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by toddheasley 5310 days ago
> Much like how a computer gets slow and needs to be reformatted, people who are browser power users need to clean out Firefox every few years.

Maybe I'm asking to much, but this seems totally unacceptable to me -- both things seem totally unacceptable to me. And while it may still be just true, Firefox suffers worse from this problem than any OS, software or other browser that I use.
1 comments
gkoberger 5310 days ago
Uninstall Firebug, which I'm assuming you have installed. That will fix a majority of your problems.

Mozilla can do nothing about you using Firebug, yet still gets blamed for the slowness.

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lelele 5309 days ago
> Mozilla can do nothing about you using Firebug, yet still gets blamed for the slowness.

This is how things go in real-world. I remember reading about how much work went into each new version of Windows because of bugs and clever code in existing software. Otherwise people who upgraded and found their old software not working anymore would have blamed Windows instead of their buggy software.

You can't boast about Firefox being extensible and then blame plugins because they break it. At least, Firefox should be warning about troublesome plugins. The more people have to deal with Firefox being slow and unstable, the more Firefox will be getting a bad rep. Sorry, but you can't fight human nature, you know. You can't change how most users think. If you want to increase market share, your software must be as much dumb-friendly as possible.

On my Linux box, Firefox is crashing lots of times a day without giving me any clues about what could have gone wrong. What am I expected to do? To become a Firefox developer? Switching to another browser is an easier path.

By saying this, I hope I don't seem unappreciative of Firefox developers' efforts.

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robin_reala 5308 days ago
The MemShrink team, having hit all their obvious targets in Firefox itself, are now reaching out to extension authors to help them fix their own memory problems. Firebug, being a major extension used by millions of people, is on the receiving end of this help already. There are several fixes committed into the 1.9 beta branch that reduce overall consumption, and I’m sure more will follow.
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toddheasley 5310 days ago
I concede that I'm not being completely fair. I actually don't develop in Firefox and only have a few versions installed on VMs for testing, no bookmarks or extensions. And, as I said in another comment, over the last 10 years, Gecko has become like a trusted friend; I know what will work and don't usually test in Firefox until way later than I should.

I was responding to YOUR stipulation that browsing experience degrades the more you use Firefox. IF it does, that seems like emergency problem #1 to fix if Firefox wants to stop hemmorrhaging users. But then, I'm speaking completely out of turn, since I haven't been a Firefox user for years.

EDIT: ...since I haven't used Firefox as my primary browser in years. I use it daily; not as a "power user."

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