[jr2]

Checked my Automatic Updates scheduled to be installed and un-selected this:

Internet Explorer 8 is the latest version of the familiar Web browser that you are most comfortable using.

[Snail]

I know this is going to turn into a "FIREFOX RUELZ" thread. Don't start.

I hate Firefox. I hate it so much. It eats memory and is a terrible POS. What makes it even worse is all this Firefox propoganda circulating around the web. If people actually used this ****ing web browser instead of making misleading bull****, they'd realize it's a terrible program.

[SpardaSon21]

Hey, I use Firefox and I love it.  Much better than IE.

[jr2]

Perhaps you need to try another browser, my friend...












         

[Tomo]

Safari: Absolutely terrible, and has an awful record of unfixed security holes.

IE: v7 was indeed a big improvement. Abysmal record on fixing security holes (IE8 still has several massive security holes that MS refuse to fix, apparently because it would break Windows Update).
Consumes memory, very slow rendering particularly of large HTML files. (Try to scroll a 3MB HTML file.)
No possible way of expanding functionality through plugins of any kind.

Firefox: Pretty good with a nice fast rendering engine. Very good record of fixing security holes.
Absolutely huge range of plugins. Many of them are even useful!
Some people claim it consumes memory, but it's not as bad as IE7 on that front. In fact, the worst offender in both cases is actually the Adobe Acrobat plugin which you can't blame on either Mozilla or Microsoft.

Opera: By far and away the best Windows Mobile-based browser. Good record on fixing security holes.

Chrome: As yet, an unknown quantity. Renderer is WebKit which is known to be pretty good.

In summary, the only defensible browser choices right now are Firefox, Opera and Chrome.
And the choice between those three is a personal one - I'm mostly on Firefox and Opera Mobile.

[Mongoose]

As much as I do honestly love Firefox, the memory complaints do have some merit.  As much as they claim to patch up memory leaks with each new version, I just had it balloon its memory consumption to something like 450 MB with only three relatively low-impact tabs open.  Absolutely no idea why, either.  If I had my old amount of RAM, my system would have been floored.

[Bobboau]

the only complaints I have for firefox is the memory usage, which I honestly don't care that much about, and the slow startup time. aside from that firefox is awesome, especially if you do web development and use firebug.

[TESLA]

the only complaints I have for firefox is the memory usage, which I honestly don't care that much about, and the slow startup time. aside from that firefox is awesome, especially if you do web development and use firebug.

This is kind off off topic, but I upgraded my windows internet explorer, few days ago, download windows automatic updates (vista security), restarted the computer and the ****ing thing would not load up
Just got the loading windows box, that was it, had to find my Vista Disc, and undo all the updates, really pissed me off, not sure what updates I can use or cant use. Absolute pain.

[S-99]

The best thing i've been able to surmise from running firefox on many computers is that every tab of firefox takes up about 32mb or slightly more of ram. I've noticed this a while ago. That when three tabs were open i was taking a huge bite out of memory about 100mb or more of ram. More tabs meant even more memory. I've also done testing with internet explorer 7. It's memory consumption is almost identical to firefox. And then i tested opera, and opera was identical to the firefox and internet explorer.

Doesn't matter which browser you use, if it tabs, if it lets you go to the same websites as the rest, chances are it's going to eat the same ammount of memory as the rest.

Good browsers i like, firefox and opera (opera is also for desktop computer use not just mobile computer use tomo). I haven't used chrome before because i don't care about it (what new **** will it have that i will absolutely need). A browser is a browser except when it's just a trojan on your system because a whole bunch of malicious web sites have malicious code written that's great for internet explorer and the user was running as an admin.

The memory consumption point made by everyone is kind of moot based on how featureful the browser needs to be and the overly complicatedness of todays web sites (i've seen many a myspace profiles in my life and, just in one firefox or IE window, one myspace profile that had so much animations and flash powered bull**** brought the system to a crawl...constant alt-f4 worked). I guess to say be careful where you surf on the net a lot of web sites take up more memory than others.

[The E]

The memory consumption point is most definitely not moot. An application like Firefox, which tends to stay running days, if not weeks on end for some people, really does need to have proper memory management. And considering that low-spec computers do have a comeback of sorts in the form of netbooks, a high grade of efficiency is desirable.

Personally, after years of using Firefox in all its incarnations, I switched to Chrome recently. Why? Because I discovered that, while Firefox' extensibility is quite nice, all I really need the Browser for is, well, browsing. Chrome, with its uncluttered UI and general speediness, works quite well for me.

[S-99]

If you want a browser that just a browser how about you just don't use any of the additional plugins. The memory consumption thing still is moot. You either have enough memory in your computer for tabbed browsing or you don't. Some people like having 20+ tabs open in firefox or any tabbed supporting browser. 20+ tabs is going to be about 700mb of ram in use just for the web browser. A tab taking up memory is not something to take lightly either. Just like how you can open up as many instances of firefox running at the same time, opening up a tab in firefox or any browser that supports tabbed browsing is exactly the same as opening up a new instance of firefox that isn't a tab.

A browser that supports tabbed browsing is really just a browser that's also its own mini task bar for all of the different running instances of itself.

