Is Firefox Becoming Bloated?
Most of you reading this are likely doing so with the now popular Web browser lovingly known as Firefox. Born out of the frustration to need something with less bloat, Firefox fit the bill with flying colors. These days, however, this is looking less and less like what we can expect from them in the future.
It’s a Feature, Not a Bug. One company line that I grow tired of hearing come up again and again is the issue with memory handling. Take the page-cache mechanism, for example. A feature, but also in many instances a huge resource hog. And now with version 3.0 just around the corner, we have to wonder what other ‘features’ are going to require me to rush out to purchase a new stick of RAM just to accommodate what older revisions of the same browser just a few years ago would have been fine with.
To point out how maddening this is, see my thoughts below.
Time for An Alternative? On the chance that I find myself in a place where I cannot take it any longer and feel the need to use an alternative browser that is holding true to Firefox’s original vision, the best candidate would be Epiphany. It runs a little lighter on memory than Firefox, does not give me fits with banking sites, as I have had with Konqueror, and best of all, it’s actually fun to use.
All of my needed plugins work already, such as Java and Flash, but there are a few things that I find myself missing. I miss the Firefox plugins, which provide for extra functionality. This sort cancels out some of the memory resource savings, but I miss them nonetheless. One thing that I really do not like about Epiphany, however, is the lack of a clear auto-complete with domain names. Seriously, typing in Google ought to bring me to Google, not the search engine searching for itself.
Firefox 3.0 Not Looking Too Promising. Admittedly, I have yet to try any beta of the next release of Firefox. But from what I have read, the developers are not really hearing what anyone of consequence is saying anyway. So, when Firefox 3.0 comes out, it appears that my browser usage may be taking a drastic change. It’s a real pity.
This article has been republished with the kind permission of our friends at Mad Penguin. For more news about the Open Source community, go give ‘em a look or Subscribe to Mad Penguin’s RSS Feed!
Related Articles @ Mad Penguin:
