OT: IE7 vs Firefox

FF 2 or what ? The very latest bleeding edge FF is supposed to be better at memory management.

Steve

2.0.0.11

Firefox 3 Beta is out now, might be worth looking at that?

Don't get me wrong - I'm perfectly happy with Firefox. I was just wondering why IE was so much more memory-hungry than FF when opening multiple tabs, given that they used much the same amount in their basic state. Using the Rule Of Tim, I was hoping some code-junkie would be able to explain :-)

Apart from the normal conspiracy theory of Micro$oft wanting you to upgrade your computer as often as possible on account of the alleged tie-in with Intel you mean? ;-)

On or around Fri, 25 Jan 2008 20:05:21 -0000, "Rich B" enlightened us thusly:

IE is a pile of s**te.

I've stuck with what is now seamonkey, although I only install the browser, mainly 'cos there are one or two things that FF does subtly differently, and I prefer the thing I know.

but functionally, they're both built on the same Gecko engine.

I've got Firefox on one machine, and Seamonkey suite on the other - which I use for the email. Can't say I ever have a problem, the interface is almost identical.

Used to use Opera before I went to Mozilla, the opera browser was a lot better than IE, and the Mozilla browsers are better still. My IE is still the original 6.0 that came with Win2k......

Alex

Taken as read, mate, taken as read.

In one way it is better, and that's a way that matters to me. I use Outlook Web Access to read work emails from home, and the IE interface is vastly superior to Firefox's. Otherwise, I wuld have uninstalled it when I got the computer.

Actually, serious point, I see a lot of "Mickey$$oft is sh11!te" comments floating about the interweb, and that seems to be the default position for most switched-on users. But, taking away Microsoft's attempts to rule the world and the identified poor usage of system resources discussed in this thread, what is actually bad about IE7? Now that IE has caught up with Firefox with things lke tabbed browsing, I find the functionality of the two programs very similar. I use IE7 at work all the time and have no complaints.

My Firefox often consumes 250Mb of memory, even with only one tab open. Shutting it down & re-opening just one tab, & it's down to a mer 42Mb. Thunderbird typically uses some 75Mb.

I suspect all those extensions I use are responsible :(

On firefox I tend to use the keyboard to navigate quite a lot, including doing page searches by just typing the word, no need fo faff about bringing up dialogues, entering the whole search word and then hitting enter, you just start typing the word and when you get to where you want, you stop typing. On the beeb website for example I can get from some deeply nested page straight to the front page normally by just typing anything from "fro" to "front p" then when the link is selected, hitting return. I like adblocker too, very useful.

Wow! That's some extensions. Good point, though. I didn't mention in my orignal post, but if I open 5 tabs in Firefox (memory approx 30MB) and then close them again, the memory use stays up around 25-27MB. Closing and re-starting FF brings it back close to the 21MB of a "fresh start", but to get it right back to the 21MB requires a shut-down and re-boot of the PC. There's obviously a lot of stuff hanging round in there which won't go away once you start to use the facilities.

Slightly related (I hope). As I use Firefox and Thunderbird, I have set the URL: MailTo Protocol under folder options/file types under Control Panel to open Thunderbird as instructed somewhere in the Firefox FAQs. This persists for a variable period of time before reverting to opening Outlook.

Re-boots have no effect on the persistence.

Any thoughts?

I only have Outlook for the calendar and address book which sync with my PDA.

Using XP Pro BTW.

Richard

find the registry key it changes and force it in as a startup program.

if you uninstall outlook I think the pda syncing stuff will sync with the windows address book rather than the outlook one.

Not sure about the calendar stuff. it must sync with something else instead?...

Good idea

Another good idea!

Hm. I should have said that the PDA runs Pocket Windows.

Richard

is it using activesync to sync with windows? dont you get a choice of what program it will sync each item with somewhere in the setup?

its been a while since i used it.

Hi Tom

I'm not sure if Activesync will do anything other than talk to Outlook - in that big, sharing way that MS operates ;-)

But not to worry.

Thanks

Richard

There's a bit here on other apps and even for those of the fruity persuasion, but maybe a bit out of date.

Richard,

Take a look at BirdieSync -

- if you need a way to sync your PDA with Thunderbird and Lightning/Sunbird. Easy to set-up and use but not free (unfortunately).