[Mars]

If I could block ads, and read RSS feeds in Chrome, it would be my browser of choice.

Right now I'm using Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 with adblock and it's taking about 107 MB

[Mongoose]

Firefox is usually somewhere in the realm of 100MB for me, and that's on a system with only 512MB of RAM, yet it's still substantially faster than IE8.  I can't say I experience random crashes more than once in a blue moon, and now that you can recover the tabs you had open (and even the text entered in them) when you re-open it after a crash, that's barely more than a momentary inconvenience anyway.  I love the interface, I love my extensions, and I have no reason whatsoever to even consider switching to something else.

[haloboy100]

Firefox is using 97,484 K right now for me.

That's nothing compared to internet explorer, which is apparently running 167,488 k...

But that's not RAM, is it? where do you go to check the ram usage?

EDIT: Firefox is now at 104 k right now, so I guess I just wasn't using it enough the past few minutes.

[Fury]

Chrome 2.0 is out of beta and released as stable.

[Splinter]

Opera is the greatest thing since perforated toilet paper. 

By  providing only the basics and letting the user add whatever features he wants (if available), the Firefox team may seem to be catering to the minimalist, but Firefox, without addons, is still slower performing in almost every way than Opera. If you want a real minimalist browser that is light on its toes, go for Chrome.

I use Opera mainly for the tab features (duplication, follower tabs, cascade, tile etc...), the Trash can/undo, the mouse guestures, and the quick find/history search. Which if any of these exist in FF are almost impossible to find and or use. I have gotten so used to not caring if I accidentaly close a tab anymore. It's a very freeing experience.

Before some FF fans get all huffy I know you can duplicate tabs and undo closed tabs but they might as well not exist.

"As it turns out Firefox has the capacity to duplicate copy tabs. However I discovered Atlantis while trying to find where Firefox referenced tab duplication copying. I found it by searching their online help database for 'copy tab' --  not 'duplicate tab'. So to duplicate copy a tab you hold Ctrl while clicking and dragging and dropping the tab. If you let go of Ctrl before you drop the tab it won't work."

"Undoing closed tabs in FF we again run across a function that, because of obscure placement or bad implementation, is a rarely used feature (Ctrl+Shift+T). Weird button combos aside, Firefox will let you undo tabs through the history menu. History>Recently closed tabs> select the tab you want to restore. However it being under two sub-menus and the fact that they collapse every time you restore a tab means if you want to restore multiple tabs you will be spending more time getting back there than actually getting your tabs back. As mentioned before, your next option is to use the shortkeys. Position your fingers over those buttons. Not very comfortable or easy to use. I have large hands and I can barely reach all three buttons with one hand causing enough discomfort to warrant  using both hands. Your final option after closing a tab in Firefox is to right click on the tab bar > undo close tab. However, this brings us back to the most annoying tab bar in all of browserdom, where yet again if you have only one tab open there is no tab bar.  So you were browsing with two tabs and you closed one by accident. Now, you can't use the most practical form of restoring your tab because the tab bar you need to click on disappeared because the Mozilla masters decided that the top 20 vertical pixels of the current page are more important."

[MP-Ryan]

Firefox is currently using 68 MB of RAM on my system.

And so long as Firefox has the native functionality I've come to rely on and the excellent extensibility afforded by plugins, I won't be using anything else.

[haloboy100]

"Undoing closed tabs in FF we again run across a function that, because of obscure placement or bad implementation, is a rarely used feature (Ctrl+Shift+T). Weird button combos aside, Firefox will let you undo tabs through the history menu. History>Recently closed tabs> select the tab you want to restore. However it being under two sub-menus and the fact that they collapse every time you restore a tab means if you want to restore multiple tabs you will be spending more time getting back there than actually getting your tabs back. As mentioned before, your next option is to use the shortkeys. Position your fingers over those buttons. Not very comfortable or easy to use. I have large hands and I can barely reach all three buttons with one hand causing enough discomfort to warrant  using both hands. Your final option after closing a tab in Firefox is to right click on the tab bar > undo close tab. However, this brings us back to the most annoying tab bar in all of browserdom, where yet again if you have only one tab open there is no tab bar.  So you were browsing with two tabs and you closed one by accident. Now, you can't use the most practical form of restoring your tab because the tab bar you need to click on disappeared because the Mozilla masters decided that the top 20 vertical pixels of the current page are more important."

They're just tabs. What's so special about taking an extra few seconds to get a tab back after you accidently closed it?

I'll let you know that I accidently close my tabs all the time, and after simply pressing ctrl-shift-T, an action which takes less than three seconds, I'm back on my merry way to tab-happiness.

