I never thought I would say this, but... Firefox is no longer my default browser.
And from a fiery long-time supporter, that is saying something.
One of the things I dislike most about it is that, for some reason (which still hasn't been satisfactorily explained, in my opinion), it gets very cumbersome - it slows down - in a relatively short amount of time.
This has become especially noticeable in the last two years or so.
And since the last worldwide "coordinated" mass download, in June (what a fiasco of a non-event that was, world-record or not...!), it seems worse than ever. It hogs much too much memory, the password manager has become unreliable (yes, I do use the "remember password" function - and no, my PC hasn't been cracked yet) - and, most of all, it simply cannot handle scripting the way it should to offer a smooth sail. (In order to surf through script-intensive pages you have to disable scripts, which makes loading noticeably faster, of course - but it also deprives you of the functions that scripts offer.)
Within Blogger, I have also noticed - more than once! - a bug specific to Firefox: at times, during editing the blog, the text that is being edited simply disappears. If you want to edit the blog entry, you will have to either restart the browser (or even the PC), or edit it in some other browser. (I know this is a Blogger - not Firefox - bug; but the fact remains that I only have to contend with it in Firefox.)
People have tried to find all kinds of solutions to "lighten" the burden and make it run faster, but all these solutions really do is reveal the in-built flaws.
And until it is substantially improved, Firefox will remain the second in line of succession to the throne of Default Browser in my household.
"Second?" I hear you say. "Not first?"
That's right: second, not first.
As of November, the official (potential) heir to the throne is: Chromium.
After dear old Firefox's grinding through script-intensive pages like a rheumatic snail, the speed of this - very, very LIGHT - browser was, literally, like a sigh of relief.
And from a fiery long-time supporter, that is saying something.
One of the things I dislike most about it is that, for some reason (which still hasn't been satisfactorily explained, in my opinion), it gets very cumbersome - it slows down - in a relatively short amount of time.
This has become especially noticeable in the last two years or so.
And since the last worldwide "coordinated" mass download, in June (what a fiasco of a non-event that was, world-record or not...!), it seems worse than ever. It hogs much too much memory, the password manager has become unreliable (yes, I do use the "remember password" function - and no, my PC hasn't been cracked yet) - and, most of all, it simply cannot handle scripting the way it should to offer a smooth sail. (In order to surf through script-intensive pages you have to disable scripts, which makes loading noticeably faster, of course - but it also deprives you of the functions that scripts offer.)
Within Blogger, I have also noticed - more than once! - a bug specific to Firefox: at times, during editing the blog, the text that is being edited simply disappears. If you want to edit the blog entry, you will have to either restart the browser (or even the PC), or edit it in some other browser. (I know this is a Blogger - not Firefox - bug; but the fact remains that I only have to contend with it in Firefox.)
People have tried to find all kinds of solutions to "lighten" the burden and make it run faster, but all these solutions really do is reveal the in-built flaws.
And until it is substantially improved, Firefox will remain the second in line of succession to the throne of Default Browser in my household.
"Second?" I hear you say. "Not first?"
That's right: second, not first.
As of November, the official (potential) heir to the throne is: Chromium.
After dear old Firefox's grinding through script-intensive pages like a rheumatic snail, the speed of this - very, very LIGHT - browser was, literally, like a sigh of relief.
It has a few glitches: copying and pasting HTML tags and such (for example, on IMDB) is beyond annoying; and sometimes it simply disappears - you click a link and instead of finding yourself on the new page, you find yourself in the open sea of your PC screen background. (Bear with my paltry metaphors today; I haven't had enough sleep.)
But it is very fast, and the layout is very convenient: the "home page" presents you with tiny screenshots of your most often visited websites.
But which browser rules, you ask?
Surely not... not Internet Explorer?!
Rest assured: surely not.
Definitely not.
In fact, I haven't used it in years, except for research reasons (to compare its efficacy with other browsers) - and for adding an extra click on various click-to-donate pages that register visitors by their browsers, not by IP addresses. (What can I say: I am a kind soul! ;)
And it is not Safari (for Windows), even though I am very pleased with its graphics, including the typography (which I hear some people hate). I wouldn't describe its performance as "blazing", as its makers claim; it often hogs all the CPU (something Firefox does, too), and it is definitely very annoying to see the "crash" error messages EVERY SINGLE TIME I close it.
(It was suggested to me that I should download the newest version. Well, I did, but it didn't help one bit. I'll keep you posted if I find a solution.)
And God knows it's not pitiful Opera!
I never could understand why it was touted to be the "fastest browser" on Earth (or was it "the galaxy"?)
It was never anything but unfriendly, fidgety and very, VERY slow on my PC.
(And remember, I always had other browsers - never less than three at any given time, five or six for the past two years - to compare it with, so its performance clearly wasn't due to something that my PC did or did not do.)
In my experience, even Netscape - yes, yes, I still do use Netscape! - is much faster and friendlier than Opera. (And lately considerably faster than Firefox, I regret to report.)
So... which is it?
After having ridden all my browsers - and I rode them hard! (and yes, I am aware I am mixing metaphors; you don't ride successors to a throne - well, not unless... eh, forget it) - I am glad to announce my new default browser:
You may or may not believe this, but Flock has consistently outperformed all the other browsers installed in my OS.
