OK, so here’s what I just did. I opened TechMeme up, and Ctrl-clicked on every link on the main part of TechMeme. That opened every link up into a tab. Then I went to Windows Task Manager and looked at how much memory each took.
Firefox 2: 249,996 K
IE 7: I couldn’t complete the tasks, but after loading only about half of the links iexplore was taking 295,800K.
Firefox 2 was much faster on my machine to open up all the tabs and get me back surfing. In fact, on my little Lenovo X41 Tablet PC, I couldn’t complete opening all of the links using IE7. IE was just getting slower and slower.
Now, this isn’t matching what other people are seeing. Lifehacker says that IE 7’s memory utilization is much lower than Firefox’s. Which tells me something must be messed up on my machine and/or something else is getting loaded on my IE7 machine.
What are you seeing?
Scobleizer 
Thanks for the testing. In my machine, I always found that IE is a lil bit faster than FF, I think that because IE is part of Windows system itself.
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Thanks for the testing. In my machine, I always found that IE is a lil bit faster than FF, I think that because IE is part of Windows system itself.
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profilemaster: I’m loading up Windows on my new superdooper MacPro just to see if I can complete this test on a cleanly installed machine and if having a huge memory pool changes things a lot. I just tried rebooting my machine and closing everything non essential and rerunning the test and it still bogs down with about half the links opened with IE 7 (on the previous test I had Outlook and a few other things open — but then I had them open for the test with Firefox too). With Firefox 2 everything just zips right open. I wonder why I’d be seeing such a huge difference between my results and LifeHacker’s results.
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profilemaster: I’m loading up Windows on my new superdooper MacPro just to see if I can complete this test on a cleanly installed machine and if having a huge memory pool changes things a lot. I just tried rebooting my machine and closing everything non essential and rerunning the test and it still bogs down with about half the links opened with IE 7 (on the previous test I had Outlook and a few other things open — but then I had them open for the test with Firefox too). With Firefox 2 everything just zips right open. I wonder why I’d be seeing such a huge difference between my results and LifeHacker’s results.
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Oh, and that’s with the phishing filter turned off.
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Oh, and that’s with the phishing filter turned off.
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My results are about the same as what you describe on your machine. IE gets faster if I uninstall any toolbars. Maybe somethings getting hung up in there?
I went back to Firefox as a default, because eventually with a dozen or so tabs open, IE would almost always lock up or be so slow that I would just get too frustrated.
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My results are about the same as what you describe on your machine. IE gets faster if I uninstall any toolbars. Maybe somethings getting hung up in there?
I went back to Firefox as a default, because eventually with a dozen or so tabs open, IE would almost always lock up or be so slow that I would just get too frustrated.
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This discussion is great entertainment but not science. The problem that LifeHacker is seeing is a more “common case” scenario.
How many people open 100 tabs? I don’t think either FF or IE are too much worried about optimizing their memory footprint for this case.
The real problem occurs with rich AJAX applications like Sampa that creates and manipulates many objects, IFrames, AJAX calls, etc. On that case, in my tests, Firefox is faster than IE in terms of CPU, but it ends up consuming more memory.
Somebody writing a poor AJAX app can really drain a lot of resources from your browser, either IE or FF. But if the dev is doing a good job cleaning up memory, Firefox memory will most likely be higher than IE.
But, again, who cares? Users should only care if their browser are getting slower, but not how much memory it consumes.
As a good practice for Web 2.0 users, you should close your browser every few hours or so. That is not ideal, but it is the reality of the world today.
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This discussion is great entertainment but not science. The problem that LifeHacker is seeing is a more “common case” scenario.
How many people open 100 tabs? I don’t think either FF or IE are too much worried about optimizing their memory footprint for this case.
The real problem occurs with rich AJAX applications like Sampa that creates and manipulates many objects, IFrames, AJAX calls, etc. On that case, in my tests, Firefox is faster than IE in terms of CPU, but it ends up consuming more memory.
Somebody writing a poor AJAX app can really drain a lot of resources from your browser, either IE or FF. But if the dev is doing a good job cleaning up memory, Firefox memory will most likely be higher than IE.
But, again, who cares? Users should only care if their browser are getting slower, but not how much memory it consumes.
As a good practice for Web 2.0 users, you should close your browser every few hours or so. That is not ideal, but it is the reality of the world today.
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More specifically, my IE is running at about 230,000 K and my FF is running at about 130,000 K. That’s with all the windows open from TechMeme. My “feeling” is that IE is about that much slower too… making it an obvious choice to try something else.
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More specifically, my IE is running at about 230,000 K and my FF is running at about 130,000 K. That’s with all the windows open from TechMeme. My “feeling” is that IE is about that much slower too… making it an obvious choice to try something else.
