You'd at least think they would allow to open more instances of the process. It would go lengths around the little problem, and they'd have to work less on the whole matter, as well...Originally Posted by citizen
How does that work? Close all tabs, set homepage and load it?
Btw, Bubba raises an interesting point. I'm inclined to agree.
Well, in FF you can set your homepage to an array of tabs. For example for me I have gmail and google reader set as it, so if I press the 'home' button in FF it'll open gmail on the tab I press home in, and reader in a new tab. If you set your homepage as 39 different pages (tools -> options -> main -> Use Current Pages), then press home it should open 39 different tabs, without you worrying about plugin load times etc.
39 tabs opened in a browser is no way to test that browser speed/performance/quality/whatever. It's, at best, a way to measure an user insanity. The more tabs, the more insane and the least I'll be open to reason with them. I advice strong medication and 6 months rest away from any computer. And I'll stop with the superlatives here. I could go on forever.
39 tabs is not what any decent browser maker aims at. It's not useful to a user to. And the time one could gain from better code to optimize the load of such tabs will be wasted by the user on the time it takes for him to find the tab he wants. I can't believe this argument was brought up to justify one browser over another.
This is exactly the cornerstone of my reasoning. Software performance is more tied to hardware improvements than it is to language design. Naturally there are differences; CornedBee brushed it on his post. However, we cannot negate a language capacity based on the fact it comparatively under-performs. I gave an example of one such application where speed is not a concern. Like that, there are many other type of applications.It just happens to be that the benefits of faster hardware are consistently applied to the whole machine.
Speed is the realm of Hardware. Programming languages have to knock to come in.
Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.
I think we have different versions.
I use 9.50 Alpha, which only has Tools -> Preferences -> General -> Set current.
I don't see why that's useful...
About Firefox, I usually browse for 2 hours without restarting it. And I usually finish what I was doing before it. I don't see any direct performance hit when it has been running for a very long time. I just know it starts using more memory due to caching. In fact, I usually prefer closing the browser just to close all the tabs. So it would be very annoying if it would keep everything open. What I really like is that Firefox is capable of loading the whole previous session when something caused an unexpected shutdown. Like a power failure, which happens quite often for me.
"The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore
I don't think so. With my current XP settings even a Pentium III 450Mhz worked quite quickly. I just had to choose the right applications to use. I bought a new computer only because Photoshop, Flash and some games didn't work well on it.
My dream is to make a huge application that does gazillion things but runs veery quickly on an old machine...
GRR... I wanted to use the Edit button.
"The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore
Actually it is not. The attitude that creates the bloatware that permeates the industry is poor quality control, deadlines being set based on marketing and not on software analysis and inadequate team management. Probably also what you say, I would have to agree. But not only and probably not the most.
Meanwhile, the discussion was about about programming languages. Not about the quality of the software that comes out of those programming languages, Bubba.
Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.
Lest I remind you your posts began this portion of the discussion.Meanwhile, the discussion was about about programming languages. Not about the quality of the software that comes out of those programming languages, Bubba.
No they didn't. Read better.
Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.
When using Firefox for a while you'll start notice how tabs takes longer to load, how it takes longer to load pages and even doing normal tasks such as clicking on a link starts taking a lot longer.
Restarting Firefox fixes this.
So when having lots of tabs, performance quickly degrades. It becomes slow.
Opening new processes would allow you to split tabs among processes, thus fixing the whole "it wasn't designed for 39 tabs" argument.
On the contrary. A good browser does not freeze when opening tabs. And it does not take forever to open them either.
And you seem to believe that everyone is like you. In fact, people like to have many windows open at once, which is the reason we use tabs in the first place.
Stop guessing for yourself. Just because it isn't useful to you, doesn't mean it isn't useful for someone else.
But if the user wants to open a lot of tabs and they never load then the whole switching between tabs is useless.And the time one could gain from better code to optimize the load of such tabs will be wasted by the user on the time it takes for him to find the tab he wants.
Plus your argument fails in that it's harder to find one tab among many and that applies to many tabs. So in order to make it easy to find one tab among many, you have to have many tabs open and that means that they must make sure the browser works fine with many tabs.
Excellent. I suggest that you suggest this to the Firefox developers.Opening new processes would allow you to split tabs among processes, thus fixing the whole "it wasn't designed for 39 tabs" argument.
Now, what's with "deliverance from complicated programing languages" again?
Look up a C++ Reference and learn How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
I think I already did? At least the whole more threaded bit. No freezing. But they wanted to sped time elsewhere I think? Meh, long ago.
But as for the original topic, at least one thing that can be said for certain is that there will always be a need for different languages.
Maybe not for speed, but for the approach and functionality and to what market it's aimed.
Software the likes of browsers are developed to the masses. And I can guess my left arm, the average user doesn't care about 39 tabs on their browser.
Meanwhile, because I don't want to guess anymore I just opened 39 tabs on my browser. All pointing to different places. My Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.12 didn't crash or halt on my , I'll remind you again, aged PIII 1GHz 5000Mb Ram laptop. So, I'm really unsure as to who is guessing here. Me or You. I was also able to open tabs while others were being loaded. Only exception was if the page contained Flash.
And since we are on the guessing frame of mind, I then tried to go to a specific tab (1&1 Webhost Control panel). Cycling through them is not doable. Too slow. The left and right buttons don't help either since I can only see a minimal portion of the window title and the tab menu was crowded with items, but the only viable choice.
Do I find this useful? No. The time it took me to go to that tab was way more than the time it would take me to click on the bookmarks toollbar button for that page and load it on a new tab. No more guessing, ok?
EDIT: Just read laserlight's post. This is the last I'll have to say about this off-topic issue.
Last edited by Mario F.; 02-23-2008 at 11:10 AM.
Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.
You are guessing that the 10+ million users of Firefox are like you and don't like many tabs.
Right. So that explains why FF2 had the option to save sessions, and why Tab Mix Plus, which further can control tabs, and allow them to be split onto multiple rows rather than scrolling, appears on the top 50 popular extensions.
I can put tabs on multiple rows and quickly find the tab I want, as well.
Uhuh, let's stop assuming everyone is like you.
And that should clear up a few things.
I wanted to comment on this stuff, but the tone of this thread discouraged me. I think it's better if we let it rest. No more Firefox and Opera speed comparisons, please.
I partially disagree. Speed is not just the hardware's business. It's not the language's business, though. It's the programmer's business. Poorly chosen algorithms and data structures hurt more programs than any language effect could ever do. They hurt more than any hardware upgrade can ever make up for, because hardware improves linearly, while poor algorithms hurt performance quadratically and exponentially.Speed is the realm of Hardware. Programming languages have to knock to come in.
You can mostly ignore performance when making your language choice, but to ignore performance when actually writing applications "because hardware is getting better anyway" is irresponsible and ignorant.
All the buzzt!
CornedBee
"There is not now, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be, any programming language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad code."
- Flon's Law
