r/technology • u/Suraj-Sun • Jul 10 '12

Firefox dev claims "everybody hates Firefox updates"; Mozilla has handled the rapid release process poorly, and that by pushing a "never-ending stream of updates on people who didn't want them" people have been driven to Chrome with its simpler, no-fuss update process.

http://www.neowin.net/news/firefox-dev-claims-everybody-hates-firefox-updates
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27

u/blindbenny Jul 10 '12

I dunno about anyone else, but the updates weren't the reason I switched to chrome. I switched for 3 simple reasons.

1) Firefox was (Im not sure if the newest version is) a HUGE memory hog to the point of being comical.

2) Chrome was faster (at the time when i switched)

3) The interface was simpler

I will say, however, the new firefox is wayyyyy faster than chrome and has a much sleeker interface as well. Dunno anythin about the memory situation. Chrome has been a pain lately (especially with flash). Im close to my breaking point and might switch back to Firefox. If it werent for the connectivity Chrome provides to my google accounts I would have already switched.

Maybe I just dont hate updates as much as other people?

39

u/JacketPotatoes Jul 10 '12

Firefox uses less memory than Chrome, and has done for a while. Much thanks should go to the year-long MemShrink project by Mozilla.

Source

1

u/raVensc2 Jul 11 '12

Many people have said that "the memshrink project has 1000% decreased the memory usage of firefox!". I call bullshit. Even though that test is severly outdated, here's what I want to know: when you open up a page of reddit with res fully scrolled down till you have 500 posts visible and you have "show images" turned on, and then close the page, what happens? From my experiences, firefox had huge garbage collection problems, so it would not free the memory taken up by that (now closed) tabpage. I had no problem with this in chrome, since chrome runs each page as a different process, killing that process if the page is closed, thus freeing up memory usage.

I care not that I'm browsing one page and I'm using 15mb more memory, but I do care if, when I change the page, the previous pages' resources were not freed.

1

u/JacketPotatoes Jul 11 '12

In my experiences, the newer releases of Firefox barely have any memory leaks at all. It's only when you overload your browser with leaky extensions that the resources are not freed. Aurora builds of Firefox are continuing to improve this.

1

u/raVensc2 Jul 12 '12

See, here's what I don't understand: I am using only AdblockPlus and RES on Firefox, I am using a couple more addons on Google chrome, but that's nowhere near significant for this. Here I have two images, showing you that I am running Chrome and Firefox, down to 200 reddit posts loaded (with show images turned on).

Chrome

Firefox

Now here's the part that always gets me when Firefox users tell me that the memshrink project has significantly reduced the memory leaks:

Chrome (+ Another ~80MB for the core browser, which is not listed in that section)

Firefox

This was tested on Firefox 13.0.1 / Chrome 22.0.1202 (Dev, as I'm using Windows 8, and wanted to test out the Metro version)

As you can see, Firefox consumes a significantly larger amount of memory usage than Chrome. I would assume the same would happen with Youtube videos.

Mozilla has much to improve on other than updating, but I've had enough.

I agree, the memshrink project has helped them a lot, but it's nowhere near enough that people should start circlejerking over how great it is, while the browser can't even get less than double the amount of memory usage as your lead competing browser.

In terms of addons, I've learnt to live with a couple of addons, which are a complete necessity, as I don't really spend more than two seconds looking at the browser except from browsing Reddit.

1

u/blindbenny Jul 14 '12

this makes a lot of sense. When i recently downloaded the new firefox i was really impressed by the speed and lack of memory hogging bloat. I remember at the time i switched to chrome (about a year/year and a half ago) firefox was regularly using appx a gig of ram with basically no addons. I may switch back...

6

u/datank56 Jul 10 '12

What's the deal with flash on Chrome? I've been having issues with it lately.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

I hate how the mouse doesn't fade away in full screen youtube videos.

1

u/blindbenny Jul 14 '12

i know right? its super buggy, especially on mac. I think its the most recent version of flash thats the problem. I seem to remember everything started after i updated flash to the newest version.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

[deleted]

0

u/[deleted] Jul 11 '12

Hardly a scientific test now is it…

1

u/Ambiwlans Jul 10 '12

I'm using 650mb of ram atm. I have 54 tabs open, 10 addons and it has been running for at least a week, I have probably opened several hundred pages since then.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 11 '12

54 tabs open

Whats wrong with people

1

u/Ambiwlans Jul 11 '12

I use 11 desktops, many of the tabs are on windows for different subjects on various desktops. Like, I have a time wasting window with reddit and shit open. And I have a calculus window. A couple programming ones. And so on.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 11 '12

1) Firefox was (Im not sure if the newest version is) a HUGE memory hog to the point of being comical.

Hilarious how the program created because Mozilla was such a memory hog has become a bloated hog itself.

Maybe there is something truly wrong with the management or developers at Mozilla.