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And, even better fodder…
When I close IE and FF (per Marcelo’s comment), FF takes about 1 to 2 seconds to shut off. IE takes 8 to 10 seconds.
And, in my previous comment, I said “with all the windows open” and I meant pages open as tabs.
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And, even better fodder…
When I close IE and FF (per Marcelo’s comment), FF takes about 1 to 2 seconds to shut off. IE takes 8 to 10 seconds.
And, in my previous comment, I said “with all the windows open” and I meant pages open as tabs.
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Marcelo: I don’t usually open 100, but I do regularly open 30 tabs. Why? Cause I want to preload links I want to check out then i quickly move through those tabs.
Also, you’re right. This isn’t scientific. That’s why I’m asking for other people’s experiences. That way we can triangulate in on the truth together.
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Marcelo: I don’t usually open 100, but I do regularly open 30 tabs. Why? Cause I want to preload links I want to check out then i quickly move through those tabs.
Also, you’re right. This isn’t scientific. That’s why I’m asking for other people’s experiences. That way we can triangulate in on the truth together.
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IE7 just seems to lag to me compared to Firefox 2.0. I am not very impressed with what I have seen so far.
I will stay with Firefox for the foreseeable future. Especially since we will have probably two new major updates to Firefox by the time the next IE is released.
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IE7 just seems to lag to me compared to Firefox 2.0. I am not very impressed with what I have seen so far.
I will stay with Firefox for the foreseeable future. Especially since we will have probably two new major updates to Firefox by the time the next IE is released.
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Man. This is NOT scientific result. Going to task manager to check for memory pressure is lame.
At least download real task manager from http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/ProcessExplorer.html and report number of Private Bytes vs. Virtual Size vs. Working Set.
Most of memory used can be some caches used to actually speed up rendering of pages – not slow your computer down. You have always apply tradeoff in algorithms – speed vs. memory.
As well what’s a reason to make application do not use memory in case if it’s already fully paid and plugged in into your motherboard ?
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Man. This is NOT scientific result. Going to task manager to check for memory pressure is lame.
At least download real task manager from http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/ProcessExplorer.html and report number of Private Bytes vs. Virtual Size vs. Working Set.
Most of memory used can be some caches used to actually speed up rendering of pages – not slow your computer down. You have always apply tradeoff in algorithms – speed vs. memory.
As well what’s a reason to make application do not use memory in case if it’s already fully paid and plugged in into your motherboard ?
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Tag: good point. I really don’t care how much RAM my apps take up. I just care whether they remain responsive to me even after I push them hard. Firefox wins on my machine, hands down.
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Tag: good point. I really don’t care how much RAM my apps take up. I just care whether they remain responsive to me even after I push them hard. Firefox wins on my machine, hands down.
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While I can’t make any claims one way or the other I feel the need to mention that you must consider part of the memory taken by the OS in the case of Internet Explorer. From what I’ve read a fair amount of the memory footprint would actually be in Explorer. I don’t think its a trivial issue to compare there footprints head to head. However, if the IE7 footprint is bigger without even considering Explorer, hands down FF is the winner.
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While I can’t make any claims one way or the other I feel the need to mention that you must consider part of the memory taken by the OS in the case of Internet Explorer. From what I’ve read a fair amount of the memory footprint would actually be in Explorer. I don’t think its a trivial issue to compare there footprints head to head. However, if the IE7 footprint is bigger without even considering Explorer, hands down FF is the winner.
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I heard that IE has to create a new instance of each of your installed toolbars for every tab you have open – that’s likely to have a big impact on performance. Robert: did you have any toolbars running during the test?
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I heard that IE has to create a new instance of each of your installed toolbars for every tab you have open – that’s likely to have a big impact on performance. Robert: did you have any toolbars running during the test?
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Ie7 isn’t preloaded with windows, nor does it take up any system ram. It’s been made since day 1 to not share ram with explorer, hence why installing ie7 you no longer have the option to share ram with explorer like ie6 did
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Ie7 isn’t preloaded with windows, nor does it take up any system ram. It’s been made since day 1 to not share ram with explorer, hence why installing ie7 you no longer have the option to share ram with explorer like ie6 did
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I’m noticing IE7 is running much faster then FF2.0 no matter how many tabs I have open. Are you running IE7 on XP or Vista, Scoble?
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I’m noticing IE7 is running much faster then FF2.0 no matter how many tabs I have open. Are you running IE7 on XP or Vista, Scoble?
