My trial of Firefox

[STRESSTEST]

On Oct 19th I installed the latest version of Firefox.

Day one I had a crash while using the browser. Several days later I had a near catastrophic HD crash that I was able to recover and then ghost to a new drive. Originally I blamed Firefox for the crash, but it was the drive (Another POS WD bites the dust).

So overall I am pretty pleased with the browser. It's stable and works on every page I have gone to.

I don't use the tabbed browsing in it or Opera as Iâ??m not a fan of the feature.

The problem I have with the browser is it's inability to keep up with Opera in popup protection and all the ad ware that gets through it.

This machines usage is very routine. It's the work box and I do the same thing on it daily. So there wonâ??t be much that varies.

I'll be open minded about this and starting today I'll go back to opera and see how it fares in 14 days as I have with Firefox.

Here are todayâ??s results:

[Vindicator]

I really doubt all those are from Firefox.

In the month since I reformatted (and upgraded to Firefox 1.0PR), the most I have had are tracking cookies.

[Mr. Perfect]

What the ★■◆●... Where do you visit?

[kurupt]

yeah dude, wtf? ive been using firefox for about 3 name changes now, and ive had about 5 things that popped up in adaware and spybot. and i download things illegally and watch alot of porn.

[STRESSTEST]

Like I said, we'll see the difference, if any in 14 days when I refresh this thread

[Duper]

That's a *somewhat but not totally unreasonably* old version of Ad Aware too.

/me Stess in the butt. so there. neah.







any reason you haven't updated? or just a preference thing?



*better Tyr?* heh

[Tyranny]

It isn't THAT old, they're only up to 1.05.

Initially I was going to say it was because he was visiting a lot of non-commercial sites, such as porn sites, which even on Firefox put some ★■◆● on your computer.

I just scanned with Ad-aware SE personal 1.05 today and found nothing, cept for a couple of virii AVG saw while it was scanning. No harm done.

Spybot didn't get anything either. I don't get any popups and I also use Spywareblaster in tandem with Spybot to keep most spyware off the PC period.

Can't really compare with Opera since I've never used it. Firefox 1.0PR has been solid for me though.

You say that was after 14 days of using Firefox? damn...I scan probably once or twice a month, maybe three times. Never seen a total even close to that since I got Ad-aware for the very first time. Usually it'll be like 4 or 10 or something like that when I get them.

[roid]

so much spyware, stress you suck at the internet.

i'm still confused as to the reasons why you hate firefox. i've heard you say a number of times how you think it sucks.

so now you're trying it eh.
wow, that's a lot of spyware (did i mention that's a lot of spyware)
coz that there sir. is a lot. of spy ware.

[Plebeian]

I've never even had that many objects identified total, on the four machines I've used Firefox on (since Phoenix 0.5).

I've also never had any issues with popup protection, as every last popup ever is stopped. If I want it, then I unblock the site. I do have to refresh/resend, though.

[Testiculese]

You scan once or twice a month? Wow. I scan once a year. (I wondered if I even had Ad-aware installed, sure enough, I do, last scan 11-30-2003). So I ran a scan.

0

[STRESSTEST]

i'm still confused as to the reasons why you hate firefox. i've heard you say a number of times how you think it sucks.

I don't recall ever saying it sucks or I hate it. Can you show me where that happened? I made a comment about a post I made in Ice's thread, but I explained that in detail above in this post. But since I've said it "a number of times", maybe you can show me where?

You scan once or twice a month? Wow. I scan once a year. (I wondered if I even had Ad-aware installed, sure enough, I do, last scan 11-30-2003). So I ran a scan.

0

I scanned the day I installed Firefox. 15 days ago now. Yesterday I updated the software to the newest def's and that is the result I got.



My plan is to do another 14 days with firefox after the 14 with opera to see if it has the same results as the first go round.

This isn't an attack on the browser guys, you all act like I made a personal comment about you. Lol. Look how you all get defensive about this. It's really comical. As I said, i like the browser, but so far these are the facts in my world. The reason for going through all the trouble is for me to prove, or discredit my findings so far. If the 2nd go round proves to be fine, I'll probably call Firefox my new browser. If not, I'll stick with opera. It's no big deal either way to me. My quest is to simply find the best browser for me, not you ass clowns So unbunch your panties already, jeez.

[Mobius]

I don't use the tabbed browsing in it or Opera as Iâ??m not a fan of the feature.

Bill, you automatically devalue your assessment of any browser when you admit you don't use the most powerful feature.

Also, I hope you loaded up a ton of extensions because Firefox is *meant* to be customised. Vanilla Firefox is pretty ho-hum in terms of power user features.

[fliptw]

You did clean off all the ad-aware deteced objects right?

MOBIUS: SHUT UP.

[STRESSTEST]

In that screen cap? Yes

[Samuel Dravis]

I've been using Firefox for the past week or so. Much better than what I had been using previously (Netscape), and a lot more useful than IE with all the plugins you can get for FF.

[MD-2389]

Bill, you might want to check these extentions out:

http://adblock.mozdev.org/
http://bugmenot.mozdev.org/

The two best friends any Mozilla/Firefox user will ever have.

As far as Mobius' comment about downloading a ton of extentions, just be careful about that. There are quite a few of them that are poorly coded.