I only installed it after being pushed to it by Netscape, and only to give it a test ride. I certainly never intended to use it as the "social" browser that it is marketed as (I am not really a fan of internet "networking"). And I didn't.
But after seeing its consistent lightness and speed, even after many months of intensive daily use - and that's with all the scripting enabled - I decided to instaurate it as my default browser.
So far, it has never crashed or frozen (and I use all my browsers very intensively).
Also - and this is very important- it provides an elegant, hassle-free solution to the infuriating problem created by Firefox's cowering (how would you call it?) before Microsoft's nagging "Security Zone Policy" issue, which automatically prevents you from downloading (let alone saving) ANY executable files - including updates of Mozilla/Firefox itself!
(There are a lot of things that you can do - correction: there are a lot of things that you'll HAVE to do - if you want to resolve this issue.
One is downloading IE 7, if you haven't got it yet - yes, even though you are using Firefox - so you can adjust the security settings.
Right...
The other one, of course, is ditching both Firefox and IE for another browser, non-compliant with MS's enforced "security" obsession, to download and save files.)
I am not sure Flock's marketing - "the Social Web Browser" - is really doing it justice.
But maybe it's better that way.
Maybe if more people would use it, the success would go to its makers' heads, and we'd be stuck with another... Meh.
So, now you know. Flock rules!
In my opinion, it is anything but egregious - unless you use (as I did - once, never again) the word in its original sense... :)
To find out more about browsers, here you have a useful timeline (with links).
And when it comes to keeping your browsers' caches uncluttered, I don't think you can do much better than the free utility known as CCleaner.
(I am not paid to say so; in fact, I was glad to pay them a little donation, a long while ago.)
And BTW...
But which browser rules, you ask?
Surely not... not Internet Explorer?!
Rest assured: surely not.
Definitely not.
In fact, I haven't used it in years, except for research reasons (to compare its efficacy with other browsers) - and for adding an extra click on various click-to-donate pages that register visitors by their browsers, not by IP addresses. (What can I say: I am a kind soul! ;)
And it is not Safari (for Windows), even though I am very pleased with its graphics, including the typography (which I hear some people hate). I wouldn't describe its performance as "blazing", as its makers claim; it often hogs all the CPU (something Firefox does, too), and it is definitely very annoying to see the "crash" error messages EVERY SINGLE TIME I close it.
(It was suggested to me that I should download the newest version. Well, I did, but it didn't help one bit. I'll keep you posted if I find a solution.)
And God knows it's not pitiful Opera!
I never could understand why it was touted to be the "fastest browser" on Earth (or was it "the galaxy"?)
It was never anything but unfriendly, fidgety and very, VERY slow on my PC.
(And remember, I always had other browsers - never less than three at any given time, five or six for the past two years - to compare it with, so its performance clearly wasn't due to something that my PC did or did not do.)
In my experience, even Netscape - yes, yes, I still do use Netscape! - is much faster and friendlier than Opera. (And lately considerably faster than Firefox, I regret to report.)
So... which is it?
After having ridden all my browsers - and I rode them hard! (and yes, I am aware I am mixing metaphors; you don't ride successors to a throne - well, not unless... eh, forget it) - I am glad to announce my new default browser:
You may or may not believe this, but Flock has consistently outperformed all the other browsers installed in my OS.
I only installed it after being pushed to it by Netscape, and only to give it a test ride. I certainly never intended to use it as the "social" browser that it is marketed as (I am not really a fan of internet "networking"). And I didn't.
But after seeing its consistent lightness and speed, even after many months of intensive daily use - and that's with all the scripting enabled - I decided to instaurate it as my default browser.
So far, it has never crashed or frozen (and I use all my browsers very intensively).
Also - and this is very important- it provides an elegant, hassle-free solution to the infuriating problem created by Firefox's cowering (how would you call it?) before Microsoft's nagging "Security Zone Policy" issue, which automatically prevents you from downloading (let alone saving) ANY executable files - including updates of Mozilla/Firefox itself!
(There are a lot of things that you can do - correction: there are a lot of things that you'll HAVE to do - if you want to resolve this issue.
One is downloading IE 7, if you haven't got it yet - yes, even though you are using Firefox - so you can adjust the security settings.
Right...
The other one, of course, is ditching both Firefox and IE for another browser, non-compliant with MS's enforced "security" obsession, to download and save files.)
I am not sure Flock's marketing - "the Social Web Browser" - is really doing it justice.
But maybe it's better that way.
Maybe if more people would use it, the success would go to its makers' heads, and we'd be stuck with another... Meh.
So, now you know. Flock rules!
In my opinion, it is anything but egregious - unless you use (as I did - once, never again) the word in its original sense... :)
To find out more about browsers, here you have a useful timeline (with links).
And when it comes to keeping your browsers' caches uncluttered, I don't think you can do much better than the free utility known as CCleaner.
(I am not paid to say so; in fact, I was glad to pay them a little donation, a long while ago.)
And BTW...
Has your browser passed the ACID TEST?
EDIT (January 16, 2009):
I finally downloaded the last version of Opera (my pet peeve), and I have to report that it has improved - susbstantially!
Meanwhile, Firefox has gone from my default browser to not-so-good-anymore, then to almost-bad, and now to... worse.
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