Firefox, Windows Vista and Windows 7

Wednesday, July 28 2010 -

Does anyone still use Firefox? I swear, it was once my only browser, but these days every single time I open Firefox it takes forever to load and then informs me it is updating and to please wait. Minutes later, after I’ve switched to Chrome or if I’m on a no chrome site (LOL) to IE it will finish launching. It’s become so annoying I avoid Firefox like I used to avoid IE. Is Firefox a dying breed now that Chrome, Safari and IE are evolving and gaining steam?

My 5 year old HP laptop boots up Windows Vista about 10 seconds faster than my 6 month old Windows 7 laptop, which has 2x RAM and much faster CPU. The difference? On the old laptop I paved the hard drive (years ago) and put Vista on it. So all that crap-ware was gone. My Windows 7 laptop still has the crap-ware.

2 comment(s)

Chuck Kirby wrote on January 23, 2008

If you tune Firefox it works fine. Search Google for "8 Easy Firefox Tweaks for Super Fast Web Browsing".

Tim wrote on January 23, 2008

That's the heart of my gripe Chuck. The code I write and the apps I support run in he browser. I need the browser user experience to be seemless without tweeking. Most of my end users don't know what browser they are using. When asked I get "Windows" or "I'm on a Mac". Asking a consumer to tweek their browser so it runs better is not possible. If, as a developer, I can't stand how the browser behaves, there is no way an end user is going to like it. Let's look at an example: Firefox crashes about once a week. The entire browser just goes away. Then one of two things happen: 1) a message appears saying it crashed and asking if I want to reload the page I was on or another page or 2) nothing.

Now take, for example, Chrome. If it crashes, you get a page that says something to the efffect of "Aw snap..." There are zero technical details just enough information in laymans terms for any end user to understand something bad happened. It is just a better user erxperience all around. [ we won't discuss IE, but I will mention that I haven't had an IE crash in months and lately I use it all the time].