I really like Opera over Firefox due to the fact that it doesn't freeze when loading 36 pages (or more) at once. It doesn't even freeze when loading a page.
This is compared to Firefox when you can't browse a page until it's finished loading because the page will freeze. And loading 36 pages at once will lock the entire browser until all pages are finished loading.
It's just... bad practice. I hate it.
Originally Posted by Adak
Oh yes, I also think the speed problem happens only for "power users" which surf with more then one tab.
Btw, it really wasn`t my goal to start a Firefox vs Opera debate here.
But if them get it or not.... This just shows that slow speed (even if only seconds) will decide if costumers use your product or not (if there is a faster alternative).
What's bad practice? Loading 36 pages at the same time. YOu can't read them at the same time. Why bother?
Because it has to load them all when starting the browser or when reloading all tabs, that's why.
I want to be able to browse and use the browser while such is in progress.
To make matters worse, if your connection is slow, it takes even longer before you can use the browser. And you can't start a new process, because it will only open a new window.
Now this is what I might expect from overhead from C#, but never C++...
The point is, I'd change to Opera in a fly if all the functionality and plugins was there.
Speed matters. As well as interactivity.
>> Because it has to load them all when starting the browser or when reloading all tabs, that's why.
But that's not necessary, simply a bad design in my opinion. I expect all tabs to close when the window closes, and fortunately some tabbed browsers do it this way.
You never considered that 36 tabs is perhaps excessive to the point that developers decided not to optimize for a stack that large? I'm shocked at how much people needlessly multitask.
No, they should absolutely not.
Generally, I always keep the browser open, but Firefox's performance starts to degrade after a certain while, so you have to close it and re-open it, and therefore all tabs must remain open.
Not so. If it's too much, then we can we have 36 tabs open (and of it is too much, then why the heck would they prevent more processes from spawning!?)?You never considered that 36 tabs is perhaps excessive to the point that developers decided not to optimize for a stack that large? I'm shocked at how much people needlessly multitask.
It doesn't matter how many tabs there are, even if it's just 5-6 it happens.
We keep getting faster processors and graphics card because speed matters.
Last edited by Elysia; 02-23-2008 at 10:01 AM.
Heh. I agree with you, citizen. Meh.
How much better is Opera than FF in terms of 36 tabs?
The last time I checked with lots of tabs, it was flawless.
Flawless implies an instantaneous load time...
Rather what I meant (can't you read my mind!?), was how long does it take to load in both cases?
Sometimes in some forums I open about 20 topic tabs and then start reading them one by one. I use Firefox and I have no freezes nor lag. Opera actually is a little faster, yes, but that's not an advantage that would make me like it more than Firefox.
In the beginning of this thread people discussed about the difficulty of languages. I think that totally depends on people. For example, any kind of graphics or text parsing is a headache for me, but I feel that assembly, drivers and other low-level stuff in C is ridiculously easy.
Probably the weirdest thing about me is that I absolutely can't stand complicated and funky themes. As I see them they drive me mad because in my subconscious I know that they make the thing slower. That's one reason why I can't stand Vista. On my XP machine I have all design elements turned off, I'm using the classic theme, I have turned off all unneeded services and I have no applications running in the background (even no firewall nor virus protection). By the way I have a quite new computer.
"The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore
>> We keep getting faster processors and graphics card because speed matters.
Well, that doesn't mean that programmer's needlessly optimize on faster hardware. In fact, that seems to be the way people prefer to solve some performance problems. Windows XP required hardware upgrades initially, as (abismally) Vista does now. Same with a number of PC games, (Crysis). But people obviously aren't throwing in the hardware for web browsing. It just happens to be that the benefits of faster hardware are consistently applied to the whole machine.All that "go faster" stuff happens to benefit interpreted languages as well because their interpreters have the latest greatest to work with.
>> Not so. If it's too much, then we can we have 36 tabs open?
Hard limits tend to be a bad idea. But imagine your frustration if I assumed that users of Citizen Explorer used like 10 tabs. Quality Assurance couldn't think of 36 things to do, so freezing occurs only sparingly. I do the best I can to fix it, shipment proceeded. I'm not saying that happened or even that that's what breaks it, but it doesn't seem to be the decision developers are hinging on.
Good software is still chiefly decided on how fast it goes, I see.
No
To make the test as fair as possible, I timed from when the window first appeared.
Loading 39 tabs in Firefox took 45.5 seconds.
Opera took a fraction of the time (< 10 seconds).
This may be an unfair test due to the bloated plugins in Firefox and because I couldn't see 100% when all pages had finished loading in Opera, but anyway...
Opera was still very responsive when loading.
Of course, I just loaded 39 tabs of the same page in Opera and different ones in Firefox, but porting 39 tabs to Opera would be overkill for a small test...
I dunno how fair that test is, Elysia. One could consider Opera caching the page which might lead to quicker load times. Set the 39 pages temporarily as your home page. Close all windows and press the 'home' button. That should get over the fact of FF's plugins loading etc. Can Opera do the same thing? If you feel like a real test load the same pages in FF and Opera.
I tire quickly of this attitude that with the current crop of hardware software speed does not matter. It is attitudes like this that create the bloatware that permeates the industry. We have more power and more horsepower than ever before and yet we continually try to move backwards to improve things that do not need improving all for the sake of making it easier. I'm convinced that with this type of attitude we will always have slower and slower software regardless of the hardware because we find new and interesting ways to make it slower.As for speed (performance)... well, I'm very critic of this word. I think we overrate its importance. It is natural that, while discussing this topic lines like "this programming language is slow" or "performance is important" are commonplace. But let us be honest about it. Is it really that important?
So some company raises the bar on hardware and some other company finds a newfangled way of making it run slower. Nice.
And as for programming. It is hard, complicated, and technical. I find the easier the language the more the language gets in the way of the more complicated stuff you want to do with it. We don't need easier programming languages - we need programmers who understand how to use the languages we have. I don't always equate 'new' with 'better'.The goal is to create even greater applications then we have today. Therefore we need more easy programming languages.
Last edited by VirtualAce; 02-23-2008 at 10:25 AM.
In terms of the languages that they are programmed in, how does Firefox differ from Opera?
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