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[Mr ChriZ]

I'd love to see MC use Chromes rendering engine for web pages.
I know this has been brought up time and time again, people wishing it used Firefox.
Most of the time this is for feature xyz, or security scare 2044 in IE.
I don't really care for most of this. Chromes rendering engine on the other hand is lightning quick.
For going to YouTube etc this would be fantastic.

[JONCAT]

I'm also impressed with Chroms. Firefox feels bloated; maybe all the addons...

DC

[Marty3d]

ANY browser but IE would be fine by me. Mostly because MC bogs down a couple of seconds everytime it uses IE and becomes quite unresponsive.

[JimH]

ANY browser but IE would be fine by me. Mostly because MC bogs down a couple of seconds everytime it uses IE and becomes quite unresponsive.

Shouldn't happen.  Check IE's add-ons.  Try updating IE.

[Marty3d]

It's not a problem, just seems...I don't know, sluggish perhaps. The browsing experience could be better, but I guess the hickup'ing occurs when the browser is started for the first time. But I have no addons or anything since I don't use it as my default browser, and it's updated through Windows Update, so. So, no sweat!

[glynor]

I'm also impressed with Chroms. Firefox feels bloated; maybe all the addons...

It is.  Keep the AddOns to a mimimum.

I use only Adblock Plus, Foxmarks, Nightly Tester Tools, and No Script.  I used to have a big pile of others that I used but I found that not only are many of the individual AddOns buggy and bloated (and make Firefox behave likewise), but that at a certain point, just a sheer number of plugins can make the Firefox process run slower.

There is no "perfect number" (because different AddOns use differing amounts of resources, I'd guess) but I've definitely seen combinations of AddOns cause substantial slowdowns when they are fine by themselves or in smaller groupings.

That said... FireFox 3.1 beta is WAY better.  The new javascript engine is sweet!  And, BTW, I've found the new beta completely stable and usable (I'm using it exclusively on my Windows 7 installs).

[glynor]

I should also mention... Chrome is nice for some things.  However, it isn't really quite ready for everyday browsing (despite the fact that it was actually *gasp* taken out of beta by Google) because it does lack a few security features that are very, very important.

For example, there is no way to completely disable third-party cookies (which is the absolute first thing I do when using any browser).  It has a "restrict how third-party cookies are used" option, but this doesn't help much because it still allows places like DoubleClick to install cookies and track you all over the web.  Not shocking since Google owns DoubleClick, but still not wonderful.

Another example is memory usage.  Do a little test, open Firefox (without AddOns) and open three Tabs to a set of websites.  Then open Chrome and open those same three tabs.  I found that Chrome was using literally triple the amount of RAM for the three tabs, and it only gets worse as you open more tabs.  This is obviously a symptom of the "open each tab in it's own process" methodology Chrome is using, but if you are (like me) someone who always has 3 browser windows open with sometimes 15-25 tabs open at a time across them all, it can quickly eat up a huge pile of system RAM.

Thirdly, of my 8 or so machines that I use and manage regularly at home and work, I have 3 that won't run Chrome at all.  I get only a "application failed to initialize properly" error message on those.  The browser loads and you can create new tabs and dig through the options, but you can't actually open any web pages (which makes it fairly pointless).  No idea why, but that track record isn't great.  The machines all work otherwise and don't have many similarities (one is a Mac, the other two are Windows -- one XP and one Vista).

[JONCAT]

Thanks for the heads up on the Firefox addons. It is indeed time to cull through the excess addons.

I use a stock install of IE7 and it does feel like there is a lot of room for improvement. On all machines I use (at work or home), IE is always more sluggish than FF, and compared to Chrome...it's plain slow.

OT: Gylnor, how do you like Windows7? Still dealing with Vista crashes here using various Adobe products (with Aero off etc.). XP seems so much more stable.

Thanks for the heads up on the 3.1 FF

DC

[glynor]

OT: Gylnor, how do you like Windows7? Still dealing with Vista crashes here using various Adobe products (with Aero off etc.). XP seems so much more stable.

Short Answer: LOVE IT.

Long Answer (just written up yesterday): http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=50407.0

EDIT: I'd enjoy your comments on the other thread... Esp. regarding problems with Adobe apps.  I've been using Photoshop and Illustrator CS3 on my Windows 7 install quite a bit and they've been fine.  Acrobat 8 was annoying to get set up, and I haven't used it that much yet, but it seems to be working okay so far.

[glynor]

One other thing to keep an eye on for Firefox performance is the "Live Bookmarks" RSS reading feature.  USE THESE SPARINGLY.  I used to have a huge pile of Live Bookmarks (growing every day), but it makes Firefox startup performance TERRIBLY slow because it has to go and download each and every single one of those RSS feeds.  It isn't programmed very well though and the download process blocks the UI for the rest of the app.

So, if you start up Firefox, it loads immediately, but then is "frozen" for a 20 seconds - 2 minutes before you can use it, look at reducing your Live Bookmarks.

[Mr ChriZ]

No probs with CS3 on Vista here either.

[JONCAT]

I'm guessing my X61 tablet's display adapter just can't deal with Vista, or the driver sucks. The Vista GUI just causes a lot of "white screens" and gpu heavy apps or a bogged down Firefox triggers app crashes.

DC

[xen-uno]

Agreed on FF3.1b2 ... brings tab switch rendering speed back up to (and maybe beyond) v2 levels (compared to v3.0).

These extensions work: Download Statusbar, FireFTP, Flashblock, Image Zoom, Java Quick Starter, Move Media Player, Nightly Tester Tools, Noia Extreme (theme)
These don't: Colorzilla, Copy Plain Text, DictionarySearch, Googlebar (moz), ListZilla, Magic's Video DL'er, Plain Text Links, Quicknote, Statusbar Clock, Tab Mix Plus

... enough work to make it a worthwhile upgrade.