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How stable is Firefox / Camino

T

Tomaz

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 24, 2004
311
0
Switzerland
I tried using Firefox and Camino for the last few weeks and really liked them, but I went back to Safari cause both Firefox and Camino kept crashing on a regular basis. Sometimes I had several crashes per day and both always crashed after I put the PB to sleep and woke it up again without quitting the browser before. It's a shame, since I really started to like and use the gchat function in gmail, and Safari doesn't support that.

Could anyone share his/her experience with these browsers?
 
Both browsers are very stable. Make sure you are using Camino v1.0, the beta issue was for me prone to weird things. I use Camino as my primary browser, hardly use Firefox, don't like the look of it. Plus I think Camino is faster overall. I use them on old hardware too, G4/466, G4/DP 867, iMac G3/500, PowerBook G4/667, G3/300 B/W. And last use OS 10.2.8 through OS 10.4.5. I have 5 browsers installed on main computer to view web sites and their differences.
 
Does anyone of you have problems with the mozilla browsers crashing when coming out of sleep mode ?

Do you use any plugins ?
 
Camino hasn't crashed on me, so its my primary browser. However, it is quite annoying that:

1) Nintendo.com doesn't support it.
2) Bungie's website is super slow on it!
 
I have more problems with refreshing on firefox. I'll be switching between tabs and I'll go back to one and it'll just refresh. This wouldn't be a big deal, but since Im stuck in the stone age with dialup, it's annoying as hell. Other than that, used firefox forever!

dustin
 
A new version of Firefox just came out (1.5.0.1), adressing stability issues amongst other things. Maybe that helps, maybe it's time for another try...
 
miniConvert said:
I'm using Camino v1.0 and it's pretty stable but I wouldn't say it's as stable as Safari is yet. However, it's far far faster and nicer to use - it was a no-brainer for me.
Click to expand...
Yeah, not that FireFox, Safari 2.0, and Camino crash a lot. I just found that Safari 1.x crashes much MORE then the previously listed. I find Deer Park (FireFox G5 optimized) to render faster than Safari. Shiira uses the same Web Kit as Safari and renders much faster then Safari too.
 
I use Safari more than Camino, just because Camino does not support the integrated Dictionary feature of Tiger. I like to have available the ctrl+cmd+D over a word I don't know the meaning of, feature in Safari.
Otherwise it would be Camino all the way. Like somebody said before, Firefox looks worse than IE.
 
I've been using Firefox for the last couple of weeks and finally decided to (seim-)permanantly replace Safari with it as my default browser. With the "GrAppl (Brushed) 1.8" theme is looks quite like Safari as well. In two weeks, Firefox has not crashed on me once, and it seems a bit faster than Safari as well, although not dramatically so.

Safari does crash sometimes but the bigger problem for Safari is resources. It has some horrendous memory leaks in it. Over time, memory usage increases to hundreds of megabytes, CPU usage rises and rises to well over 50% on my dual G5, and everything slows to a crawl. When I quit Safari and relaunch it, memory usage immedately goes back down, CPU usage drops, and everything is snappy again. But it always happens (for quit a few versions now, and on multiple Macs I own). Maybe I notice it more than others because I tend to open and close a lot of tabs, but this should not be happening, period. Firefox does not seem to have this problem.

I do miss a few things from Safari such as the Google search history list, having the site history list accessible in a drop-down menu, having each tab's close button directly on the tab rather than way off to the side, and having a directly-clickable "Reveal in Finder" button on each download item. But so far I'm very happy with Firefox overall.
 
Camino and Firefox are great - the former for Macs, the latter for PCs (I don't find Firefox as attractive as Camino, visually). Stability has never been an issue.

I don't really like Safari - not a big fan of the brushed metal look, or the icon set (both of which I've changed with SafarIcon and UNO, but props to Firefox for their extensive themes and extension libraries.

The big thing I have against Safari is, it is impossible to simply right click on a website in the dropdown menu of a bookmark folder, and have it open in a new tab.
 