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I found Firefox 2.0 RC3 to perform better than IE7. Firefox uses around 3-5MB less memory on startup with the same page loaded and that is with 5 extensions loaded in Firefox. When running with 40+ tabs Firefox can easily handle it whereas IE as good as locks up (it doesn’t actually lock up but it is so slow it is unusable). This is on my XP Pro SP2 system with all available update to date and 3GB of RAM running on a Pentium 4 3.2Ghz (HyperThreading) CPU.
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I found Firefox 2.0 RC3 to perform better than IE7. Firefox uses around 3-5MB less memory on startup with the same page loaded and that is with 5 extensions loaded in Firefox. When running with 40+ tabs Firefox can easily handle it whereas IE as good as locks up (it doesn’t actually lock up but it is so slow it is unusable). This is on my XP Pro SP2 system with all available update to date and 3GB of RAM running on a Pentium 4 3.2Ghz (HyperThreading) CPU.
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Repeated the Scoble test, got the same numbers as Toby did – IE7 was much less responsive while tabs were opening, and after opening thirty tabs was unable to close successfully. Firefox behaved no differently under a thirty-tab load than under a 1-tab load.
TAG makes a couple of good technical points – I don’t think that the performance difference is due to the additional VM allocation, for instance. My recollection from the IE7 blog is that IE7 is thread-per-tab, with a lot of IPC; each tab is almost a full instance of IE6, due to some architectural issues in the IE6 implementation. Here’s the link: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/05/26/422103.aspx
They were concerned about footprint, but were hoping for better responsiveness. Ah, well.
SK
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Repeated the Scoble test, got the same numbers as Toby did – IE7 was much less responsive while tabs were opening, and after opening thirty tabs was unable to close successfully. Firefox behaved no differently under a thirty-tab load than under a 1-tab load.
TAG makes a couple of good technical points – I don’t think that the performance difference is due to the additional VM allocation, for instance. My recollection from the IE7 blog is that IE7 is thread-per-tab, with a lot of IPC; each tab is almost a full instance of IE6, due to some architectural issues in the IE6 implementation. Here’s the link: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/05/26/422103.aspx
They were concerned about footprint, but were hoping for better responsiveness. Ah, well.
SK
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Strange its jsut the reverse for me – I’m running Windows Vista – what r u trying on?
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Strange its jsut the reverse for me – I’m running Windows Vista – what r u trying on?
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@LordDaMan: According to msft’s technical document it says that IE7 is integrated in vista (while its standalone in XP).
My simple test results:
In XP. In both browsers I opened reddit, the first 10 links from reddit in tabs, gmail in a tab, google maps pointing to Indianapolis, IN in a tab, and google reader in another tab. IE7 took 175M, FF 95M. At that point they seemed similarly responsive and is a relatively normal load for me. I made no modifications to IE7 and have 9 extensions installed in FF.
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@LordDaMan: According to msft’s technical document it says that IE7 is integrated in vista (while its standalone in XP).
My simple test results:
In XP. In both browsers I opened reddit, the first 10 links from reddit in tabs, gmail in a tab, google maps pointing to Indianapolis, IN in a tab, and google reader in another tab. IE7 took 175M, FF 95M. At that point they seemed similarly responsive and is a relatively normal load for me. I made no modifications to IE7 and have 9 extensions installed in FF.
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test Ψ§ΩΩΩ test
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test Ψ§ΩΩΩ test
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Firefox is faster for me. I love the firefox feature where you type the name of a person into the url bar eg: “bill gates” and click enter. It brings you to the profile of him on the microsoft site. If you enter “george clooney”, it brings you to his profile on the imdb site… You can try others….
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Firefox is faster for me. I love the firefox feature where you type the name of a person into the url bar eg: “bill gates” and click enter. It brings you to the profile of him on the microsoft site. If you enter “george clooney”, it brings you to his profile on the imdb site… You can try others….
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What am I seeing? I’m seeing FF, as IE7’s interface is a joke, as is its rendering (and you only get the improved rendering on sites with a specified DTD, the vast majority of which don’t, so most will see identical rendering to IE6). FF also has a near infinite amount of features that IE7 doesn’t due to extensions. Why are people even _bothering_ with IE7? Who cares how much less it sucks than IE6? It’s just an upgraded IE6, nothing more. (And the interface is a massive downgrade, for sure. Did Fisher-Price design the IE7 interface?)
The only reason I installed IE7 on my machines is because I’m a web developer, and I kinda HAVE to, plus to just plug more holes in the OS.
I’m switching my home machine to Ubuntu soon, anyway. Wish I could do that at work…
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What am I seeing? I’m seeing FF, as IE7’s interface is a joke, as is its rendering (and you only get the improved rendering on sites with a specified DTD, the vast majority of which don’t, so most will see identical rendering to IE6). FF also has a near infinite amount of features that IE7 doesn’t due to extensions. Why are people even _bothering_ with IE7? Who cares how much less it sucks than IE6? It’s just an upgraded IE6, nothing more. (And the interface is a massive downgrade, for sure. Did Fisher-Price design the IE7 interface?)
