UPDATE: Firefox is a pig when in use, but not when idle. It turns out that GMail is the pig!
srsly.
Don't get me wrong, It's my main browser and it looks like it'll stay that way. I was using it when it was called Phoenix, and then Firebird.
But boy is it a memory-leaking pig of a program.
When I leave my computer on overnight, which is frequent, I'll usually come back to see Firefox with a spiked CPU usage that's bouncing around quite a lot. It's not actually being used for anything, it's just sitting there being a pig, as though it was written in Java.
And yet, I can't use anything else. Nothing can compare. It's not as though I'm hard to please either. It feels like whatever my needs may be, I'm in some kind of super-niche. Every other browser fails so hard, that I've run out of tears..
Here's a simple roundup of desires.
-
Thorough ad-blocking.
- I do not respond positively to ads. I'm disabling them to _help_ the advertiser. I waste less of their advertising dollar, and I don't end up hating their product because of advertising.
- Hosts files and Proxies can be used for this.
-
Accesskeys that use alt.
- Yes, I got addicted to this because of Internet Explorer, but it's simply a more efficient hotkey than anything else.
- Firefox is at least configurable to use this.
- Flash/JavaScript blocking.
- Remove redirects.
- Work with external programs sensibly.
- Session-restore, including any text typed in input boxes.
- Remember passwords, preferably with auto-login.
- Tabbed browsing.
- Bookmark shortcut keys, so i can do simple searches from the location bar.
- Profiles which are trivial to migrate to a new installation. Just copy files around.
-
Fonts that don't look like ass.
- Sometimes this is about as frustrating as most xterm fonts are. I mean, how hard is it for xterm to have a font which looks like the console? Sheesh. 9x15 ftw, but I prefer dosbox's font.
- Download helper - videos, multiple pictures, queues, etc.
- A theme that isn't hopelessly cluttered and awkward or ugly
-
Not a memory-leaking pig
And would you guess it.. Firefox is the only browser which is capable of this entire list. Except for the part about being a pig. Many items need to be done with add-ons, and some are configurable in about:config, but at least it's all possible.
I can't say that for any other browser. Even bribes can't correct the browsers that are out there.
Even though it's not open source, I'd use Opera if it could cover a few more of these things or at least do proper accesskeys.
Hrm, I wonder if I could have some kind of auto-sensing script which would know the active window, and then magically remap the alt key so that it fires off the necessary accesskey. So tempting, but I know that would probably not work the way I need..
At any rate. Life is hell when even the best-of-breed isn't good enough.
- GMail investigation
Tests with and without Google Gears on regular web pages, the WordPress dashboard and GMail show that GMail will consume 15% processing power when idle. This is outrageous!
I'm sure that there's either a memory leak with handling AJAX/JavaScript, or possibly GMail has decided to design itself to be a bitch to Firefox and nice to Chrome. For those of you with poor memory, this kind of thing has happened in the past with other companies, and I haven't for one second believed Google's "don't be evil" motto.
So this means that I'll most likely replace GMail with a nice textmode email program. I'll probably also check into an auto-bitchslap program which will both act as a whitelist and bounce HMTL emails.
Last updated 2017-12-18 at 10:25:21