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Firefox 3.5 Benchmarked, Close To Original Chrome
CNETNate writes "The tests prove it: It's the third-fastest browser in the world, and over twice as fast as Firefox 3. In terms of Javascript performance, Firefox 3.5's new rendering engine places it squarely above Opera 10's beta and Internet Explorers 7 and 8 (based on previous benchmarks), plus it's getting on for being almost as quick as the original version of Google Chrome. Also, the new location-awareness feature was testing in central London, and pinpointed yours truly to within a few hundred meters — easily enough for, say, a Starbucks Web site to tell you where your nearest Starbucks is."
Why is it when the government can keep tabs about where we are it's "draconian" or "orwellian," but when a web browser does it, it's "cool"?
Having used Chrome now for a little while after becoming irritated with FFX's memory utilization in particular, I'm going to have to admit that while it is quantifiably better than FFX (and Opera) in many ways, I don't find the speed difference compelling. Indeed, I find myself occasionally wondering if Chrome is actually slower than FFX in some ways. I am still using it, as the memory utilization is significantly better, but the little inconsistencies in presentation and the weird sensation that it feels slower makes me really want to switch back to Firefox. If Mozilla can get off their ass and really plug the memory leaks and utilization, I'd probably switch back today.
That's not to say that Chrome is bad. It's 100% usable, and its much more compatible with sites I use than Opera is. (I tried Opera first after I started looking around). The problem is that it still breaks some sites that aren't broken in IE or Firefox. And whether or not you blame the browser or the non-standards compliant webmasters, the reality is that I cannot switch their sites, but I can switch browsers that I am using. That means I have opened IE 7 windows more while using Chrome, than I have with Firefox.
I posted a blog about this yesterday. I tried Firefox 3.5 in a Windows XP VMware Virtual machine yesterday and quickly web back to Firefox 3.0.
The problem is that FF 3.5 freezes while loading a background tab. In Firefox 3.0, I have no problem clicking on some link that looks interesting, loading the link in a new tab, and continue reading the article I'm reading or what not.
This doesn't work in 3.5. When I load a page in a background tab, the entire Firefox client freezes up when it's processing Javascript, HTML, or whatever in the background tab. I can't scroll up or down in the foreground, write a posting or email (typing in text freezes and the letters I'm typing in aren't buffered), or do anything else with Firefox as it parses the page in the other tab.
Because of this issue, I quickly moved back to Firefox 3.0. I hope the Mozilla developers address this issue in the next six months, because if this issue isn't resolved in Firefox before they EOL security updates with Firefox 3.0, I will probably have to move to another browser.
Any modern browers besides Firefox with a "always use this font for text" option? Neither Opera, Safari, nor Chrome had this option last time I tried those browsers. (Don't get me started on IE8, which forces me to use anti-aliased text)
I tried to do something pretty seemingly simple with Javascript (1 draggable line to redraw the background colors of the table), and it drags its ass on IE8. It is fast and smooth in FF/Opera/etc, but with so many people using IE still, it hardly matters.
Morphing Software
Man, the experience is like I if bought a new laptop.
Since Firefox's GUIs and extensions are entirely assembled in JavaScript, the new javascript engine not only optimizes page rendering, but in fact, the entire browser experience in faster.
Before Flash came along, web video on Linux was a great thing. MPlayer supported the big tree formats very well (Quicktime, Real, and Windows Media) and performed extremely well. Open Source browser plugins didn't disabled the controls, and made it easy to download the source of the video, no matter how obfusticated the web page code.
In fact, MPlayer supports all types of FLV video as well... The problem being the way its embedded into a page requires a SWF interpreter to even find the URL to the FLV file, and as of yet, nobody has written-up what should be a rather simple bit of code to do that, and pass the URL back to the user, or directly to a video player.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
yes, but "zomg you're not supposed to use tables for layout!"
which of course has led to the similarly quaint removal of b, u, s and i tags for the sole reason that content and presentation should be separate. Nevermind that if you -now- want something to be bold, short of writing your own XML bits and pieces, you have do something insane like "<style>.b { font-weight:bold } </style>...<span class="b">this is bold</span>".
At some point, the scales tilted completely the other way and all balance was lost. Alas. The same applies to tables. Not that I think tables are appropriate for layout, but DIVs with a crapton of CSS aren't particularly it either.
I thought Flash (and JavaScript, for that matter) were used for video because they provide a half-assed form of DRM; obfuscating the URL of the .FLV file so the average user can view The Precious but not download it.
But maybe that's the cynic in me talking.