I'm thinking I can't be the only person out there who is becoming increasingly angered by the deterioration of Firefox over the past few years.
I have been a loyal Firefox user from 1.5 onwards back when I still used Windows and remained loyal with my switch to Mac 3 years ago. Firefox was light years ahead of anything offered at the time I switched and I simply grew accustomed to it's look and feel, and some great add-ons I can no longer live without. Nevertheless, my limits of loyalty are being severely tested lately--festering for quite some time now.
Back in the 2.X days the big issue was memory leaks, 3.X was supposed to fix it. Yet here we are at 3.6.6...and the memory usage by this browser has never been worse. I have 9 tabs open for about 3 hours now and memory usage is at an astonishing 512.4 MB. This is just unacceptable. The memory usage on Safari would be half that or less in the equivalent situation. Performance suffers as a result. I am forced to restart Firefox every few hours to alleviate this memory problem, only to find myself having to do it once again later.
Second issue, the constant beachballing. Yes it only lasts 10-15 seconds at a time, but it is simply maddening. I can't think of the last time I had a beachball appear on me on Safari with heavy usage. I find it unacceptable that these days with powerful computers and broadband connections Firefox can grab 50% of CPU usage when having a few tabs open and start beachballing with such frequency.
Keep in mind I do not have endless plug ins and extensions. I only use what I need. I know that many of the crashes are Flash's fault, but I'm not even talking about Flash when these performance hits take place.
Third issue: it's grown slow. I don't think I need to elaborate any more on that. It's just not as fast as it used to be. Scrolling often lags too.
I honestly do not know how much more of this I can take. The thought of ditching Firefox was unthinkable for me some time ago, but more and more I am increasingly frustrated with this browser that has apparently become the Hummer of browsers: memory hog, resource hog, bloated, slow and unreliable.
I will give Firefox 4 a chance once it is released for the public and I think that will be it for me if these issues are not addressed. Enough is really enough. I've grown so used to this browser that it is very hard for me to leave it, but I'm sick and tired of getting a sh**ty experience. Safari is OK and it would take a lot of getting used to to make the full time switch, and I wish I didn't even have to contemplate it. Chrome is out of my list--the idea of Google tracking me 24/7 is enough for me to not even consider it no matter how fast it may be. Alas...I guess I'm just ranting, but I truly am sad about this situation. I want to stay loyal. They have just slowly but surely tested my patience one too many times.
I have been a loyal Firefox user from 1.5 onwards back when I still used Windows and remained loyal with my switch to Mac 3 years ago. Firefox was light years ahead of anything offered at the time I switched and I simply grew accustomed to it's look and feel, and some great add-ons I can no longer live without. Nevertheless, my limits of loyalty are being severely tested lately--festering for quite some time now.
Back in the 2.X days the big issue was memory leaks, 3.X was supposed to fix it. Yet here we are at 3.6.6...and the memory usage by this browser has never been worse. I have 9 tabs open for about 3 hours now and memory usage is at an astonishing 512.4 MB. This is just unacceptable. The memory usage on Safari would be half that or less in the equivalent situation. Performance suffers as a result. I am forced to restart Firefox every few hours to alleviate this memory problem, only to find myself having to do it once again later.
Second issue, the constant beachballing. Yes it only lasts 10-15 seconds at a time, but it is simply maddening. I can't think of the last time I had a beachball appear on me on Safari with heavy usage. I find it unacceptable that these days with powerful computers and broadband connections Firefox can grab 50% of CPU usage when having a few tabs open and start beachballing with such frequency.
Keep in mind I do not have endless plug ins and extensions. I only use what I need. I know that many of the crashes are Flash's fault, but I'm not even talking about Flash when these performance hits take place.
Third issue: it's grown slow. I don't think I need to elaborate any more on that. It's just not as fast as it used to be. Scrolling often lags too.
I honestly do not know how much more of this I can take. The thought of ditching Firefox was unthinkable for me some time ago, but more and more I am increasingly frustrated with this browser that has apparently become the Hummer of browsers: memory hog, resource hog, bloated, slow and unreliable.
I will give Firefox 4 a chance once it is released for the public and I think that will be it for me if these issues are not addressed. Enough is really enough. I've grown so used to this browser that it is very hard for me to leave it, but I'm sick and tired of getting a sh**ty experience. Safari is OK and it would take a lot of getting used to to make the full time switch, and I wish I didn't even have to contemplate it. Chrome is out of my list--the idea of Google tracking me 24/7 is enough for me to not even consider it no matter how fast it may be. Alas...I guess I'm just ranting, but I truly am sad about this situation. I want to stay loyal. They have just slowly but surely tested my patience one too many times.
