Downloaded it, thought "Wait, this looks like Chrome," then switched back. Also, for some reason, it didn't support my printer. So, Chrome's back in for me!
Downloaded it, thought "Wait, this looks like Chrome," then switched back. Also, for some reason, it didn't support my printer. So, Chrome's back in for me!
That's unusual... The OS should be handling all the printing stuff. The browser shouldn't matter.
Well, actually they used to. Computers used to have tons of moving parts. The earliest computers were completely mechanical, like Babbage's machines or the Antithykera Mechanism. It's actually a major, and relatively recent, development that entire computers are solid state. Magnetic hard drives are the last vestige of non-solid state. BIOS chips used to be grids of very tiny circuit breakers. Now they are flash. Only within the past few years have we seen motherboards like mine with all solid state capacitors. Ask Rym's old computer why that is such a big deal.
Heck, replacing mechanical ball mice with optical mice is relatively recent.
The big deal about solid state electronics is that they work or they don't. If they work, they will probably work effectively forever. If they don't work, they just don't work. A RAM chip is a grid of a whole bunch of solid state capacitors and transistors. If you don't fry it by applying a shock to it, it just works. You can't hurt it by using it too much. The worst that can happen if maybe if you use a CPU or GPU too much, you will waste electricity and generate excess heat.
One of the exceptions is flash storage. Each sector on a flash device only has a limited number of write cycles. You can read from it forever, but after some point a sector becomes read only. It's an insane number of writes per sector, but not an unlimited number. Usually SSDs have spare sectors they start using when other sectors die out, but eventually the capacity of the drive will shrink after an extremely large amount of usage.
That's unusual... The OS should be handling all the printing stuff. The browser shouldn't matter.
That was my thought, but I got an alert saying it wasn't supporting the printer, tried to print, then nothin' happened. Checked it through Chrome, worked. I don't know what's goin' on, but since I don't plan to use Firefox even if this was fixed, it doesn't really matter. I will check one more selling point before I completely give up on Firefox though.
Well, actually they used to. Computers used to have tons of moving parts.
To be specific, I meant design principles and modern machines - For example, what you described as "wasted effort" would be an no-no when designing a mechanical device, where the power loss could make your device horribly inefficient to run and more liable to break or be useless, but not necessarily the case when you're talking about software, like you explained - but Yes, I do understand what you mean. Though, I suppose it's not entirely obsolete just yet.
You realize that Chrome sends out an excessive bandwidth-wasting number of DNS requests? While you are reading this forum doing nothing, it is sending out the DNS queries for every link on the page that it doesn't already know. Most of that is just a waste because you are only going to click on one link. But when you do finally click on that one link, it will load more quickly because it does one less query.
I use Google's DNS so it's their bandwidth they're wasting. :P
Well, actually they used to. Computers used to have tons of moving parts.
To be specific, I meant design principles and modern machines - For example, what you described as "wasted effort" would be an no-no when designing a mechanical device, where the power loss could make your device horribly inefficient to run and more liable to break or be useless, but not necessarily the case when you're talking about software, like you explained - but Yes, I do understand what you mean. Though, I suppose it's not entirely obsolete just yet.
The funny thing is that from a MechEn perspective, a computer is a device that takes in electricity and produces heat Granted, there's some light and sound energy, but mostly it's just heat.
As for the whole deal with Chrome vs. Firefox, I'm using Chrome at the moment, and I don't see Firefox 4 having enough of an advantage to justify switching. From what Scott said, I gather the only advantage is the keyword on bookmark feature?
I just upgraded, and there's only one extension I use from Firefox 3 that isn't working with Firefox 4, though there is a very similar implementation in another extension that will do for now. I never found Firefox particularly slow, to be honest, so for now I'm not seeing any great leaps forward.
So far Firefox 4 seems a lot better than before but I don't know if I'm going to switch back completely. The main improvement to me is just the more chrome-esque look it has now with the tabs up top. Thats a big deal if you're on a netbook that only has a screen resolution of 1024x576. Also, the tabs don't reload if you separate them from the main window, which is a big plus if you are watching a video in it. I don't really have any complaints since I really don't use all that many plugins or extensions. So far I haven't had any crashes so thats a plus.
That's unusual... The OS should be handling all the printing stuff. The browser shouldn't matter.
That was my thought, but I got an alert saying it wasn't supporting the printer, tried to print, then nothin' happened. Checked it through Chrome, worked. I don't know what's goin' on, but since I don't plan to use Firefox even if this was fixed, it doesn't really matter. I will check one more selling point before I completely give up on Firefox though.
Yeah, that is bizarre... Unless you've got a weird printer driver issue or something... I honestly have no idea what could cause this.
Man, I already told you guys that Firefox is a piece of shit. Never use it. Ever. It will never work. The only solution is to not use it. You guys are so stupid. Stupid to the max.
