Open Source Web Browser
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Scott Gilbertson kindly interviewed me for his article: More Firefox Bloat- Say It Ain’t So, Mozilla. I offered so much more than a single sentence to his original query, so I thought I’d pass along the discourse (and my own self-correction) here:
I’ve got Mozilla’s perspective as well as some outside open source people, but I was wondering if you wanted to offer a user perspective. Do you have any great Firefox anecdotes about RAM usage freezing the system or memory leaks or anything like that — end user oriented issues.
Heh. Firefox has always been plagued by memory leaks (at least, as far back as I can remember). Mind you, I’m nothing more than a casual Firefox user - having been a Maxthon advocate since it was called MyIE2.
Firefox didn’t take off because of its core stability - it took off because it was a decent enough alternative to a Web browser that had been abandoned (Internet Explorer). Didn’t hurt that it had “open source” karma, either. Some people love the simplistic nature of Firefox, but I’m one who believes that minimalism is a gigantic weakness.
The issue isn’t really about cluttering Firefox with more features that could slow it down and make it more unstable - the issue is in not fixing outstanding, documented, replicable bugs before adding more features to the core.
I was using Mozilla for years, and it never grabbed much attention. The Firefox project was timed perfectly - the world was pissed off at Microsoft, and looking for a valid alternative that they weren’t finding in Opera (at that time, shareware or ad-supported).
Personally? I don’t think Firefox is all that fast - nor has it ever been. ;) If Opera could get their UI act together, I’d take them as serious competition on the desktop. Then again, IE and Firefox are hardly shining examples of amazing interfaces…
“Heh. Firefox has always been plagued by memory leaks (at least, as far back as I can remember).”
Are there any specific issues you can think of?
Actually, let me kindly retract that assertion?
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009749.html
Which isn’t to say that Firefox is not without its share of issues. I haven’t really seen it lock up on me any more than I’ve had Internet Explorer lock up on me.
I can tell you one thing: Firefox’s browser security implementation is far and away better than Internet Explorer’s. FAR and away. Whereas IE requires you to refresh the entire page just to download a file that you may have clicked on, Firefox pops up a dialog with a countdown timer.
Moreover, the Firefox model for plugins / addons is astoundingly cleaner than Internet Explorer’s.
So, why not use Firefox? Eh, I really like the way Maxthon has been for me all these years. Maybe one day I’ll switch. But not now. I don’t feel the need. Granted, I’d just as soon use Lynx than Internet Explorer 7 or below!!!
What are your views on the open source model? Does the fact that Firefox is buggy/leaks memory have anything to do with it being open source?
Personally, I love open source seven ways from Sunday. I use Miranda IM, which is an Open Source instant messaging client. I really only like using open source software for my Web operations.
The issue I generally have with open source software is the lack of a cohesive UI. Firefox plugins are all over the map. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I believe that Apple’s design ethic has made the world understand that you could have elegance alongside functionality.
Or why do you think the developers haven’t fixed the memory leaks and other issues you mentioned?
How many millions of people use Firefox? Can you imagine if each one of them wanted to see something different in their core browser? :) I think optimizations are continually happening, although I’d argue that the general UI in Firefox 2.0 was a step backwards (and I noticed that several Firefox enthusiasts agreed with me).
Are they just not listening or are there other reasons?
You can only pound so many nails at one time. To compete further, I do believe that Firefox must contain more “awesome” functionality out of the box. Otherwise, you’re having to run a browser with a zillion plugins - and none of them aware that other plugins might be running. You have a more stable program if said items are actually integrated into the base.
IE6 had a lot of problems with standards and other rendering issues, but there weren’t many complaints about memory leaks or fairly basic problems for day to day use (excepting security issues), why do you think Firefox was able to gain so much market share even when the browser really wasn’t even stable?
IE6 really sucked THAT much. People were ready for a change - and that was enough of a tipping point to steal mindshare. Microsoft screwed the pooch, but they’re not going to give up the ghost again.
It’s not just about standards compliance - it’s about raw speed and core functionality coupled with compatibility.
NOTE: I may need to clarify my earlier points on the speed of Firefox. I think, as far as page rendering is concerned, Firefox beats IE - hands down. Launch time for Firefox, however, has always been horrible. Moreover, I like Firefox on OS X more than I like it on Windows.
16 Comments
LoneE
May 21st, 2007
at 5:52am
This comment is for Chris.
In Firefox and in IE, the little thumbnail pictures in the banner spill onto a second line when the browser window is not wide enough. When this happens, it covers part of the first two lines of your post (main title and the date and time of the post). It was most annoying until I found out that I could get rid of them by widening the window. But others with smaller screens may not be able to do so.
Salocin.TEN
May 21st, 2007
at 7:42am
Hello Chris Pirillo.
