So I stopped using firefox today...

Paul11 said:
Why ?
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Tbf, when I had xp I tended to do this, it being easier than dealing with the issues from constant installing removing. Still, never had any such need with either vista or w7. If you have to reinstall either of those regularly you need to take a good look at your hardware.

Also, unless something changed, if flash crashes 3.6 should simply offer to reload the tab. The only time I've had stutter was using a beta build but even then, it was flash crashing not ff :p
 
Hairybudda said:
Probably stuck in the Win 95/98 mindset where people believed windows would get irreversibly slow over time which could be solved by reinstalling every 6 months. Complete nonsense of course but people find it hard to let go, as evidenced by the OPs inability to grasp the progressive improvements to firefox. I remember FF when it was still phoenix, better than IE but still not great, in the same vein FF3 is better than 2 and I'm sure FF4 will be fine too.
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windows does slow up if you have lots of programs installed over time unless you do a little maintanace. Programs like tunup utilities are god for that. You have to clean your regestry, defragment your regestry, keep on top of junk files and defrag your hard drive and that keeps things running nicely.

My sister had several types of every kind of program you could shake a stick at insalled and heres was at a crawl at one stage.
 
Hairybudda said:
Probably stuck in the Win 95/98 mindset where people believed windows would get irreversibly slow over time which could be solved by reinstalling every 6 months. Complete nonsense of course but people find it hard to let go,.
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Actually I just done it last night and the difference is vast. Though I have this problem where I install a lot of one time only style software - why can't they just be standalone exe's. :(
 
Bozebo said:
Snip.
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Sadly I'm the same Bozebo I find I'm turning to Ie more often simply because FF doesn't work or doesn't want to load the page.

I have two add-ons installed

Ad block Plus
No script

I get the stuttering even on google.

I wonder if it's not google though trying to load the auto complete?
 
cumulusjames said:
Well I am grateful for the info about foxit. I have banished adobe reader and my pc somehow seems happier for it. I am not sure weather that could be proven in lab tests. It just seems chirpier!

Now all we need is something nice to replace flash and shockwave. And waht teh hell adobe air is I dotn know. I have never seen any indication that it performs any useful purpose. My pc does not seem to be unhappy without it.

Excuse my spelling or lack of. I am dyslexic anyhow but I have had a sherry or two. Apologies to the countdown nerds.
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I was a fan of Foxit until it started trying to force install toolbars and god knows what else.....

Sumatra PDF is a good alternative.
 
I have tried most Chrome, Opera, Firefox and IE and I still navigate back to FF. Out of those browsers only Opera gave me problems with certain websites not rendering correctly.
However it is the few extensions that I use for FF that has kept me using that browser, and the fact that it simply works for me.
I am using version 4 beta 7 and it has been perfect in my every day use and as I like the use of the extensions I'm using I can't see myself needing to change anytime soon.
When I did try Chrome I was expecting it to be quicker than FF but I'm guessing that as I have got older and my brain no longer functions in milliseconds then that would explain why I could see no difference.
 
I use both Chrome 9.0.587 and Firefox 3.6.12

Both are very fast with every update and I've never had a problem with crashes or slowdowns even browsing websites which end up consuming almost 2GB of RAM due to the masses of pictures on the pages (image thread, for example).

It's your set-up, that's the issue here!

As for PDF, Adobe Reader Lite is the best reader. Adobe seem to have a much better rendering engine for PDF making text look better and it performs better too and it's as lite as Foxit/anything else and doesn't have the crap the full reader has.
 
Khaaan! said:
As for PDF, Adobe Reader Lite is the best reader. Adobe seem to have a much better rendering engine for PDF making text look better and it performs better too and it's as lite as Foxit/anything else and doesn't have the crap the full reader has.
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How can text look better than perfect and the software perform better than loading immediately?

foxit.png
 
When scrolling, Adobe is smoother, when loading pages with images, Adobe is faster...etc.

As for text:

Foxit vs Adobe 9.3 Lite

pdfcompare.JPG


Whether you accept it or not, Adobe PDF reader in any iteration is the better PDF reader for accurate and smooth rendering. The default UI layout is also more logical. I used to be a Foxit reader user for a long time until the Lite crew updated PDF reader to the 9.x builds.
 
Those two images have different sizes of text.

