I've seen a few people as of late that share this sentiment. This is probably the only reason I haven't switched to Chrome yet. I can even remember the earlier version of Chrome running fast, whereas up-to-date version of both run about the same AFAICT.
Anyone here with recent Chrome and FF usage? What are your thoughts?
O_o
I've been using all the major browsers lately. (It is awful, but still seemingly necessary for web development.)
Disclosure: "Firefox" is my browser of choice.
Now, I am only testing stuff a few tens of minutes at a time so maybe that has my view skewed so keep that in mind.
I get the sentiments. Absolutely. I have them, or similar, about all of the browsers. Well, okay, not the speed thing because they all seem extremely snappy serving from local.
The other stuff though? I could rant for days about how crap a job "Firefox" does managing its memory and GUI resources under "Windows". I generally leave my main computer on constantly and as a developer a lot of windows stay open to API references. Have you ever had your box go swap crazy or crash because of "Chome"? I've had the pleasure with "Firefox".
How about "Chrome"? I don't know, maybe the anti-virus I run is part of the problem, but for me browsing the actual web with "Chrome" is painstaking because the thing freezes core GUI elements while waiting on a download, or even response, from a server. That is unbelievably frustrating to me. If I decide to stop waiting on a page; I want the ........ing browser window closed now and not when it decides to give up.
*shrug*
If it is just the speed leaning you that way, I'd say stay with "Firefox" if you are on "Windows".
If it is the other stuff, poor GUI management, go for it. Don't get me wrong; I think they all suck for different reasons, but if you are overexposed to the problems you know you'll probably be satisfied with a set or problems that don't ping so much.
Soma
o_O
Firefox leaking memory I am familiar with, but come on, swap crazy? How can you get swap crazy? Generally you just have to restart firefox a little now and then.
Can't generally say much about firefox vs chrome, but chrome is much heavier on the memory and that's all I'm going to say about it and why it's not my browser of choice. Don't get me wrong--there's plenty of stuff wrong in firefox. It's just the best browser out there right now.
Originally Posted by Adak
You answered your own question.Generally you just have to restart firefox a little now and then.
I don't restart "Firefox". (I obviously do; I restart it when it finally crashes, when an update is delivered, or when something crashed my computer.)
I also don't restart my PDF viewer, my CHM viewer, or my ebook viewer.
My development machine is pretty much just that. I like having my manuals, standards documents, and API references already open and ready for when I pile up to code. I keep my editors open. I keep my IDE open. I keep terminals open. I keep "SSH" sessions open into my compiler suite.
I don't want to change my behavior because of software. I want software that works for me.
I'd have tossed "Firefox" by now if I thought something else was better. I'll never be satisfied having to restart a bit of software, or the computer where it lives, because of such flaws. You shouldn't be either.
Soma
I agree 100% with you. I tend to do the same.
But what's better, thrashing or restarting every once in a while? I really have little choice considering Firefox tends to get slower and slower the more memory it eats.
On linux I ditched Chrome in favor of Firefox a couple of months ago and haven't looked back since. The memory usage of Chrome was awful, and especially (as far as I could work out) when having javascript heavy sites open. If I had Facebook open in a tab on Chrome, even just idle for well over 16 hours a day, I had to restart the browser every 2 or 3 days because it was slowing my computer to a crawl. With Firefox I have never had this much of an issue; sure I have to restart maybe once a month but I can live with that, especially when my memory usage dropped by almost 1 Gb aswell with no noticeably effect on responsiveness of the browser.
On Windows (my work computer) I use Chrome, I haven't noticed the memoryeating by Chrome on Windows so far and I won't fix what ain't broken.
Thank you all for your thoughts.
Heh, this is exactly my experience. I restart FF every couple of days or so (depending on how much flash I've been browsing)... but not usually by choice
Speed mostly, yes. I've yet to find a usable every-day browser that doesn't drink memory. As per platform, I mostly use Linux, but will not use different browsers on different platforms; I'm much too obstinate for that.
And I wish my farts smelled like freshly brewed coffee.
Google was great for cool software, but it's tended to pull in the reigns recently. I logged into Google Reader this morning and was told that it is about to be discontinued in July.
Real shame as I thought that was a cool service. Now I'll have to look for another option.
Dang it, Google, why? Why, google, why?
What do I have to use now that works on both desktop and mobile? What clients will I use to read and sync?
Ugh.