Have you heard of Flock? http://www.flock.com
Get Picasa
May 21st, 2007
at 8:16am
Easter Egg; Open Source Saves the Day; AOL Suing Microsoft; Camtasia Studio is not CamStudio; Download Stellarium; Weird, Strange, and Odd USB Gadgets; I Don’t Get It; URLs in Spoofed Files. Full note: By Chris
Enterprise Architecture: Thought Leadership
May 21st, 2007
at 10:47am
but realistically north of $250K when everything is included. That’s a lot of money by anyone’s standards. Many vendors spend a LOT more. I wonder why vendors don’t consider an investment in getting their CTO’s to blog as a better usage of cash? Open Source Web Browser Is Mozilla Firefox bloated? I can attest that memory usage has been less efficient in later releases. Commercial Open Source is a juggling act I wonder when folks will start noodling that the model of open source doesn’t have to be commercial? What
Matt Hartley
May 21st, 2007
at 12:22pm
Just so everyone is clear - there is *no such thing as a Firefox memory leak*, it is a backwards caching ‘feature” that unfortunately, sucks up resources faster than the blink of an eye. This is why some pages run more poorly than others.
It is fair to say, that this is a poorly thought out feature that causes more harm than good and should be shelved once and for all. I hate it, think it should be done away with, but do not in anyway shape or form believe that it should continued to be mislabeled.
The fix is an easy one:
http://tinyurl.com/yz62od
(excuse the reference to the older version of Firefox)
“Firefox 1.5 implements a Back-Forward cache that retains the rendered document for the last five session history entries for each tab. This is a lot of data. If you have a lot of tabs, Firefox’s memory usage can climb dramatically. It’s a trade-off. What you get out of it is faster performance as you navigate the web.”
Until Blake and friends get this fixed, I would suggest the link above.
Matt Hartley
May 21st, 2007
at 12:25pm
I found this page to be fairly unbiased on its reporting on the different browsers. This even goes onto say that IE 7 is better with RAM than Firefox is. Check it out. ;)
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/FirefoxMyths.html
Advantages Of Internet Marketing
May 21st, 2007
at 4:10pm
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Techmeme River
May 21st, 2007
at 4:36pm
12:30 PM [IMG] Chris Pirillo: Open Source Web Browser
John Belanger
May 22nd, 2007
at 5:32am
Oh I don’t know. The increase in security and the open source aspect if Firefox just seem to make me feel secure. I can’t prove it, only feel it. IE on the other hand hasn’t really done anything with IE7 other than try to force folks into Windows XP. Not nice, not nice at all. Firefox has just been a good secure, fast browser. I need IE for Windows update, that’s it. I can live quite well without the proprietary stuff IE handles.
John Belanger
Robin Zalek
May 22nd, 2007
at 7:11am
Firefox Myths… unbiased? Hardly!
While it makes some valid points, it also takes a number of claims to extremes; taking comments posted by random web-user #5,672,884 (e.g. “Firefox is secure”, “Extensions are safe”, “Firefox is bug free”) as relied upon statements used by the whole community. Or taking a statement on a test build (”Firefox passes Acid2″) and calling it a myth by applying it only to released builds (indeed I have Gran Paradiso on my system and that does indeed render Acid2 perfectly.)
Note clearly that I’m a *huge* Opera fan, regardless that page is just loaded with the undigested remnants of edible goods.
I do however find it amazing that Firefox’s page caching can use up so much more memory that Opera’s, cache less pages, and still be slower (in my experience.) There’s room for improvement, but the concept of caching back and forward in history is otherwise an excellent one.
Chris: What do you consider currently wrong with the Opera UI as seen in v9?
Tyler
May 22nd, 2007
at 7:31am
Ok, I do agree with some points in there. And unlike most people who write against Firefox, you actually had some good points to back it up. Hopefully some of the things they mention do get fixed in 3.0, but ya just gotta wait. Anyway, hope to see your future posts.
Pal
May 22nd, 2007
at 7:56am
As far as speed, I don’t mind waiting an extra 5-6 seconds for FF to open if it saves me a second or two on every page from there. Page rendering has more to do with bad site design anyway. If designers learned to properly code layouts with CSS, there might be even more demand for standards compliance too. But provide a clunky tool like frontpage or whatever it’s called now, which removes most of the thought procecss for proper coding, and the browser is secondary concerning speed.
Chris
May 22nd, 2007
at 8:27am
Good article. I find myself using Opera at home, Firefox on my “dev” machine at work and IE7 on my “operations” machine. Each has strong and weak points for sure.
The developer oriented plugins for Firefox are awesome (web dev and firebug for examples), but the “memory issue” does get tedious.
One way to help a bit with FF memory beyond what’s already mentioned here is the trim_on_minimize trick. Opera and IE7 both release memory when minimized. With this little tweak, so does Firefox.
Firefox Facts
May 22nd, 2007
at 10:00am
interviewed me for his article: More Firefox Bloat- Say It Ain’t So, Mozilla. I offered so much more than a single sentence to his original query, so I thought I’d pass along the discourse (and my own self-correction) here… Firefox fan or not - check out Pirillo’s post. It’s well worth your time. Related Articles at Firefox Facts:Firefox User PanelHow Do I Download Firefox?Learn Firefox - A Visual Guide to the BrowserWhat is Mozilla Firefox?Firefox PhoneGo Meet Foxkeh
Schmal001
February 22nd, 2008
at 6:22am
There’s problems with all of them, IE7 is not that fast and takes up around 40 to 50 mb of RAM. Safari is exellent but takes up 60 to 80 mb of RAM. And I like Firefox probably the best because it supports Flash and Java really well, unlike on my computer Java has disapeared which makes it really hard to go on to interactive sites.But Firefox took care of the problem!
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at 4:25am
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