[Scotty]

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

*snip*

Aww, did you get stuck on TV Tropes?

[NGTM-1R]

Actually, I was pulling my little-known duties as moderator on a fanfiction site I'm not going to name because even most of the stuff I have to let pass on to posting sucks.

[Tomo]

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!

Flawed experiment for a couple of reasons:
1) The IE process isn't the whole of IE. There are bits all over the place (eg inside svchost)

2) By default, Firefox caches the history to RAM which makes it very fast but consumes lots of memory. It does try to play nice - if you've got lots of RAM it'll use it, but if you haven't it won't.

Firefox 3.5.2 here, 5 tabs (all randomly chosen threads from this site, as I happened to have them open), 72,748KB.

[High Max]

IE 7 is said to run better than IE 8 and 8 has more bugs, but the problem is that once you have SP 3 for XP, you can't revert to IE 7 unless you uninstall SP 3, which you shouldn't do. So maybe that means the ones who have installed IE 8 need to wait until IE 9.

I also felt Firefox was being slow, so I removed it, and Flash does seem to be a problem. But it seems FF has better auto-complete and it works for more websites while in IE, these websites don't have auto-complete.

[S-99]

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.

If you didn't get my relation earlier then you should do some more browser tab tests (i like the data anyhow). What i learned from browswer tab memory footprint, is that a tab in a browser takes up just as much memory as a new window of that browser, So in other words that means something like one tabless browser window of firefox, IE, etc, takes just as much memory as a tab in a browser window of firefox, IE, etc.


In simpler words. The firefox window with no tabs at google.com takes just as much memory as a tab for google.com in firefox. There's no difference between a browser window and a browser tab. In fact all tabbing really is just a task bar built into the browser to handle all of the browser windows of itself and represent them to you as tabs.

So 32 separate IE windows is the same thing as 32 IE tabs. What does the 5 instances refer to and mean (i used "instances" earlier to refer separate browser windows instead of saying "browser windows", but people didn't like to understand, so i stopped using instance)? But, with the on average of a browser window and a tab on average taking 32mb of ram, and you have 5 firefox tabs open to non resource hungry web pages, then the 130mb of ram consumption for firefox fits this. Forgive me if i say that your internet explorer experience seems majorly under represented. Also if you haven't hit on it, your lingo and the way you used it is confusing and plz describe more clearly next time (major reason i'm nitpicking.

And when i mention how things didn't change since the browsers have been out? Man, i remember when IE5 came out and it's minimum memory requirements was 32mb of ram. Stuff really hasn't changed since then (except for tabs). And why ***** about memory consumption if you have plenty of memory?

I'd say you guys really aren't too used to tabs yet since they're still pretty new. Well tabs make sure that back in the day with IE6 that had no tab support that you didn't take up your task bar with 10 minimized or maximized IE6 windows, and then task bar grouping came out which was supposed to improve the task bar experience (i hate task bar grouping!!!). And today with IE7/8 you can do your same 10 windows of IE open at one time via tabs and not clutter up your task bar. But, in the past just as much as it is today, all those windows of IE6 being open was also a memory hog.

[Enigmatic Entity]

If you can't get websites to appear in a list from the normal address bar:

1.) Type it into the Google search box if you have it installed into your browser.
2.) Create a new bookmark or favourites folder and put all of your frequently visited sites into it. This way it comes up when you start typing an address from www.whatever. At least, this works in Firefox Portable 3.0.6.

As for the rant, IE is slow on large MB pages, and Firefox takes a while to load up. Another thing is how these browsers handle the University network where I am. IE8 is not compatible with the "learning system", and now all the computers have updated...And it also only supports FF2.0, apparently. FFP 3.0.6 seems to work all right. The other thing is, in some instances, It asks me to enter my ID up to 4 times at start up per tab (if more than one) which is really annoying.

Edit: www.whatever.com is actually a site...

[NGTM-1R]

Flawed experiment for a couple of reasons:
1) The IE process isn't the whole of IE. There are bits all over the place (eg inside svchost)

2) By default, Firefox caches the history to RAM which makes it very fast but consumes lots of memory. It does try to play nice - if you've got lots of RAM it'll use it, but if you haven't it won't.

Firefox 3.5.2 here, 5 tabs (all randomly chosen threads from this site, as I happened to have them open), 72,748KB.

Then give me an estimate on how much that is and we'll add it up.

Except, of course, this is probably a more efficent arrangement anyways, but let's leave that alone. Also, except, of course, Firefox will still lose since testing five windows of this very page results in...under 10,000 K, and even adding all my svchost bits together won't get it to what FF is doing. But instead, lets judge things solely based on observed speed differences in other programs too.