Tomaz said:
Does anyone of you have problems with the mozilla browsers crashing when coming out of sleep mode ?
Click to expand...
Never had a Camino or Firefox crash when it comes out of sleep mode.
Actually I had had minimal crash problems at all.
Do you use any plugins ?
Click to expand...
yes, I use multiple plug-ins:
* Java Embedding Plugin
* PDF Browser Plugin
* Shockwave Flash
* Flip4Mac WMV Plugin
* QuickTime Plug-in
* Java Plug-in
 
I think I found out when exactly Firefox crashes on me after waking up from sleepmode. It only happens when I put the PB into sleepmode while a site is still loading in Firefox. Then, when waking up, Firefox can`t connect to that site anymore and I get the spinning beachball of death and have to force-quit it. I downloaded the new new (1.5.0.2) update that just came out (2 updates in less than 24h, wow!) and tested it for a few hours and didn`t have a single crash except the one mentioned above. So it seems they fixed a few things.

I really like Firefox more than Safari and would like to continue use it, most shortcomings that people describe compared to Safari (interface, TabCloseButtons...) can be fixed with extensions. And I really like the search menu, the more compatible rendering machine and some of the extensions. I`m happy now that it seems to be more stable! :)
 
Tomaz said:
Does anyone of you have problems with the mozilla browsers crashing when coming out of sleep mode ?

Do you use any plugins ?
Click to expand...
YES. although it doesnt always crash when coming out of sleep, although it also can crash when the computer hasnt slept for some time. I am back to Safari because of the problems with firefox. It happens more on my powerbook than powermac though. I tried Camino a while ago, and I'll give it another go..but firefox has let me down. Yes I updated to the latest, but it still is way too unstable for a browser.
 
Camino Crashes on my Powerbook!

I have been using Camino since the days it was called Chimera. The last few weeks Camino has crashed every time I put the computer to sleep with it open- whether there is an open web page or not. I have never had this many crashes with Camino!

Usually I run a nightly build. Because of the crash-o-rama thing I decided to replace the bleeding edge version and run the stable release. IT CRASHES TOO!

What's up? Is it something about the OS that changed? I am using a new-in-November Powerbook 1.67 GHz G4 with 2 GB of RAM, running 10.4.6.

Camino is such a marvelous browser. This bug MUST be eradicated.:confused:
 
BlizzardBomb said:
Camino hasn't crashed on me, so its my primary browser. However, it is quite annoying that:

1) Nintendo.com doesn't support it.
2) Bungie's website is super slow on it!
Click to expand...

Nintendo's site may not support it, but Camino renders all the pages with no problem so far as I can tell.

Bungie's site is rather poorly put together, IMO. I am not sure that the slowness is the fault of Camino's alone.

torchstar said:
I have been using Camino since the days it was called Chimera. The last few weeks Camino has crashed every time I put the computer to sleep with it open- whether there is an open web page or not. I have never had this many crashes with Camino!

Usually I run a nightly build. Because of the crash-o-rama thing I decided to replace the bleeding edge version and run the stable release. IT CRASHES TOO!

What's up? Is it something about the OS that changed? I am using a new-in-November Powerbook 1.67 GHz G4 with 2 GB of RAM, running 10.4.6.

Camino is such a marvelous browser. This bug MUST be eradicated.:confused:
Click to expand...

I somehow imagine that you already thought of this, but...Have you tried 1) Repairing permissions, 2) checking to see if there is a conflict if you use add-ons (ie., camitools).

I too use Camino 1.0 as my primary browser and I am very happy with it. I pretty much recommend it to anyone that has a Mac as an alternative to Safari. Safari is still great, mind you. I just like the speed and simplicity of Camino.
 
torchstar said:
Camino is such a marvelous browser. This bug MUST be eradicated.:confused:
Click to expand...
There was a macosxhints article a few months ago that indicated the use of annoying fonts such as Comic Sans in sizes greater than 8 point cause spontaneous browser resets. They suggested switching to Arial, or even something like Verdana, to see if the problem went away.

I'll try to dig up the link.
 
emw said:
There was a macosxhints article a few months ago that indicated the use of annoying fonts such as Comic Sans in sizes greater than 8 point cause spontaneous browser resets. They suggested switching to Arial, or even something like Verdana, to see if the problem went away.

I'll try to dig up the link.
Click to expand...
It's true! It's true! I've seen it!
 
I've been using Camino on my Tiger powerbook for months, and I haven't had any stability issues. I've found it to be a better fit for me than Safari.

Unfortunately when my friend tried to install Camino on her iBook running Panther, it crashed like crazy. It might have something to do with how poorly written most of the html on Myspace is, that's what seemed to crash it for her.
 
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