If you're complaining about memory usage, that's fine, but it's still moot, depending on how many tabs you have open at once and where each of those tabs is at a different web page memory usage will differ. Having 10 tabs open to google.com wont take much memory, but having the same 10 tabs open to myfreepaysite.com will probably take more memory than google will. Depending on your computers memory, you'll obviously be adjusting the amount of tabs you have open, and even more greatly...the sites you go on the internet since other web pages will zap more memory than others from your system.

As far as clutterless chrome goes, it looks to be about as cluttered as firefox with the bookmark bar disabled. Netbooks work fine with firefox and the default 1gb of ram they come with. You obviously don't want to have 20 tabs open at once given that memory capacity but 10,12, max 15 is doable. My eeepc 900ha i upgraded to 2gb of ram does even better with multiple tabs in firefox and is able to handle more tabs with the memory increase i gave it.

Memory consumption is still moot because for some reason you don't want to realize that web browsers have been memory hogs from the start and there's not much to be done about it. There's the program itself and what it supports for the web pages you go to. Will your magical barely using any memory browser have support for flash, steaming audio, animated gifs, silverlight, colors, all of the html standards (including the ones microsoft invented that aren't part of the html standards), and all this other ****? How secure is your browser going to be? What protocols would you like your broswer to support? What features would you like your browser to support. Don't forget the web pages you'll be going too what do you want to have display in your web browser that will work and wont work for the sake of memory consumption? Luckily supporting **** is easy, but the problem is when the **** you support gets ****ing stupid.

Click here and tell me if it's the content on the internet or the browser itself for the memory consumption.

[Mars]

Did you just link to a virus? 

[blackhole]

I want to point out that 99% of the memory problems normally associated with Firefox are, in fact, caused by Flash.

[T-Man]

I assume a big reason a lot of people like to use firefox is because it was not only faster than IE6 (which was the IE around at the time) but it enjoyed the same reason people got into Applemacs and Linux; the vast majority of the viruses and malware are for Windows or IE, so by having something different your immune. However, what people will eventually find is as more and more people make this switch....the viruses and their creators will too. I've alrady heard reports on the grapevine of viruses for Macs and firefox. Viruses target what is popular, and at this rate you might find in a few decades the IE of that age becomes the immune bowser people are loving *lol*

As for myself; i admittedly Run IE8 (), which i'm liking so far (though i havent activated all of its features yet). I also admit i have never used any browser other than IE on my own PCs (), not because of Microsoft fandom, but simply becuase of the dumbass facts; i use Windows, Windows comes with IE, therefore i use it . I suspect Safari and Firefox have several advantages over IE, but i find IE adequate for what i need, know the mot about its operations, rarely need to worry about incompatability issues, and i have some confidence knowing if there's ever a problem there's a company the size of a small nation with ludicrous ammounts of money in its pocket working on a fix.

So yeah, i'm a IE user, and i ain't going to change for the foorseable future. Everyone else are free to make the choice for themselves though.

[NGTM-1R]

Here's a fun experiment, kids. Let's check out what the task manager has to say about IE (I'm still using 7) and Firefox!

32 seperate IE windows, 20-odd text, 5 youtube, 1 this very site, the rest Agony Booth

5 instances at 261,000 K.

Most recent version of Firefox. 5 tabs, two text, one links-heavy, two other forums. 1 instance, 130,000 K. No Flash anywhere.

Memory footprint. It exists, *****es.

[DeepSpace9er]

I tried Firefox, Opera 10, and Chrome.. but for now im sticking with IE8. As far as I can tell, their performance is about the same and my cable connection is awful anyway so 0.05ms in benchmark performance isnt a big deal to me anyway. Im sticking with IE8 because I like of the new features like Webslices that autoupdate with the latest news from sites I like and also because of how each tab works with Aero Peek in Windows 7.. none of the other browsers work like that. The other ones all have 1 aero peek preview per browser instance not tab and thats really a dealbreaker feature for me. I know you can get around it by turning tab browsing off.. but i dont want to turn tab browsing off. Im not that partial to firefox to begin with and I dont need or use any of the million add-ons they have for it.

[colecampbell666]

I have 4GB of memory (and most people now have at least 2) so I don't care about FF's memory consumption, and I like the addons and stuff.

[Kosh]

I've decided to just stick with Firefox 2.x for now. I really hate the new address bar, and frankly I find having to type in the url of the sites I visit everytime to be rather annoying, instead of just selecting it from a nice list. Unfortunately all the new browsers have it. Is there some way to switch it back to classic mode or whatever?

[Commander Zane]

Actually you can set IE8 (And it usually defaults as so) so if you simply type "www.[insert two or three letters here]" and hit Shift + Enter it finishes the rest of the URL for you.
Since I've already visited and typed my webpage's URL before, I just type "www.den" and Shift + Enter then bam, I've entered the webpage "www.denofspoot.freefourms.org."

[NGTM-1R]

I've decided to just stick with Firefox 2.x for now. I really hate the new address bar, and frankly I find having to type in the url of the sites I visit everytime to be rather annoying, instead of just selecting it from a nice list. Unfortunately all the new browsers have it. Is there some way to switch it back to classic mode or whatever?

Even IE6 did the autocomplete business, I can't really believe that Chrome or later versions won't.