Firefox Browser getting worse?

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Hi. this is more of a moan on how appauling firefox has become with each update. For me, firefox keeps crashing on certain websites such as the playstaion network and sometimes on sites that display youtube videos.

It also sometimes take up to 1gb of my blooming ram with only about 5-6 Tabs open at a time! Has firefox lost its way?

Well im sick and tired of using it now and imho its fastly becoming as bad if not worse than Internet explorer. So what is the alternative?

Opera. My mate who is a web developer has been banging on for a while how opera is the best and most reliable browser to use and wow it really is better than firefox. less resource hungry and no crashes so far.

i've got over 10 tabs as we speak and its only using 280mb of ram as a posed to firefox using nearly 1gb!

Bye bye firefox, hello opera!

[Vini]

If Chrome had some of the extensions I require, I'd jump ship too.

I've never been as discontent with FF as I have been since rebuilding on Windows 7. Maybe it doesn't like 7. But it always seems to bomb out (randomly) on pages that are Java/Flash heavy. I've been in love since the Firebird days, but recently I've been wanting to play the field.

Chrome is fast as they come, but it's just not ready yet

I'll try Opera now.

[dangel]

I spent a few months on firefox, then chrome and then Opera 10.50 beta came out and tbh I came to the same conclusion - especially when I found i could get the addins I actually needed working (autopagerize/adblock) too. I regularly try the competition but really Opera fits my needs much better - especially on lower powered PCs where FF in particular struggles.

[Zak33]

I like Firefox.. I don't get crashes at all.

As screen resolutions go up and adverts become more prevailent, extra ram useage is likely.

[abaxas]

I have to agree with all of th above, but with one huge difference.

The unix/osx builds of FF are fantastic, while the windows one is 'gash'. There is no real reason for this, unless somewhere in the chain something is buggy.

I run 4x instances of FF 3.62 (ie different processes) of my mac at the same time + 10's of versions inside VMs under ubuntu. I have next to no issues, even with ram usage.

[Steve]

I open Firefox first thing in the morning, and don't close it until the end of the day - I open hundreds of tabs in that time. It uses a fair bit of RAM - but RAM is there to be used. What you should be asking is whether it's slowing things down or not.

The crashes you're having, of course, are another matter, but my money's on the Flash plugin causing grief - it usually does.

[peterb]

I have found Firefox to be more reliable than Opera - especially the latest Opera release, both running on a Linux machine. As with steve, I open it and just leave it running, by the end of the day I can have 20 or more tabs open.

That said, the latest version on Windows (XP) has been less stable, although I hadn't really thought about it until I saw this post!

[dangel]

Opera linux is a fair bit behind now though - they've yet to get a 10.50 release out and 10.5 is actually a huge jump from the old 10.10 version - and on Windows it's even more pronounced due to all the Windows 7 support 10.50 brought in.

[mikemikemi]

Firefox is more reliable than chrome for me.

I'm not bothered by it's ram usage, but what annoys me is that if I close the window by accident then try and immediately restart firefox the previous process hasn't closed yet so it can't restart. I prefer Chrome's way of handling this as it restarts instantly.

[doddsy]

I haven't used opera for years, I did use chrome while I had XP (I'll assume it's better now) but once I installed 7 the first thing I did was download FF. I had some problems a while back due to a buggy plugin but once that was fixed everything was fine. I find it fast and stable, not sure what the OP is doing with his tabs but I currently have 6 open and I'm using 107mb.

[Brucelles]

I am a big FF buff, but I do get crashes pretty frequently, running on windows 7. As the OP says, it tends to be on graphics heavy sites. That said, I run it on XP as well and it's as stable as the great pyramid.

I like Opera, and would probably switch if I could get a reliable dictionary installed, and if it ran my company's timesheet logging system.

[dangel]

I like Opera, and would probably switch if I could get a reliable dictionary installed, and if it ran my company's timesheet logging system.

I find the dictionary OK personally - does your company use timeware perchance?

[Brucelles]

No, we have something called E4SE. It sucketh like unto an vacuum. It only runs on IE or FF.

I have problems with the dictionary with MS Office, so I think it just carries over. I selected English UK, but it keeps slipping back to English US, which is gibberish to educated people.

[Georgy291]

FF keeps repeatedly crashing with me, refuses to load up some websites completely and youtube is a comeplete nightmare here

[Tumble]

I tried 3.6 when it came out. Wasn't impressed at all. Gone back to 3.5.8 - stable as a rock and everything works.


(and NO virii at all)

[TooNice]

Memory wise it's much better after I went from 3.0 to 3.6 (heard that the improvement was done in 3.5). I tend to have 30ish tab open, and it stays open till I restart (weekly) or when it crashes. Takes under 700MB. As far as crashes go, it tend to happen on the same screen but is not too frequent.

There is a bug that, pardon the pun, bugs me and that is related to broken JS of sort when it's not loaded fully. Side effects include the 'smilie button on Hexus not working or the 'more messages' button on FB not expanding.

The fix is to clear the cache. Trying a 'force refresh' is hit or miss.