Firefox 4 - I desperately want back to my previous version, please.

leanneloves

I won't be updating then.

Andrew1472

I've pretty much given up on Firefox now. I just did another test which I am confident I can reproduce.
My laptop runs Windows 7 64 bit and has 2Gb of RAM.
I loaded http://.mapcrunch.com/gallery in 4 browsers and scrolled to the bottom of the first page.
The results are:-

IE9 used 50Mb
Google chrome 10 used 157Mb
Opera 11 used 219Mb
Firefox 4 with a new clean profile went off the chart.

Task Manager was showing 97% memory use, but it wasn't refreshing so I couldn't get an actual number that made sense.
At this point the laptop was unusable. After waiting for 5 minutes to see if it came back to life, I gave up and rebooted.
I have no idea what is actually going on with Firefox, it is way beyond my understanding.

Please note that the site I used is harmless, but it may result in needing to reboot if used with Firefox 4. Do not go there unless you are confident doing that. I have broken the link. Add www after the // if you want to try it.

*Kat*

Since upgradting to FF4 I've had 4 BSOD (I've not installed anything else new the past few days either) As soon as my dissertation is done (I have a load of useful bookmarks) ill be going back to Chrome *grr*

Andrew1472

*Kat* wrote: »

Since upgradting to FF4 I've had 4 BSOD (I've not installed anything else new the past few days either) As soon as my dissertation is done (I have a load of useful bookmarks) ill be going back to Chrome *grr*

Export your bookmarks to an HTML file and then import them to Chrome will work if you can't live with the BSODs.

HO87

My apologies too crimson.

However, I've now had the 10 Gawker sites running for a couple of hours on the same socket 939 machine as I ran the tests in Ubuntu earlier using FF4 (using the same basic set of plug-ins and extensions as in the Linux set-up) on XP SP3. This clearly demostrates a differential in memory usage compared with Linux and what would seem to be a slight memory leakage issue - although I can't positively confirm that. The PF usage in XP is currently at 684Mb as opposed to the ~460|Mb in Ubuntu and this has steadily crept up from 631Mb when I first started it running.

The stephenhorlander (sorry I called it hogland earlier) site really played havoc. It took very nearly 40 seconds to load and pushed the PF usage to 1.21Gb so over 60% compared with the figure of very nearly a third of that using Linux. It did not however bring the browser to crashing point and I was able to continue to use other tabs without issue.

I suspect that allows a preliminary assessment to be made that the issue is not one purely of a problem within FF4 but perhaps rathermore a combination of FF4 and operating system.

At the end of the day the choice of browser is very much a personal one and if one no longer feels comfortable then move on to one that suits better. My original move to Firefox was one based purely on the complete lack of security with IE and it has yet to let me down whether that be as v0.9 right the way through to 3.6. I like Opera for its crisp layout but if you find FF4 awkward you might find Opera similarly so. Midori is extremely light and relatively featureless compared with Opera and FF but it can't be described as a resource hog by any standard. Chrome has a slick appearance but my choice not to use it is because it is used as an additional - and substantial - source of data on net usage by Google. We suffer enough intrusion as it is let alone handing over even more information in what is a more or less covert fashion.

There is always going to be a trade off of performance in favour of a feature-full experience and without the commitment of the former the latter is going to be thin.

Andrew1472

HO87 wrote: »

I suspect that allows a preliminary assessment to be made that the issue is not one purely of a problem within FF4 but perhaps rathermore a combination of FF4 and operating system.

Many thanks for doing that. I apologise for quoting such a small part of your post, but what I have quoted tends to confirm what I have begun to suspect. FF4, it seems, does not play nicely with Windows 7, but is better with some alternatives with varying degrees of success. I'll leave the rest of the investigation to those with far more knowledge than me.

I sincerely hope Mozilla realise there is a problem before it becomes a crisis and rectify it urgently.

I have no choice but to abandon Firefox for now. Despite your concerns, which I understand, I am happy with Google Chrome for the time being as the best alternative for me.

Thanks again.

DCFC79

FF4 seemed ok earlier on xp but not tried it yet on w7 but ill stick with 3.6.15(soon to be 3.6.16)

Inactive

Andrew1472 wrote: »

Crimson,
I'm sorry. We seem to have hijacked your thread.
I hope you don't mind and I hope we all understand what FF has become a little bit better at the end of it.

I don't think that has " become better " I think that it has become worse.

Andrew1472

Inactive wrote: »

I don't think that has " become better " I think that it has become worse.

Sorry, that was a badly constructed sentence which I've now corrected.

I completely agree.

Any browser that has the potential to become unusable simply by the user browsing has to have serious problems.

nickj_2

i've justuninstalled ff4 with revo uninstaller and done a clean install and it seems to be behaving much better now