I'm amazed that you say Adobe is faster when loading pages because my experience has been the exact opposite, in fact recently when loading a pdf there has been a progress bar coming up with adobe rendering each page whereas Foxit loads the file instantly.
 
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They're using the exact same magnification (125%). At 100% the difference is even more obvio9us Adobe is better but I used 125 to show the crispness of the text further for both readers. It looks different because Foxit renders pages differently (which is my whole point).

General pages LOAD at the same speed, it's just pages with heavy content load faster and smoother as you're scrolling into them in Adobe Reader Lite.
 
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Bozebo said:
These new versions of firefox are so incredibly buggy. I am experiencing issues on both linux and windows - lockups, stuttering, crashing.
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Stock Firefox is really stable. The only crashes I've ever experienced with Firefox have been down to extensions and plugins, normally the latter (they're not the same thing. Flash is a plugin, not an extension).

Have you made absolutely sure that you're using a fresh profile (that's not the same as reinstalling) and that you have no plugins or extensions causing problems?
 
Khaaan! said:
When scrolling, Adobe is smoother, when loading pages with images, Adobe is faster...etc.

As for text:

Foxit vs Adobe 9.3 Lite

Whether you accept it or not, Adobe PDF reader in any iteration is the better PDF reader for accurate and smooth rendering. The default UI layout is also more logical. I used to be a Foxit reader user for a long time until the Lite crew updated PDF reader to the 9.x builds.
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that may be aswell if you have a lot of pdfs to study. For the rest of us it is a very occational thing and basic information for example property detials or the manule for your pc or somoething. So it does not matter much how it renders.
 
MikeHunt79 said:
I'm not a huge fan of FoxIt either TBH, what do you think of Sumatra? It seems much faster than any PDF reader I've seen and really small too... But I haven't compared font smoothness or anything like that...

Linky: http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/free-pdf-reader.html
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As above, I suppose if all you're doing is the occasional viewing of a PDF manual or whatever then it doesn't matter in general what reader you use but many of us read way more than that. eBooks, Magazines, other materials and so on.

I found Sumatra to be as fast as Adobe Reader Lite and Foxit at loading the app and loading the PDF but when zoomed in at say around 400-800% for looking at finer detailed graphics and so on in PDF media) it uses an awful lot of CPU (40% on all 4 cores on my 4GHz quad) and because of this it lagged considerably. This was on a very basic PDF too (the Photoshop one above).

Adobe Reader Lite and Foxit had no lag in the same test and Adobe reader is also GPU hardware accelerated in all views (worth mentioning).

I think of it logically.

Adobe Reader Lite v9.3 is free, it's 22MB in size and is hardware accelerated. Why use a lesser compatible product when this exists? It's more logical to use the better product especially so when it's not costing anything at all.

People just have it stuck in their minds that the Adobe one is bad because it's bloated and slow and while that is the case for the full reader the Lite version is anything but.
 
Cheers Khaaan!, I must admit I don't use PDF files that much so I use Sumatra for viewing them, for my netbook it's ideal as it has a slow HD so the fact that Sumatra is less around 2MB means it opens very quickly. I think I'll give Adobe Reader Lite a go, I didn't know that it had hardware acceleration so with any luck it should speed things up...

You're spot onwhen you say 'People just have it stuck in their minds that the Adobe one is bad because it's bloated and slow and while that is the case for the full reader the Lite version is anything but.' I'm exactly like this, I hate the normal Adobe Reader because it seems needlessly huge and the endless updates really annoy me, this is the first time I've heard of the Lite edition so I think I'll give it a go. :)
 
I'm just trying out Adobe Reader X after seeing the installer is just 33MB (105MB extracted).

It appears to not install any extra guff like previous versions either and the sandboxed approach for PDF viewing should hopefully mean that constant updates don't bug people away.

Edit*

Having tried out Reader X I am very happy with it. I found no evidence of bloat like previous full versions of the Reader, it appears to be focused on just one task and that's reading PDFs and then, if you want, comment/share them but those features do not intrude and are only available if you click on them.

It seems as a fast as Lite/Foxit etc but the plus point I found over the others is that it can remember individual PDF view settings and positions which is excellent for eBook and magazine readers who return to stuff later to finish reading.


I'm sticking with Reader X :)
 
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