Firefox has a comparable observable drain on computer performance to an active bittorrent program running a 150K upload and 150+K download at the same time, or an instance of EVE Online. Having an open firefox window, nevermind any tabs, will cause a noticable slowdown in any high-quality game I run. FS2_Open and a couple of old MechWarrior games are practically the only things I can run on this computer that won't suffer a noticeable dip in performance.

Memory. Footprint. Exists.

[Spicious]

58 tabs - 333MB private working set.

[BloodEagle]

You think automatically updating to IE 8 is bad? They try to trick you into installing their anti-piracy crap all the time. [/anti-threadjack]

[Liberator]

I would use chrome exclusively if it didn't randomly stop working in a way that only comes undone by uninstalling and doing a registry cleaning.

[Tomo]

Memory. Footprint. Exists.

That phrase doesn't mean what you think it means.
"Memory Footprint" simply means the amount of RAM consumed by an application. It exists for every single application ever and that will be written in the history and future of computing. Some are larger than others.

What matters is *how that memory is utilised*. Does the memory usage improve the user experience? Are there memory leaks, or does memory get effectively reused?

FSO uses a *lot* more RAM than Freespace 2 did - but FSO is most definitely better than the original. Thus the memory usage is an improvement.

Firefox caches to RAM to have faster browsing.
IE caches to the hard disk instead. (Have a look in Temporary Internet Files.)

Thus IE is slower to use, while Firefox is much faster but will have increasing memory usage over time until it reaches the self-imposed ceiling.
It is possible to disable the memory cache in about:config, but it's not recommended because it slows Firefox down.

If you want a browser with a tiny memory footprint, then try Lynx. You won't like it though.

So, what's the 'killer feature' that you like in IE?
I haven't found anything that's best in IE, except that IE6 properly displays pages designed for the IE6 abomination of HTML.

There are things that Opera does better and things that Firefox does better. I've not tried Chrome yet (and probably won't for a few years) so can't comment on that one.

None are perfect however - there is definitely room for improvement in both browsers.

[NGTM-1R]

Thank you for insulting my intelligence. I know exactly what it means; however apparently my metaphorical mode of speech goes over your head.

Also, FSO? More RAM? FSO is basically the least memory-intensive thing I run regularly on here. Steel Panthers 3 consumes more RAM than FSO (barely). This is like the time somebody from the SCP team tried to talk down something on ballooning memory requirements. It's a total non-sequitor and irrevelant!

Firefox caches to RAM for a "faster browsing" that is, frankly, lost on the average human observer. The time difference just isn't enough to actually matter to someone without ADD (or even someone with, if we're honest). In this case it then comes down to how big of a performance hit it's going to inflict on my machine and whether I can afford to leave it open rather than lose my place on whatever I was reading, or leave it open while running another activity from which there is frequent opportunity to alt-tab. (EVE comes to mind.)

With Firefox, that's just not an option.

[Stealth]

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.

i have 12GB of memory, which means, according to my calculations, that i'm 3x better than you

[colecampbell666]

And?

[Commander Zane]

Look at it through the eyes of someone in the military, 2gb does nothing better even over 512mb.
I know this, I've seen it countless times.
1.66ghz dual-core over a 133mhz single-core processer? Faster? Not here.

[colecampbell666]

Look at it through the eyes of someone in the military, 2gb does nothing better even over 512mb.
I know this, I've seen it countless times.
1.66ghz dual-core over a 133mhz single-core processer? Faster? Not here.

In the military. Not running Flash animations and rich-web apps.

[Commander Zane]

Even then. It's still not fast like they'll say it is.
Old system, slow hardware, takes 1:30 minutes just to log in after entering the login password.
New system, "new and fast" hardware, STILL takes 1:30 minutes to log into the exact same program.
Like I said. I know from experience, whether or not it's Flash on a commercial system or the Internet, these are PROGRAMS.
Programs that regardless of the newer hardware they slap into the systems to run it, it has NO CHANGE whatsoever.

[S-99]

Someone needs linux

[Commander Zane]

They are Linux.

[Fury]

Even then. It's still not fast like they'll say it is.
Old system, slow hardware, takes 1:30 minutes just to log in after entering the login password.
New system, "new and fast" hardware, STILL takes 1:30 minutes to log into the exact same program.
Like I said. I know from experience, whether or not it's Flash on a commercial system or the Internet, these are PROGRAMS.
Programs that regardless of the newer hardware they slap into the systems to run it, it has NO CHANGE whatsoever.

That just means bottleneck is not client, but networking or server. Or worse, poorly coded programs that can't utilize better hardware.