I'm an Opera guy now, thanks to FF's memory shiznit

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2006-05-27 04:13am

Firefox's memory leaks are worse than ever. I remember when one of the Firefox devs said it was due to holding many pages in cache, with the problem mutiplied by having multiple tabs open.

That's just so much crap. I watched FF eat up all of my memory with one tab open. Memory usage went from 42% to 100% in under a minute. Does it to that all the time? No, but it happens often enough to make me slap my butt.

Opera's fit-to-window feature is too good to not have anyway, IMO. Do you understand the massiveness of what I'm saying? Put a banana boat between your legs.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2006-05-27 05:56am

Opera has been better than firefox for ages.

And it already does all the cool things you can make firefox do with extensions.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-05-27 06:31am

Firefox has memory issues ? I never noticed.

Opera has been better than firefox for ages.

Bull. Opera is as good as Firefox, it just caters to a different audience. One that likes cluttered UI's and an ugly-as-sin interface

DaveJB · Post by **DaveJB** » 2006-05-27 08:09am

Firefox's memory issues were enough to make me consider using IE7 as my main browser (never really liked Opera). Then it became obvious that IE7 isn't anything more than IE6 with a bad copy of Firefox's UI glued on, and I realised that even with Firefox being a memory hog I never use more than half a gig of memory outside of gaming anyway.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-05-27 08:40am

I never noticed memory problems with Firefox but then again, all of my machines have at least 1 GB of memory.

Dooey Jo · Post by **Dooey Jo** » 2006-05-27 11:16am

My worst system has 192 MB of memory, and I have no problems running Firefox on it.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-05-27 11:35am

Bounty wrote:Firefox has memory issues ? I never noticed.

Opera has been better than firefox for ages.
Bull. Opera is as good as Firefox, it just caters to a different audience. One that likes cluttered UI's and an ugly-as-sin interface

What ugly as sin interface? It's skinnable and very neat.

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2006-05-27 11:44am

Speaking of Opera, how the hell do I get the URL bar back? It vanished when I pressed a random key combo and no amount of tinkering will get it back.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-05-27 11:47am

Captain tycho wrote:Speaking of Opera, how the hell do I get the URL bar back? It vanished when I pressed a random key combo and no amount of tinkering will get it back.

Tools, appereances, toolbars. Make sure it's not set to hidden or whatever.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2006-05-27 01:45pm

Many problems with Firefox and memory leaks have to do with poorly written extensions (Adblock, I'm looking at you).

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-05-27 03:57pm

Ah, maybe that's it. I run plain-vanilla Firefox.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-05-27 04:40pm

I looked at this thread thinking 'yeah, FF does use a lot of memory'... but *all* of it? In a few minutes? That ain't Firefox, buddy - even after DAYS of poking around all over the place my system reports about 150Mb for FF. I still think that's a lot and could be reduced, but it hardly cripples my system. And I never turn my main system off or close Firefox - I don't see the point. 2Gb RAM does that to a man.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2006-05-27 04:54pm

Stark wrote:I looked at this thread thinking 'yeah, FF does use a lot of memory'... but *all* of it? In a few minutes? That ain't Firefox, buddy - even after DAYS of poking around all over the place my system reports about 150Mb for FF. I still think that's a lot and could be reduced, but it hardly cripples my system. And I never turn my main system off or close Firefox - I don't see the point. 2Gb RAM does that to a man.

After a similar length of use Opera is only using 56MB. I also never turn my laptop off.

As noted, Opera can do everything Firefox can with all the whizzy extensions, it can even handle torrent downloads with a built in BitTorrent engine.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-05-27 05:07pm

Vendetta wrote:
Stark wrote:I looked at this thread thinking 'yeah, FF does use a lot of memory'... but *all* of it? In a few minutes? That ain't Firefox, buddy - even after DAYS of poking around all over the place my system reports about 150Mb for FF. I still think that's a lot and could be reduced, but it hardly cripples my system. And I never turn my main system off or close Firefox - I don't see the point. 2Gb RAM does that to a man.
After a similar length of use Opera is only using 56MB. I also never turn my laptop off.

As noted, Opera can do everything Firefox can with all the whizzy extensions, it can even handle torrent downloads with a built in BitTorrent engine.

Can it take notes ? Automatically bypass the free registration at newspaper sites ? Define and translate highlighted words, displaying both the official and slang meaning ? Automatically generate BBCode in forums ?

The only thing Firefox doesn't do is give blowjobs and I'm sure someone somewhere is working on an extension that does just that

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-05-27 05:16pm

Vendetta wrote:After a similar length of use Opera is only using 56MB. I also never turn my laptop off.

As noted, Opera can do everything Firefox can with all the whizzy extensions, it can even handle torrent downloads with a built in BitTorrent engine.

Yeah, Firefox does use more memory than it should. I still prefer it over Opera, since I simply don't care about 100-odd meg of memory.

