Browser recommendation

[Nick]

How is Firefox "bloated"? That's ridiculous to call Firefox bloated.

It's definitely bloated compared to browsers that avoid bloat as a major project goal, such as Dillo.

Maybe in comparison to bare-bones or stripped down type affairs, yes. But for competing browsers.

And it only takes up like 70 MB RAM or something like that, which isn't that much when you should probably be rocking at least 1 GB or more.

Not everybody replaces their computer every year, and even low-end systems sold today still have 256MB or 512MB. Web browsing is not Doom 3 or Oblivion, FFS. Outside of things like Flash and Java it's not really justifiable for the requirements to keep going up, and even with those it's questionable.[/quote]

It worked fine on 512 MB too, with Windows Media Player running as well.

I'm going to assume that 70% of people buying a new computer with either 256 MB or 512MB RAM these days will probably also use Internet Explorer, which uses less RAM than Firefox, since it's loaded (or partially loaded) when the system starts.

People complain too much. :\ I used IE for years, never got any spyware or viruses, and didn't rock any protection software. Now that Firefox is gaining in popularity, people start bitching at that too. If you make a web browser, you can't win. You just can't win. It's impossible.

[Ex-Cyber]

You do realise that all web browsers use lots of RAM, right?

Not so. Dillo's memory footprint is well under 1MB when looking at most pages. A fresh Firefox just looking at about:blank eats up around 20MB (going by resident footprint, not virtual which is usually misleading). Yes, it's true that Dillo doesn't have JavaScript or a nice layout engine, but it is a true graphical browser; it's not as though I'm comparing to Lynx or w3m. I'm not trying to claim that Dillo is equivalent to Firefox, but it does sort of raise a question: what does Firefox have that justifies such a huge difference in resource usage?

[Covar]

what does Firefox have that justifies such a huge difference in resource usage?

features.

[Ex-Cyber]

what does Firefox have that justifies such a huge difference in resource usage?

features.

What features, and why should they add up to a 20MB resident footprint?

[BlackAura]

Not so. Dillo's memory footprint is well under 1MB when looking at most pages.

On my system, Dillo uses 6MB just looking at the default start page. The more images you have on the page, the higher the resource usage. Many pages easily have a couple of megabytes of images, once they've been loaded and decompressed.

I can think of all kinds of reasons why Firefox would legitimately use a lot more memory than Dillo. Most of those are to do with either having more features (and things like CSS and JavaScript are not minor - they take up a hell of a lot of extra memory), extra layers of indirection (Firefox has lots, Dillo has none, hence Firefox is far more flexible than Dillo is) or in-memory caching.

[Ex-Cyber]

On my system, Dillo uses 6MB just looking at the default start page.

I think I had some formatting weirdness going on and misread the number. It is in fact around 5.5MB resident on my system.

The more images you have on the page, the higher the resource usage. Many pages easily have a couple of megabytes of images, once they've been loaded and decompressed.

I'm well aware of that, which is partly why I took the Firefox reading on a fresh launch looking at about:blank.

things like CSS and JavaScript are not minor - they take up a hell of a lot of extra memory

I'm not convinced that they do. I poked around a bit on css/edge and the memory usage didn't seem much different from plain HTML. I can't immediately think of a good JS testcase, but the SpiderMonkey interpreter (which AFAIK is the same engine used in Firefox) is under 1MB resident on my system.

[Specially Cork]

I dont see what the problem is. People get so obssessed with saving resources. But PC resources are there to be used. I would much rather everything was being used than everything being wasted while I run a bunch of stripped down bare-minimum applications.

[Ex-Cyber]

I dont see what the problem is. People get so obssessed with saving resources. But PC resources are there to be used. I would much rather everything was being used than everything being wasted while I run a bunch of stripped down bare-minimum applications.

I understand what you're saying, but it's still legitimate to consider whether that resource usage is actually worthwhile. Just because a program allocates resources doesn't mean that it's giving you anything useful in return. FWIW, I don't like Dillo because of its memory footprint; I'd still use it (well, I would if Debian got a tab-enabled build packaged) even if it used more RAM than Firefox because it's extremely fast. This has more to do with a carefully-designed network/cache subsystem (which spawned an interesting paper) than anything else. This is also the main piece that keeps it from being readily ported to Win32, BeOS, et. al.

I think it's also worth noting that efficiency isn't always achieved for its own sake. There are other reasons to strive more generally for simplicity in software, and efficiency is sometimes a byproduct of that effort.

[MulletMan13]

I dont see what the problem is. People get so obssessed with saving resources. But PC resources are there to be used. I would much rather everything was being used than everything being wasted while I run a bunch of stripped down bare-minimum applications.

I agree with this, and while I like FF on PCs, the Mac version is just too slow for my tastes, and since I don't use extensions, I prefer something smaller and quicker.

[Dreamcast4life]

I love fire fox but I am pissed at it at the moment because I get "Shockwave has a illegal operation" on almost every page, it sucks!

[djray]

OffByOne = Dillo equivalent on Windows

[curtis_ray]

just from testing..i tried mozilla firefox on a windows 95 machine with only 32 megs of ram and a 100 mhz processor and it loaded so slowly that i just shut it down out of frustration...while on the same machine ie 5.5 with pop-up blocking support loaded almost instantly and ran far better than firefox(after finally getting firefox to load up it ran like shiat)...reminded me of the STILL overbloated nutscrape browser series.


now on my home machine..firefox is boss...ie 6 is there as an after thought....although i am tempted to try out the ie7 download and take it for a spin..i think its an early preview or something..didnt really read much further than that.


so for a older machine with barebones support..i suggest ie 5.5 over everything else.

higher end i suggest firefox...for now.

[Ex-Cyber]

OffByOne = Dillo equivalent on Windows

IMO, Dillo is quite a bit better than OffByOne.