Man, I already told you guys that Firefox is a piece of shit. Never use it. Ever. It will never work. The only solution is to not use it. You guys are so stupid. Stupid to the max.
Yeah, IE6 works fine for every website I care to visit. And for the rest, I use IE5.5
Anyone able to get their application tabs to persist between sessions?
I haven't had a problem with them. I didn't do anything special either; I just pinned Twitter and Gmail as app tabs and they're there whenever I start Firefox.
First off, I never left. Chrome is too restrictive IMO. Between about:config and the userchrome.css file with Firefox, you can do a LOT of ridiculously cool (internal and external) customizations with Firefox, in addition to all the other ways Firefox lets you fuck with the layout of the browser. With Chrome, you're stuck with the layout they give you. If you don't like it, tough. Another huge reason I never used Chrome was the lack of keyword bookmarks.
Second, I like how FF is handling the status bar now. Just making the mouseover url pop up at the bottom is really nice (yes I realize Chrome has been doing this for awhile...I've been using Fission to display mouseover links in the address bar when I was using FF3, worked just dandy). Also, FF4 seems a little faster than FF3.5, but it could just be placebo. And what does it matter, anyways? We're not in the dial-up era anymore... Web speeds are fast nowadays. I've always subscribed to the notion that if Chrome can open a page in .4 seconds and Firefox can do it in .5 seconds, then how does it really affect us, the end users?
Third, some of you guys are being ignorant as hell. Scott knows what he's talking about; don't treat him like he doesn't. You guys are talking about how being an early adopter with software is a bad idea. Scott asks for examples, and all you can come up with are video games and consoles (and iOS, but I know fuck all about iPhones so I'm just hoping that Scott's argument was sufficient enough for iOS). It's not the same (and in the case of consoles, that's a hardware debate and thus a completely different ballgame) as free software. Companies ARE pushing for games to get out there as soon as possible (get their product on the market before competitors, get more sales for having it out a few weeks early, etc). Sometimes buggy or "incomplete" games WILL be released, for multitudes of reasons. But for Firefox and Chrome, what benefit would the devs have for putting out a release early? To get more money? (it's free software...). To attract more people to the browser? (a couple days aren't going to make a difference). What is going to do anything BUT attract people to the browser? Bugs and security holes. Scott is right in saying that alphas, betas, and nightly builds are what you have to be careful about. Once the nightlies become as perfect as the devs want them to be, they will be released as an official version, and you should have nothing to worry about. As long as you keep your software up to date, you should never have to worry about bugs and security holes. Your only legitimate reason for not updating to Firefox 4 is if you hate some of the new features, like the Firefox menu button (perhaps you enjoy the menu toolbar better, who knows?). But hey, that's all stuff you knew about before the official version is released...
I am actually completely baffled about what requires firefox to take over a gig of memory on my system.
I'm baffled, too. I use Firefox with approx 10-20+ tabs at any given time, and I've never seen it get over 400mb of RAM. You must be doing some crazy shit for it to be going over a gig...And as Rym and Scott have pointed out, more memory usage != bad.
Firefox 4 is not detecting RSS feeds a page links too and displaying an rss logo in the address bar like older versions of Firefox did.
I think it's pretty stupid that they changed this, but there are a few workarounds: 1. Right click on a toolbar and hit "customize", then drag the RSS "subscribe" icon onto a toolbar. You'll be able to click it when the page you are on has a feed you can subscribe to. So it seems like FF4 just took the button out of the address bar and changed it into an icon that you can put on a toolbar. Pretty pointless IMO. 2. Search for "RSS" on the add ons tab and there are at least 2 extensions that will put the RSS icon back into the address bar.
I'm baffled, too. I use Firefox with approx 10-20+ tabs at any given time, and I've never seen it get over 400mb of RAM. You must be doing some crazy shit for it to be going over a gig...And as Rym and Scott have pointed out, more memory usage != bad.
Nope, just browsing normally, usually less than ten tabs, easily. The most intensive thing I'd be doing with firefox would have been the odd youtube video, a flash game occasionally, and the one time where I have a ton of tabs open, which is when I load up my webcomic bookmarks, which is currently 52 tabs being loaded at once - but, I'd only do that once a day, and usually restart firefox afterward.
I've noticed that the massive memory usage doesn't seem to happen with Firefox 4 - I can run it all night, and other than the occasional spike, it rarely uses more than 3-4 hundred K, no matter what I do.
Nope, just browsing normally, usually less than ten tabs, easily. The most intensive thing I'd be doing with firefox would have been the odd youtube video, a flash game occasionally
Actually, if I remember correctly YouTube videos (which are Flash video files), Flash games, and Shockwave were big causes of Firefox sucking up so much memory. I've had it take up almost a gig before but I tend to load up a bunch of YouTube videos at once.
