Why is Firefox so SLOW?

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Retro_reaper
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Post by Retro_reaper »

Off course it's slower, cause it's becoming more bloated.

Happens in all software development. They start losing track of the niche and follow the herd.
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trolly
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Post by trolly »

I'm running trunk builds and i have absolutely no speed problems. Page renders usually in less than one second and loading times depends on the net quality. There are surely problems but a problem that should be solved must be identified before. Just saying "FF is slower than before" is not a valid problem description. If you can say FF version X in this configuration is faster than version Y with the same configuration it is more valid but the one how tries to fix it must be able to reproduce the problem. For that he must have exactly the same configuration down to the same hardware, software, internet provider etc etc. Because it is nearly impossible to recreate the problematic configuration problems which have only a few people are only fixed by accident.
Think for yourself. Otherwise you have to believe what other people tell you.
A society based on individualism is an oxymoron. || Freedom is at first the freedom to starve.
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VanillaMozilla
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Post by VanillaMozilla »

I run Fx on a <i>233 MHz Pentium,</i> a 600 MHz Pentium, and on 3 GHz Pentiums. I have used versions 0.7 through the current version.

No complaints here. The speed is fine on all versions, but going backwards and forwards got a lot faster with version 1.5 and later, thanks to the bfcache.

On my computers the speed is generally limited not by the browser, but by the Web server and by the speed of the connection. Naturally, it's faster at 100 MB/s than at 1.5.
Old BushVenom
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Post by Old BushVenom »

jacksoncapper
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Post by jacksoncapper »

I'm a web developer and have installed Firefox from a clean XP installation and the browser is just plainly and simply slow. Javascript runs horribly in Firefox, let alone the speed at which the browser operates, interacts, and renders web pages.

It's so typical of open source fanatics to think its acceptable to play around with configuration settings to get something working.

IE7 is impressive, and Opera 9 is too. Firefox is a dud, I'm afraid, and only good for die-hard anti-microsoft linux-crazy kids, and keeping them happy, despite being alot less productive.
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Post by Guest »

I agree. I think that Firefox sucks now. It is routinely slow and not dependable. I hate to say it but i have gone back to IE as at least the pages load faster, it doesn't freeze when i am on very common websites like bbc.co.uk and espn.com, and why does firefox take 70 MB of memory with one tab open ??????
Old BushVenom
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Post by Old BushVenom »

jacksoncapper aka troll wrote:I'm a web developer and have installed Firefox from a clean XP installation and the browser is just plainly and simply slow. Javascript runs horribly in Firefox, let alone the speed at which the browser operates, interacts, and renders web pages.

It's so typical for IE-loving trolls to claim they're web developers.

jacksoncapper aka troll wrote:Firefox is a dud, I'm afraid, and only good for die-hard anti-microsoft linux-crazy kids, and keeping them happy, despite being alot less productive.

Some Firefox users have the Linux OS and Mac OS X, but the highest percentage (by a huge margin) use some version of Windows. Sort of shows your anti-firefox bias, doesn't it?
Ciano
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Post by Ciano »

I'm a heavy user of FF, all versions since 0.x till the actual 1.5.0.4 version
I love FF very much, mainly for the plenty of features it has, with or without extensions, but i recently found this link: http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html#winspeed
I have been extremely impressed by the results of tests, so i finally tried Opera 9.
Well, that's not much to say: Opera is a lot much more faster than Firefox !!!
Ok, some features are better in FF, but about speed that's no story.
I hope future versions of FF will focus on speed.
Ciano
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trolly
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Post by trolly »

If you buy a INTEL VTUNE license and tweak the optimization settings there are some percent to gain. But why should it be that important if a page is rendered in 0.9 seconds to 1.5 seconds if the page needs more time to load and even more time to read?
Think for yourself. Otherwise you have to believe what other people tell you.
A society based on individualism is an oxymoron. || Freedom is at first the freedom to starve.
Constitution says: One man, one vote. Supreme court says: One dollar, one vote.
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Post by Guest »

Please, take a look at comparision i linked: we are not talking about some decimals of seconds in loading a web page, Opera (and... it's hard to admit, IE) loads pages in half or in a fraction than FF, we're talking about rendering a page in 3-4 seconds in place of 6-10-15 seconds; the difference makes web surfing experience a lot different for anybody.
And another very important aspect is the program loading, as "warm" start and as "cold" start.
I repeat: i am a heavy user and a supporter of FF, but if you try Opera the difference is too clear.
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trolly
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Post by trolly »

You may be right but the Opera team can afford a VTUNE compiler (don't know if they really use it) which is currently the best in optimization, FF use VStudio 8. This can be one cause. A test of VTUNE vs. VS8 shows a clear advantage of VTUNE compiled applications upto 10 times in extreme but in general VTUNE gains approx 20 to 30% over VStudio.
Maybe something is not that fatst esp. rendering of tables is an example but scale the times given in the comparison against real modern hardware. The absolute times will drop and that's what really important. Ok, user on old and slow hardware notice the time mostly the rendering times is faster than loading e.g. the images so the page is rendered nearly complete before the last images arrive.
Think for yourself. Otherwise you have to believe what other people tell you.
A society based on individualism is an oxymoron. || Freedom is at first the freedom to starve.
Constitution says: One man, one vote. Supreme court says: One dollar, one vote.
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Post by Guest »

WOW, IE7 guardian are coming!
jacksoncapper
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Post by jacksoncapper »

bushvenom wrote:It's so typical for IE-loving trolls to claim they're web developers.


I work full-time for a web development company 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, thank you and I love my job.
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Post by Guest »

I can troll too. Working for a Web development company is not the same as being a Web developer. A real developer would make the distinction. And note that the World Wide Web is capitalized.
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Post by Guest »

Anonymous wrote:Working for a Web development company is not the same as being a Web developer.

Web developer, meaning I get payed to design and develop web-based solutions whether it entails a web site, a web-based application, or an intranet/extranet system.

I've mentioned the fact that I am a web developer and work for a web development company. Hmmm, I think that's enough clarification of what I do.

Anonymous wrote:And note that the World Wide Web is capitalized.

If you want to get all word specific, well a web-based solution is not necessarily world wide.

By the way, Firefox is damn slow and a waste of anyone's time. Using it really doesn't achieve much at all.

If you really just want to be anti-microsoft, I'd suggest Opera 9, it's brilliant.
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