"As it turns out Firefox has the capacity to duplicate copy tabs. However I discovered Atlantis while trying to find where Firefox referenced tab duplication copying. I found it by searching their online help database for 'copy tab' --  not 'duplicate tab'. So to duplicate copy a tab you hold Ctrl while clicking and dragging and dropping the tab. If you let go of Ctrl before you drop the tab it won't work."

Why does that matter so much? For me, If I want to copy a tab, all you have to do is middle-click the back button, opening a tab with exactly the same history as the last one. So not only do you duplicate the page you're currently viewing (by simply pressing the forward button afterwards), you copy it's entire history along with it.

[Bob-san]

who didn't know about ctrl-shift-t? It's very convenient and I think it's an excellent combo. As ctrl-t is open new blank tab, ctrl-shift-t makes sense to bring back an old tab. I learned about it a long time ago just like middle-clicks to open links in tabs and middle-clicks to close tabs.

[Fenrir]

I use CTRL-Shift-T all the time.  It copies the tab history and everything, which is really useful.

[Splinter]

They're just tabs. What's so special about taking an extra few seconds to get a tab back after you accidently closed it?

I'll let you know that I accidently close my tabs all the time, and after simply pressing ctrl-shift-T, an action which takes less than three seconds, I'm back on my merry way to tab-happiness.

It's the little things that make all the difference. The point is that in FF that key combination is not as easy as ctrl+z or edit>undo AND since they hide the buttons and don't feature this as something their browser can do, most FF users don't even know they have that option unless they were searching specifically for it. unlike in Opera where there is a trash can at the end of your tab bar that anyone will notice right away and go hmm whats this? and they will discover they can restore old tabs. It used to drive me crazy when I would accidentally close a tab and lose wherever I was having to retype in the address and follow the links back to where I was... That feature should be something FF is proud of having not something they hide in the depths of their menu madness.

The FF team could do allot for themselves by simply giving you a couple more buttons. like a new tab button. How revolutionary. instead of making it a pain in the back having to customize just to have one of the most basic buttons how about including it by default and then letting people remove it if they want. I know so many (mostly older) people who to open a new tab will still go up to File>new tab cause they can't even get used to double or right clicking the tab bar which is only there if you have more than 2 tabs open in the first place unless you went hunting for the option to always show the tab bar... Do you see what I am getting at? It's not that FF can't do these things it's that they made it way more difficult than it needs to be.

Why does that matter so much? For me, If I want to copy a tab, all you have to do is middle-click the back button, opening a tab with exactly the same history as the last one. So not only do you duplicate the page you're currently viewing (by simply pressing the forward button afterwards), you copy it's entire history along with it.

Middle clicking the back button only opens your previous page in a new tab and it does NOT have the history and you cannot press forward to get to the page you started on. Maybe you have some add on or setting thing so that it does that but I run an modified version of FF 3.0.10 and it doesn't copy the history along with it.

I use CTRL-Shift-T all the time.  It copies the tab history and everything, which is really useful.

errr ctrl-shift-t opens recently closed tabs. You mean ctrl-shift-click-drag-and release but it's not even that easy. It's ctrl-shift-click-drag-and release the click first or the shift and then the click but not the ctrl cause then it won't work? How handy. And you would think at the very list they would give you the ability to copy a tab by right clicking the tab you want copied... where it would be listed logically along with all the other handy things you can do with tabs. Logic is not in the FF makers vocabulary.

[Stealth]

wow a lot of hate, a lot of hate

[haloboy100]

wow a lot of hate, a lot of hate

Indeed...

Still. It's one extra key to press in the ztrl+shift+T hotkey. I still don't see what the fuss is. Sure you don't see it when you first try, but that's what a help file is for, which any person with more than 2 brain cells should be able to figure out how to use and should consult immediately when they try something new.

[Mongoose]

And even putting the shortcut for it aside, I hardly see how the menu option for reopening a tab is "hidden."  The History menu is always at the top of the screen, and contains no more than ten items.  The "Recently Closed Tabs" option is right at the bottom of that list, plain as day.  I wasn't even aware beforehand that FF3 would be adding the feature, yet I stumbled across it the very first time I went to History to re-open something I'd closed.

[Splinter]

would you agree that people on this board on average are a little more computer savvy then your average Joe? I'm telling you that I know people who don't use the full functionality features and shortcuts of FF for these very reasons. That's all I'm saying. So putting aside what you are used to you or not used to people after trying both always tell me it was simpler to find what they needed in Opera. Constructive criticism never hurt anyone and I just wish FF would consider these things and it shows that little bit of extra thought that is put into a final product.

[haloboy100]

You don't need to be "computer savvy" to glance at the top of the screen and infer that the weird "history" button might be relevant to a tab you were visiting previously in time...