Nope, just browsing normally, usually less than ten tabs, easily. The most intensive thing I'd be doing with firefox would have been the odd youtube video, a flash game occasionally
Actually, if I remember correctly YouTube videos (which are Flash video files), Flash games, and Shockwave were big causes of Firefox sucking up so much memory. I've had it take up almost a gig before but I tend to load up a bunch of YouTube videos at once.
Perhaps my use of Flashblock and Adblock is why I don't have so many troubles?
Actually, if I remember correctly YouTube videos (which are Flash video files), Flash games, and Shockwave were big causes of Firefox sucking up so much memory. I've had it take up almost a gig before but I tend to load up a bunch of YouTube videos at once.
I'll not watch youtube for certain every time I'm using firefox for an extended period, but without fail, Firefox would - like I said, doesn't seem to happen with 4 - use over a gig of memory. On at least one occasion, after doing nothing for 8 hours from a fresh start, it managed to somehow be using 900 K.
Comments
Heck, replacing mechanical ball mice with optical mice is relatively recent.
The big deal about solid state electronics is that they work or they don't. If they work, they will probably work effectively forever. If they don't work, they just don't work. A RAM chip is a grid of a whole bunch of solid state capacitors and transistors. If you don't fry it by applying a shock to it, it just works. You can't hurt it by using it too much. The worst that can happen if maybe if you use a CPU or GPU too much, you will waste electricity and generate excess heat.
One of the exceptions is flash storage. Each sector on a flash device only has a limited number of write cycles. You can read from it forever, but after some point a sector becomes read only. It's an insane number of writes per sector, but not an unlimited number. Usually SSDs have spare sectors they start using when other sectors die out, but eventually the capacity of the drive will shrink after an extremely large amount of usage.
Granted, there's some light and sound energy, but mostly it's just heat.
As for the whole deal with Chrome vs. Firefox, I'm using Chrome at the moment, and I don't see Firefox 4 having enough of an advantage to justify switching. From what Scott said, I gather the only advantage is the keyword on bookmark feature?
I'll probably update to Firefox 4 soon, but I'm still waiting on a couple of extensions to update.
Second, I like how FF is handling the status bar now. Just making the mouseover url pop up at the bottom is really nice (yes I realize Chrome has been doing this for awhile...I've been using Fission to display mouseover links in the address bar when I was using FF3, worked just dandy). Also, FF4 seems a little faster than FF3.5, but it could just be placebo. And what does it matter, anyways? We're not in the dial-up era anymore... Web speeds are fast nowadays. I've always subscribed to the notion that if Chrome can open a page in .4 seconds and Firefox can do it in .5 seconds, then how does it really affect us, the end users?
Third, some of you guys are being ignorant as hell. Scott knows what he's talking about; don't treat him like he doesn't. You guys are talking about how being an early adopter with software is a bad idea. Scott asks for examples, and all you can come up with are video games and consoles (and iOS, but I know fuck all about iPhones so I'm just hoping that Scott's argument was sufficient enough for iOS). It's not the same (and in the case of consoles, that's a hardware debate and thus a completely different ballgame) as free software. Companies ARE pushing for games to get out there as soon as possible (get their product on the market before competitors, get more sales for having it out a few weeks early, etc). Sometimes buggy or "incomplete" games WILL be released, for multitudes of reasons.
But for Firefox and Chrome, what benefit would the devs have for putting out a release early? To get more money? (it's free software...). To attract more people to the browser? (a couple days aren't going to make a difference). What is going to do anything BUT attract people to the browser? Bugs and security holes. Scott is right in saying that alphas, betas, and nightly builds are what you have to be careful about. Once the nightlies become as perfect as the devs want them to be, they will be released as an official version, and you should have nothing to worry about. As long as you keep your software up to date, you should never have to worry about bugs and security holes.
Your only legitimate reason for not updating to Firefox 4 is if you hate some of the new features, like the Firefox menu button (perhaps you enjoy the menu toolbar better, who knows?). But hey, that's all stuff you knew about before the official version is released... I'm baffled, too. I use Firefox with approx 10-20+ tabs at any given time, and I've never seen it get over 400mb of RAM. You must be doing some crazy shit for it to be going over a gig...And as Rym and Scott have pointed out, more memory usage != bad. I think it's pretty stupid that they changed this, but there are a few workarounds:
1. Right click on a toolbar and hit "customize", then drag the RSS "subscribe" icon onto a toolbar. You'll be able to click it when the page you are on has a feed you can subscribe to. So it seems like FF4 just took the button out of the address bar and changed it into an icon that you can put on a toolbar. Pretty pointless IMO.
2. Search for "RSS" on the add ons tab and there are at least 2 extensions that will put the RSS icon back into the address bar.
I've noticed that the massive memory usage doesn't seem to happen with Firefox 4 - I can run it all night, and other than the occasional spike, it rarely uses more than 3-4 hundred K, no matter what I do.