[STRESSTEST]

Im not comparing plugins MD

im comparing the browser

[Top Wop]

This particular 1.0 PR build is not their best, as for some reason their pop up blocking has been shoddy compared to .9. I also experience random crashes, but they said they got that fixed for the final version, so we will have to see.

[Testiculese]

(I was talking to Tyranny)

[Tyranny]

Yeah testi, give or take. Sometimes I go for a long stretch where I don't need to, other times I go short periods where I feel it is warranted.

Most of the time I come up clean anyways.

[fliptw]

you might want to try RC1

[Jeff250]

I don't get this whole thing how Firefox is so much faster with rendering than IE. I was trying to open a 20MB .html file with Firefox, and it was taking minutes to finish, so I tried IE, which rendered it in a matter of a couple dozen seconds.

[fliptw]

was the 20 megs of html valid html?

Mind you, there is no sane reason for a 20MB HTML file.

[woodchip]

Not sure what the difference is between Mozilla and Firefox, but I use Mozilla 1.6 and very rarely have spyware...even after visiting porn sites
As to pages opening slow, maybe Stress you should get something faster than a 56K modem

[Plebeian]

Firefox is based off the Mozilla code, usually branching off the "last Mozilla release" code. At least that's how it had been.

Firefox is the browser component from Mozilla (1.5, I think the latest is based off), just streamlined more. Mozilla is the entire suite (browser, email client, useless crap, etc. ).

[woodchip]

^ Ahhh...thanks.

[DCrazy]

flip, mighta been that ASCII Matrix thing...

[Jeff250]

Nah, my AIM saves conversations in .html files, so they grow rather large. I normally divide them into 6-month chunks. It's not valid HTML (per W3C criteria), but there's nothing really invalid about it either.

For kicks, I created an ~11MB .html file (that does validate XHTML 1.1) containing 200,000 lines of...
<p>This is a test of how browsers handle large files.</p>
...as the sole content of the body.

Firefox 1.0 RC1 took ~40 seconds to finish rendering, whereas IE6 SP2 took ~18 seconds. Opera 7.23 (slightly old version, granted) also took ~18 seconds.

[AceCombat]

i just swapped to FireFox and except for the ability to move Menu's around im happy

[kurupt]

you're mad because you can move your menus? i chalk that up as a plus.

[MD-2389]

you're mad because you can move your menus? i chalk that up as a plus.

No, he's saying you can't move them in FF. You can in Mozilla though.

Im not comparing plugins MD

im comparing the browser

No ★■◆●, really? I suggested you check them out so you can see the expandability of the browser. Thus, you can write it off as a further eval of the browser.

[Honest Bob]

Nah, my AIM saves conversations in .html files, so they grow rather large. I normally divide them into 6-month chunks.

What AIM does that?

[Mr.Rsm]

my IE also run WAY faster than Firefox 1.0PR did (I say did cos i uninstalled it after wastin what seemed to be ages opening up a page that took me mere seconds in IE). With Spyware Blaster and a ton of filters spybot s&d added, and correct configuration of the HOSTS file, I hardly get any unwanted bs with IE (i do surf safely too, though). No tabbed browsing or menu moving ability in IE, granted, but it's speed makes up for it. Flame away.

Also, I wanna re-stress the importance of the HOSTS file. For some reason under WinXP and unknown circumstances (to me anyways), the registry points out a different location on the harddrive to the hosts file than what it should be... if you fix that, filters applied by spybot and spywareblaster DO prevent the entering of more malicious-ware. I found out about this by troubleshooting the NFSU:Lan client... you can look for such info on google... but if enough interest is manifested and no one finds it, i'll post it here.

[kurupt]

what menus are we talking about here? i can move the ones i tried to move just fine

[MD-2389]

For those complaining about the loading times in FireFox....

phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=328

This should about cut loading times in half. For those of us using Mozilla, this tweak works for us too.

[Avder]

Holy superonic $hit, batman, I tossed in those tweaks to my firefox and its like the first time I plugged into broadband all over again. Instant.

[Arbitar]

Holy superonic $hit, batman

w0rd. Same here lol

[Mr.Rsm]

hmm i might have to give this another try...

[STRESSTEST]

13 days, so sue me.

Results:



Tonight I will DL and install the new version of firefox and give it a whirl. update in 2 weeks


edit Duper, I updated AW SE also to 1.05, no different in scan results.. just an FYI /edit

[Krom]

I've been using firefox 1.0 for about a week now, some things are nice, some things are not nice. As far as general browsing goes, firefox works perfectly, its fast, stable, easy to use. Doing a text search through a webpage in firefox is so nice compared to IE. The lack of popups is also very nice, but the SP2 popup blocker in IE is just as good.

Something I dont like is the memory use, after running firefox all day (for a grand total of 12 minutes 30 seconds CPU time) it was consuming 49 MB of RAM with only 3 windows open, closing two of the windows caused it to jump to 51 MB of RAM and it kept on going up. The first thing that comes to mind is "HOLY MEMORY LEAK BATMAN!". As I am typing this message I notice the memory use in firefox went from 20 MB to 25 MB and then down to 11 MB, and is slowly creeping up at about 100-300k per minute or so with only this window open, honestly I had no idea I could type that fast! My keyboard must be smoking, 13 MB already!

Other then that, firefox is great!