I remember some months (maybe more than a year ago) when there was a story about a Doom-style engine in Javascript and someone commented how sad it was that with all this powerful technology, we're getting excited about 1990s style graphics in web browsers.
I had sympathy for that but it now seems to me like web technologies are improving at such a rate that we'll hit near-native performance in a few years (of course, technologies like Google's NaCl can do that now but it would be quite something to see technologies like WebGL and Javascript close the performance gap).
I pegged my CPU and got about three frames per second in both Chrome and Firefox, but that's on Linux with Intel graphics; about the bottom of the heap as far as 3D acceleration goes.
Great test. I don't have IE9 (since I need IE8 for testing, and MS still hasn't figured out how/conjured the will to make IE work like a normal application), but it's interesting to compare FF4 and Chrome. The performance looked about equivalent between the 2. Neither reports a framerate, so not sure about the exact numbers.
Just a FYI - You can uninstall IE9 from your computer. It's not listed in the Add/Remove Programs list but you can find it under the "Installed Updates" list.
And everything truly reverts to the same as it was before, Vista with IE7 upgraded to IE8? I'm (understandably in my opinion) a bit wary. I need to test websites on a normal installation of IE8. IE often has odd little details that make one machine act different from another once you start changing things.
the thing that keeps me using firefox, yet prevents me from using the new beta releases, is extensions.
i have a lot of extensions that i use on a daily basis and yet only about half of them work with firefox 4 so far. some probably don't even require any code changes other than bumping up the version marker that lets firefox install it on a new version, but a lot of extension developers seem to wait until releases are stable before testing and updating.
Usually after release most of these extensions get updated pretty quickly. I'm currently using Firefox (same reasons) and I'm waiting for the final release. I'll probably update right away and live with a few broken extensions (or hack up their version numbers) until they all get updated.
The correct way to do this is to install Mozilla's Add-on Compatibility Reporter. It lets you selectively disable and report those add-ons that aren't working correctly on new versions.
I ran into similar problems when I first got beta 7 on Vista. I ranted about it on and on to my friends (among other things it trashed all my bookmarks). And then the whole thing crashed. And when I restarted FF, it prompted me to reinstall beta 7 again, and everything was fine (happily using it now).
So I think your problem is with a buggy install/upgrade, rather than the beta itself. Not sure how you can trigger a reinstall (dunno, do dumb things till it crashes), but yeah.
Firefox 4 is a memory hog compared to Firefox 3.6. Worse, it leaks memory like a sieve. After a bit of browsing, it is using 350 MB with just a single tab open. Firefox 3.6 uses half that much memory on the same machine.
The other day, I discovered a Firefox nightly using a gig and a half of memory after some light browsing; after some investigation it turned out that had a few hundred meg allocated immediately after startup (having loaded only about:mozilla) and it allocated a few hundred more when I opened and immediately closed the bookmarks and history menus.
Turns out, in Safe Mode it was perfectly well behaved, and after hitting the 'reset all preferences to defaults' button, Firefox not only takes less memory, but is snappier too.
I beat the 350 MB by going to the Atlas Obscura website. Firefox managed to use up 550 MB with only a single tab open. This too after a clean start. Firefox just keeps on leaking memory when the Atlas Obscura website is open.
I hate saying this but Firefox 4 is shaping to be a disaster of epic proportions. The Javascript benchmarks are all nice and good but dear Mozilla folk you people also need to write a garbage collector for your implementation of Javascript that actually collects garbage.
Installed Firefox 4 Beta 8 on my Windows 7 32 bit machine. Went to the demo page, waited for it to load, hit the start button, and my machine immediately crashed (black screen, no hdd activity, not responsive). Rebooted, tried to load random page from my bookmarks, crashed again. Fortunately that time it didn't take my whole computer with it. Guess I'll try again in a few weeks?
See my reasons here. Tell me a solid reason "Why I should switch to Chrome?"
1) It's as modern as Chrome and renders web pages as well as or better than Chrome.
2) Chrome(Google) forces on me an UI I don't like. Firefox is extremely customizable and I can customize it to the last bit with extensions and little tweaking around.
3) Moreover as I have said before elsewhere FF + Sync + TMP + Adblock is unbeatable for me even though Chrome has equivalents.
4) Chrome (not Portable) installs itself into Users folders in Windows which I seriously dislike. Also take up huge space for storing it's Cache.
5) And I have some personal preferences which I miss in Chrome. (Selecting a text in Chrome does not snip the selection at the end of the line, it apply to the whole frame. Handling unresponsive web pages is better in Firefox for me etc...)
Guess I have given enough reasons why i have not switched to Chrome.
Apart from all the privacy and UI stuff mentioned before. FF works. FF4 works even better. The question is not "why am I staying with FF", it's "why should I switch to something different"?
It's not the IE "why should I switch" situation - FF supports basically every page and any popular HTML/CSS extension out there. I've got my extensions and configuration in place. Why should I bother?
I've been using Firefox as my daily browser since version 0.6 or so, and the Mozilla suite before that, so I know where everything is and I'm comfortable with how Gecko renders things. Of all the browsers I've tried on Linux, Firefox is the second-best integrated into the rest of my desktop (the best is Epiphany because it uses native widgets, but it's too minimalist for my liking). Firefox respects my font and antialiasing settings. Firefox 4 has "tab panorama" mode, which knocks Chrome's limited tab-handling into a cocked hat.
Chrome is a closed-source browser with a rigid failure of a UI and a sync feature that hands over all my bookmarks and history to Google. I can't even move the buttons around -- what a joke. How any privacy-conscious person can use Chrome is beyond me.
