IE7 and Firefox 2

joolsveer

I am a convinced Firefox user for a long time but since I have upgraded to version 2.0.0.1 I am having my doubts. It is very slow at opening websites compared to IE7. This is on my new Ankermann PC with 2 gigs of RAM and AMD 5200+ 64x2 dual processor and on ntl 6 meg broadband.



Can anyone here suggest any Firefox settings that might bring performance up to the same level as IE7?

DaSilva

I think one of the main reasons for firefox aren't settings you can change but the size of the app. Some people think it's a memory leak, and some don't. Either way it uses way too much memory.

Here's a screenshot of my pc at the moment. With only three small tabs open, firefox is using around 75MiB of RAM. Too me, that's too big a footprint, and something is wrong.

One thing I will say is, don't be a convinced firefox user. Don't be a bandwagon jumper. Firefox has it's own flaws too. IE and Firefox are both guilty of not conforming to W3C standards all the time in rendering.

Linking to screenshot, as it doesn't fit too well on the page otherwise.
http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/2519/desktopus7.png

joolsveer

I followed your example and found that there is not much difference between the memory Firefox uses and that of Internet Explorer.

Stark

It's a little better in Firefox 2.0 but I used to find Firefox would easily grow to consume more than 200MB of memory if you used it for any length of time without restarting.

Ruu_Old

There was a fix around to help with the Firefox memory leak issue for 1.5, I am not sure if it applies to 2.0. link here.

DaSilva

Did another little benchmark, though these results can't be taken as gospel.

Set all browsers to load a blank page on startup.



Opera is also the only of the three browsers too pass the Acid2 test. I currently use firefox, but only because I have it set-up the way I want, and I'm too lazy to configure Opera, and get it set-up the same way. Otherwise I would definitely use Opera.