignore tabs if they don't want to use them. There is no point in removing the functionality. (In fact, I would be willing to bet that one window with three tabs uses less memory than three windows). The same goes for extensions; people are free to not install any and removing the functionality would likely not further reduce the memory footprint.

      Yup, basically, this guy has no idea what causes memory usage in Firefox. I'm glad that the Mozilla team will undoubtedly ignore his misguided advice. Here's a hint: the main driver of Firefox memory and CPU use is web pages. Parsing, rendering, and running scripts. Web pages are huge nowadays, with tons of scripting, huge images, and even videos, and all that stuff has to be kept in memory while you have a page open. If you want to make Firefox more efficient, don't look at the UI. Look at Gecko. Unfortunately, this means you have to be a programmer to make informed comments about Firefox's memory use.

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  2. Opera? by hkmwbz · · Score: 5, Informative
    Several comments in that blog already point out the obvious: Opera already does this. It runs perfectly even on old hardware, and you won't even have to sacrifice any functionality. Hell, there's even K-Meleon, which uses Gecko.

    "Nate is CNET.co.uk's expert on digital music and portable media"

    Expert? He hasn't even figured out that the Opera browser even runs on mobile phones, and using the same engine as the desktop version...

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    1. Re:Opera? by SirMeliot · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Nate is CNET.co.uk's expert on digital music and portable media" Er, I think that means he's the one who's got an iPod.

  3. Just how old are these machines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This post is being written on a machine with a 633 MHz processor. It's fairly ancient. It runs the full version of Firefox just fine. Mind you, it isn't running Windows, it's running DamnSmallLinux.

    If I were to want a stripped down Firefox, it would probably be for embedded devices where resources are often quite limited.