I started using the Mozilla lightweight browser called Phoenix in late 2002. I’ve been with the product for two name changes (Firebird and now Firefox) and many updates. It has grown from this tiny project to create a very lightweight browser to feature bloat.
One of the things I loved about Firefox was its ability to run on just about any computer without issues. I never liked the Mozilla Suite as it was bloated and had many features I did not care about, like an IRC client. With Firefox it was just the browser and nothing more. It can with a tiny memory footprint that you could leave open for days at a time.
Today I have to close Firefox at least once a day due to the fact that it is eating at least half of my RAM and even more Virtual Memory. A gig of ram should be enough for most applications to run today. I know that there are tweaks to get Firefox to use less memory, but I’ve found that these tweaks slow down your browsing experience. I also believe that if you have to go into the about:config to change anything the setting is useless for an average user. This is like telling someone to go into the Windows registry, it is just not a smart thing to do.
The same problem exists in Mozilla Thunderbird. When you leave the program open for any amount of time it slowly starts to eat all available memory. The problem does not only exist on one operating system, I run Firefox on Windows, Linux and OS X. This tells me that the problem exists in the backend system called Gecko.
When I’ve read interviews with the developers on the subject they tend to blame extensions/add-ons for the problem. I do not run anything of this sort in Thunderbird. I’ve also ran Firefox in its bare state and had the exact same issues. Try to put the blame elsewhere, it just forces me to look at other products. It is extremely difficult to tell a not so tech savvy person to use a program that needs to be restarted every few hours.
I am now in search of something better than Firefox. I am looking for something lightweight that works on the three primary OSs: Windows, Linux, and OS X.
My first thought is Opera. The problem I have had with opera in the past is that it is too standards oriented. They have one of the developers of CSS, HÃ¥kon Wium Lie, working for them. This causes many non-compliant sites to look odd. I want to see pages how the developer intended, not how the standard sees them.
I also have an issue with Opera because when I first tried it many years ago it was ad supported unless you paid for it. I felt like I was using a free dial-up service rather than a free browser. Yes, they have removed the ads, but I still have that bitter taste in my mouth.
At this point I am at a loss, I do not know of any one piece of software that will fit my needs. I have been with Firefox for so long that I don’t really want to give it up, but it has became this huge dragon rather than a fast little gecko.