I want to move the refresh button to the right of the address bar, since that's what I'm used to. I can't.
Back/forward together makes sense. Refresh next to back/forward isn't any better or worse than refresh to the right of the address bar, so it comes down to personal taste -- Chrome imposes its own taste upon me, while Firefox is happy to let me decide.
Unfortunately I've had that problem with a lot of cross-platform software on Linux lately. Chrome, for instance, doesn't seem to be made with the idea in mind that people might use window managers other than Gnome, or might have settings other than the default chosen for certain behaviors. For instance, double clicking the title bar maximizes the Chrome window - though I have that set to a shade action. There are a few other issues, too, so it's not surprising to me that there are problems with a WM they've probably never tested such as xmonad.
That sounds like fun with Chrome's window-manager emulation. It behaves a lot more respectably when you go Settings → Personal Stuff → Appearance and choose "Use system title bar and borders".
I've tried that too earlier, but it seemed to trigger a couple of other bugs - getting the mouse 'stuck' on the title area, for one. This was many months ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's totally fixed by now.
Beta 9 is not available. You are linking to nightly builds that will eventually become Beta 9.
That SunSpider score vs Chrome is nigh impossible in the default configuration. Maybe you have Firebug turned on? I'd expect the Firefox SunSpider score vs. Chrome to be very close, with the winner varying depending on the machine, OS, and release channel.
Check out http://www.arewefastyet.com for daily benchmarks against Chrome and Safari/WebKit; it definitely shows something different, and my experience is also different; Firefox 4 is about even with the others now. Perhaps you have a misconfiguration somewhere?
Flash video crashes constantly and it still doesn't work with netflix. Who cares about crappy 90's style GL demos? SOmehow, it seems priorities aren't quite right at mozilla, IMO.
Perhaps you misunderstand the purpose of software development.
There is a stable version of Firefox (version 3.6), you can download it at http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/. Mozilla is also adding new features to Firefox in an effort to enable web developers to do new things in new ways. Development and stabilization of these new features is ongoing, which is why it's restricted to a beta program in the next version.
What would you prefer? That Mozilla abandon innovation completely and concentrate utterly on stability? That you not be allowed to participate in beta testing the next version of the browser? If you don't want to test Firefox's new features in the unstable version then perhaps you can avoid running the beta and just stick with the older version.
This made me laugh, WTF does "purpose of software development" actually mean? That phrase is itself a misunderstanding waiting to happen. :-)
Yeah... Ok, I probably deserved a bit of a snarky reply -- I missed the 32-bit requirement for silverlight in the release notes (apparently their sandboxing for 64bit is broken). Just for that oversight, I'll take my lumps.
I do think, however, that you're thinking in a binary way about this. It's possible to add new features and fix bugs at the same time, ya know. It's possible to prioritize stuff even in a beta... you don't just pile on the shiny new because you slapped a "beta" sticker on it.
It's a beta release, not an alpha, and the eighth beta release. Right on the durn frontpage is says it should be stable enough for normal use in most cases. I would classify youtube as one of those cases.
As soon as the 7th release came out, it was broken in an obvious way vis a vis youtube video on some platforms. They had months to fix it. Mozilla obviously decided that WebGL bling was more important...
...and that's fine, they can do what they want and yes, it's a beta release and webgl is cool, but I still think their priorities are screwed up.
Okay, so it sounds like you misunderstand the process of software development.
You can't completely rewrite various subsystems for performance and fix bugs at the same time. There is more going on than just 'adding new features'. New software is bound to be unstable while it is in development. If you have a problem with this, do not download beta versions.
Personally, I haven't had any issues at all with stability or compatibility on Beta 6 or 7 (on Linux).
(Since I don't particularly care about my karma at the moment, I guess I'll continue beating this dead horse :-))
And here's my snarky rejoinder: Hey look! There are bug fixes and new features in the latest beta. How did they do that? Perhaps they misunderstand the software development process!
What you have described is some ideal model of the development process based on something you think should happen. It doesn't exist, and it doesn't happen that way.
No one is reading what I wrote: their priority is messed up (in my opinion). Software development is very much about priorities.
You can decide that youtube functionality might be important for mac users for them to even continue testing the beta (e.g. no they(I) aren't(am not) going to keep launching another browser for every you tube video when they could just use safari). Or you can decide WebGL and audio (audio? really?) bling which a precious few will be using even in a year, is somehow more important.
Honestly, I think your priorities are messed up — or at least inconsistent with your actions. You seem to just want a stable browser for watching YouTube without regard for cutting-edge technology, but for some reason are using a piece of beta software that is currently focused on other things.
As far as the final product is concerned, I'd bet that YouTube does have higher priority than WebGL. But that isn't the current focus of development.
> Hey look! There are bug fixes and new features in the latest beta. How did they do that? Perhaps they misunderstand the software development process!
> What you have described is some ideal model of the development process based on something you think should happen. It doesn't exist, and it doesn't happen that way.
Do you actually do any programming yourself? I'm really not sure what you're talking about.
So you would rather they stopped trying to innovate and implement new features on the B E T A version because it doesn't play youtube FOR YOU? Mozilla's priorities are right where they should be, on adding features and fixing bugs. The fact that you found a bug should be reported. But who gave you the right to tell people what their priorities should be just because they don't fit your agenda?
If you want to watch youtube videos or have a multitude of extensions at your disposal, why would you try a beta version of the software when the stable version suits you just fine? How about if you stop being a smart aleck and contribute by reporting your bugs, just make sure your not being obnoxious about it as you're being now.
http://videos-cdn.mozilla.net/serv/mozhacks/flight-of-the-na...