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2006-05-27 06:04pm

Stark wrote:I looked at this thread thinking 'yeah, FF does use a lot of memory'... but *all* of it? In a few minutes? That ain't Firefox, buddy - even after DAYS of poking around all over the place my system reports about 150Mb for FF. I still think that's a lot and could be reduced, but it hardly cripples my system. And I never turn my main system off or close Firefox - I don't see the point. 2Gb RAM does that to a man.

Sorry, it's Firefox. Sometimes it doesn't cause mere memory leaks, it guts my system, spilling out all the RAM. And this is with a gig of memory, no extentions.

Firefox has had a long time reputation for this kind of stuff, so I'm surprised I don't have everyone nodding their heads with me.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2006-05-27 06:06pm

Bounty wrote:[
Can it take notes ? Automatically bypass the free registration at newspaper sites ? Define and translate highlighted words, displaying both the official and slang meaning ? Automatically generate BBCode in forums ?

It can translate or pull up dictionary or encylopedia entries on highlighted text from the normal context menu, or perform searches on highlighted text from google, amazon, bittorrent, answers.com, etc (and you can add your own), and has a copy to note function. It also has a built in mail and newsgroup client like the full Mozilla/Seamonkey suite, for those that want it. I think all versions now have a spellcheck built in, but since I use the Mac version that just rides on OSX's spellcheck anyway.

It can also save sessions, allows you to choose from saved sessions on open or re-open the last session, and re-open a closed tab.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-05-27 06:12pm

Hamel wrote:Sorry, it's Firefox. Sometimes it doesn't cause mere memory leaks, it guts my system, spilling out all the RAM. And this is with a gig of memory, no extentions.

Firefox has had a long time reputation for this kind of stuff, so I'm surprised I don't have everyone nodding their heads with me.

Probably because you're describing something that hasn't happened to anyone else here, even though they use Firefox many hours a day, every day, for months? *I've* sure never had Firefox balloon out to a gig, in all my months of 24/7 use.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2006-05-27 06:13pm

Hamel wrote: Sorry, it's Firefox. Sometimes it doesn't cause mere memory leaks, it guts my system, spilling out all the RAM. And this is with a gig of memory, no extentions..

When I used to use Seamonkey or Firefox for my main browser I would have to close and re-open the browser or even reboot every three or four days because it had started to crawl horribly (and no saved sessions!). Switching to Opera and keeping all my other system software the same has entirely eliminated this problem.

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2006-05-27 06:25pm

As the chief executive officer of a company that generates a fair slice of its revenue from graphics design, the default Opera interface has my seal of approval. In fact, I prefer it to the clunky, counter-intuitive design of Firefox. Opera also has a much cooler, simpler brand name/architecture system and a cleaner logo. In the unlikely event I ever do get tired of looking at Opera, I can always reskin it.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-05-27 06:43pm

RThurmont wrote:As the chief executive officer of a company that generates a fair slice of its revenue from graphics design, the default Opera interface has my seal of approval. In fact, I prefer it to the clunky, counter-intuitive design of Firefox. Opera also has a much cooler, simpler brand name/architecture system and a cleaner logo. In the unlikely event I ever do get tired of looking at Opera, I can always reskin it.

How exactly is Firefox counter-intuitive when Opera comes included with a whole shitload of menus, toolbars and other assorted odds and ends that lead to confusion as to what is supposed to do what? As it is the Firefox interface is relatively minimalist in comparison to Opera.

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2006-05-27 06:48pm

I don't see why session saving is touted as an Opera advantage. Sessionsaver extension for Firefox does it all as well, and does it well. I belive I was pimping it here before.

Sure, its not included in the default, but if you are interested in that functionality its not like the extension has a difficult to find or unintuitive name or something.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2006-05-27 07:06pm

I've never had any problems with Firefox since it was called Phoenix and in release candidate phase - and this across three operating systems! If Firefox is causing the behavior that Hamel is describing, something is quite wrong.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2006-05-27 07:10pm

mmar wrote:I don't see why session saving is touted as an Opera advantage. Sessionsaver extension for Firefox does it all as well, and does it well. I belive I was pimping it here before.

Sure, its not included in the default, but if you are interested in that functionality its not like the extension has a difficult to find or unintuitive name or something.

Because you have to install it at all. Whereas Opera can just do it out of the box. And has been able to for years.

You don't need to piss about with extensions that are likely to break the next time an OS update is released because they aren't compatible yet, the functionality is there, built in, bugtested, and working, and this doesn't increase the memory or install footprint. Opera's footprint is smaller than Firefox without any extensions.

The ability to do something that has to be added to a competitor by a third party is an advantage, something to reccommend Opera over Firefox because of.

Dooey Jo · Post by **Dooey Jo** » 2006-05-27 07:43pm

Vendetta wrote:The ability to do something that has to be added to a competitor by a third party is an advantage, something to reccommend Opera over Firefox because of.

What about the inability to something that can be added to the competitor by a third party product (or included, as is the case with the DOM Inspector)? Surely you don't expect Opera to incorporate all the functionality of the hundreds of different extensions, do you? The program would be huge...