[Firefox] Possibly bad news

[Leshy]

Just came across an article on a dutch site, referring to the blog of Mike Connor, apparently one of the main developers of Firefox.

Dark clouds over development Firefox
Source: webwereld.nl

Not everything concerning Firefox is happy chappy at the moment. One of the main forces behind the program seems to quite frustrated and close to calling it quits.

Mike Connor has had enough. That much is clear upon reading the most recent addition to his weblog. "This is something that has been on my mind for quite some time. In almost three years, we have not, for a variety of reasons, succeeded in building up a community of hackers. And now we have a problem", according to Connor's entry.

The fairytale of the little browser Firefox that could and succesfully challenged the almighty Internet Explorer doesn't seem to heading for a traditional happy end. According to Connor, the browser is not getting the attention it needs. Out of the six people that can actually make modifications to the browser, Connor is the only really active one, he says.

Even worse: he is the only one who is concerned about the fate of the browser, according to a frustrated Connor. He has had about enough, and isn't far off from closing the curtains: "This just isn't fun anymore." With a bug list that has hardly shortened over the past few months, Connor states he has become very cynical.

He has little confidence in meeting the deadlines for the browser's future versions. Version 1.5 is scheduled to be released this year, but whether that will happen remains the question. Version 2 shouldn't be expected before the end of 2006.

This is some pretty bad news if it is true

[Weeks]

Google has gobbled up some developers. Apparently they're still developing for it though.

I can't see any problems with development at the moment. Updates seem pretty regular, even though 1.0 was suppose the be fairly stable and thus updates shouldn't be needed that often. Work on Mozilla 2.0 seem to be going on, i'm not sure how active it is though. And there will always be open-source developers wanting to take the place of any developers who piss off. The wealth of interest in firefox and the open source nature of the project are the strongest points it has.

[Androme]

ITP, I convert to Leshy's side of the intersmeg, ditching Firefox for Opera to view this thread.

[The General8]

As a firefox user this troubles me.........

oh and opera! pfft, way to buggy for my liking, firefox is not (as) buggy

[MrL_JaKiri]

I haven't had a single problem with this iteration of opera, excluding the "ad page not found" thing that's backgrounded in the latest beta release.

[Androme]

Firefox - 12-17% sys res
Opera -> 5%

[Structural Integrity]

I don't know about FF, but Opera is a real memory hog. At this moment is uses 130MB of my memory and it's a minimum of 30MB after a fresh start. Now, this is not a problem here at home, but my computer at work only has 256MB of memory, so the bugger is swapping all the time.
Those 12-17%, is that whilst actively using the browser or even if it's in the background? Because if the latter it can be really annoying with games, knowing that my BF1942 would become all jerky if I had an active P2P search running in the background at around 10-15%.

But what's the memory usage of FF with a few pages open? If it's low enough I might try it out at work.

[Androme]

Thing is, I have 1024mb of memory but it's made by Hyundai (bloody Evesham PC group ...!). Anyway, for some reason Opera takes up less system res on my machine and is much faster. That 12-17% derives from no other active program, purely concentrating on Firefox loading a page/pages.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Opera's using 160 meg but I do have over 20 tabs open.

[Super]

Firefox has a memory leak so will take up huge amounts of memory if you leave it open long enough.

[Ebany]

I use opera at home but Firefox art work as I find it gets by better with my even more measly RAM of 128Mb. Given when I first started using it there was only 64Mb, its getting better (and I havent been at this job for years, only since last November...the computers are just ancient.) Firefox still uses all the memory, but so does ANY program, and firefox seems to cope with it better than Opera did.

I prefer Opera though.

[Flayer]

my opera never seems to take more than 30mb. I love it. Nothing compares.

[Leshy]

Before I reply, I would like to note two things:

• This thread was about Firefox. The idea that the browser which appears to be the biggest competitor to MSIE may not have the most stable future does not bode very well, especially considering Bill Gates recently announced that the next Internet Explorer will be released before their new Operating System. Knowing Microsoft, I'm not having high hopes for the standards compliance that I, and many other web developers, either professionals or hobbyists, would like to see. As such, the alternatives need to be solid and stable. Firefox is a very good browser and should not end in some chaotic situation where random people are randomly doing things to it because it isn't coordinated, etc.
• I'm beginning to wonder why I'm still considered the Opera zealot on this forum when it is Androme that keeps up bringing Opera, even in a Firefox thread.

Originally Posted by Structural Integrity

I don't know about FF, but Opera is a real memory hog.

This is a common misconception. Opera does take advantage of available system memory, and why wouldn't it? It's useless if it's just sitting there empty, so might as well use it to store things. If any other application requires memory, Opera will immediately release it for the other program to use.

That, and it does have controls in the preference on how it should handle memory and disk cache, I personally find that setting memory cache to off and disk cache to about 50Mb works very well. I can't recall seeing Opera go over the 50Mb mark, it's generally doing somewhere in the 30-40 range, dropping to 20's if I open more programs.

[Weeks]

Firefox's memory foot-print is recognised and is being worked on.

Compared to <0.9 versions firefox's/mozilla's memory foot-print has been reduced, but I agree I'd like Firefox a lot more if its memory foot-print was smaller.

But as I have more than 256mb of RAM, and I don't have a large amount of memory hungry programs open, it's really not that bothersome to me.

[Structural Integrity]

ITP I use FireFox to post in and read this thread.
So far so good. Memory usage is at 26MB, which I find very acceptable.
I find the standard UI rather dull though. The lack of standard mouse gestures doesn't bother me because it took me about two minutes to configure my StrokeIt to open/close tabs in FF with mouse gestures.

[Super]

You can get "extensions" to do anything in Firefox. I imagine mouse gestures are around somewhere.

[Androme]

You can get mouse gestures from plugins place.

[Structural Integrity]

Perhaps you misunderstood, but I have mousegestures with this incredible tool called "StrokeIt".

[Super]

I don't understand, you want me to stroke you?