Fairwell Firefox
For over a month now I have waited patiently for the next update for Firefox, my browser of choice. The problem: the memory leaks have run rampant and are making Internet browsing very unjoyable. My laptop, with only 512MB of RAM is in particularly bad shape as Firefox’s leaks quickly exceede 100MB or RAM which sends the laptop into intense thrashing.
My desktop with over a GB of RAM is capable of handling Firefox even when it peaks at just under 400MB of RAM consumption. But even then tabbing between pages is sluggish, video streaming is choppy, downloads stall on the prompt, and GMail even refuses to open at times. Interestingly enough, even with a 400MB Firefox process open, IE7 can play video and download without trouble. So the issue is definitely not broadband.
I’ve finally had enough. I tried switching about two weeks ago and turned back as neither Opera nor IE7 was Firefox, and my extensions were sorely misssed. But enough. This isn’t fun anymore.
And so I reinstalled Opera (I had experimented with it two weeks ago but reverted back to Firefox). I’ve been messing around with the customizability and themes to try and imitate what I really enjoyed about Firefox. For those who want the tabs to be below the address bar, I will link to the fix below.
http://my.opera.com/operafan2006/blog/index.dml/tag/Tab%20bar%20below%20address%20bar
Alas, Opera lacks the extensibility of Firefox, but I will just have to make due. I have heard some positive comments on Opera, many who even prefer it. So I will say this, Mozilla, if you don’t release that update soon I may actually end up prefering Opera.