The only reason I installed IE7 on my machines is because I’m a web developer, and I kinda HAVE to, plus to just plug more holes in the OS.
I’m switching my home machine to Ubuntu soon, anyway. Wish I could do that at work…
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I’d say the memory utilization is FAR less important than IE 7 not working right for you.
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I’d say the memory utilization is FAR less important than IE 7 not working right for you.
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I did the same test and posted them here – http://andy.gamerscircle.org/2006/10/21/firefox-2-vs-ie-7-test/
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I did the same test and posted them here – http://andy.gamerscircle.org/2006/10/21/firefox-2-vs-ie-7-test/
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hi Robert,
u are right on ie7 and why it s waste on system resources.
i have 60 – 70 windows open in firefox at any one time.
usually its things i saved in my last session each session adds 10 new tabs.
so in a week i am browsing 70 tabs
in fact this was one the first reasons why i shifted from ie to Firefox 2 years back.
i not only open browser windows but i also open chaT AND WEB DESIGN TOOLS AND WINDOWS EXPLORER
i have 10 gb of software old and new and i install as many as i can but use as little as i can
this can cause quite a drain on any system.
in fact my pc crashed thrice in 3 months
so format and reinstall
but good old firoxy- Firefox nick name has never let me down.
if at all 1 disappointment’s i face is how do i save`my settings from 1 windows installation to another like say 1 i have now to the one i install tommorow
also wont it be nice to have a feature of system sync what are doing now and restart from the same place with the same windows open and the same application states again when u shutdown and restart.
i know this is what system restore does but cant i add session save feature for my windows applications
i know om malik was angry at apple for apples disservice to macbook pro but he did appreciate firoxys session saving ability.
why cant it be done through out a OS like even for vista
why cant scyrbe like functionatlity be implemented through out windows or macintosh or better for linux for that matter
why cant a windows or any computer user switch off the pc and do the same things he did when it was on
this is called the offlirevo and scryrbe is good in it.
if u are thinking where i came up with this idea- i honestly know it came while i was typing but i had been thinking on these lines for quite some time
i have restarted my blog again
see at at http://www.arunbalaji.com/blog.php
my aim is still resource networking and i have found a way for it
by the way why dont u do urself a favor and beg borrow or try to get your hands on suns darkbox data center in a box . it will sure help your download costs.
also try using http://www.dnsmadeeasy.net
the same service meebo uses
i will be putting a web portal soon
its in the intial stages
bye
@runb@laj!
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hi Robert,
u are right on ie7 and why it s waste on system resources.
i have 60 – 70 windows open in firefox at any one time.
usually its things i saved in my last session each session adds 10 new tabs.
so in a week i am browsing 70 tabs
in fact this was one the first reasons why i shifted from ie to Firefox 2 years back.
i not only open browser windows but i also open chaT AND WEB DESIGN TOOLS AND WINDOWS EXPLORER
i have 10 gb of software old and new and i install as many as i can but use as little as i can
this can cause quite a drain on any system.
in fact my pc crashed thrice in 3 months
so format and reinstall
but good old firoxy- Firefox nick name has never let me down.
if at all 1 disappointment’s i face is how do i save`my settings from 1 windows installation to another like say 1 i have now to the one i install tommorow
also wont it be nice to have a feature of system sync what are doing now and restart from the same place with the same windows open and the same application states again when u shutdown and restart.
i know this is what system restore does but cant i add session save feature for my windows applications
i know om malik was angry at apple for apples disservice to macbook pro but he did appreciate firoxys session saving ability.
why cant it be done through out a OS like even for vista
why cant scyrbe like functionatlity be implemented through out windows or macintosh or better for linux for that matter
why cant a windows or any computer user switch off the pc and do the same things he did when it was on
this is called the offlirevo and scryrbe is good in it.
if u are thinking where i came up with this idea- i honestly know it came while i was typing but i had been thinking on these lines for quite some time
i have restarted my blog again
see at at http://www.arunbalaji.com/blog.php
my aim is still resource networking and i have found a way for it
by the way why dont u do urself a favor and beg borrow or try to get your hands on suns darkbox data center in a box . it will sure help your download costs.
also try using http://www.dnsmadeeasy.net
the same service meebo uses
i will be putting a web portal soon
its in the intial stages
bye
@runb@laj!
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Sorry to disappoint everybody, but that is not a reliable test.
For example, I am using Maxthon 1.5.8.112, and with 50 tabs opened the memory usage is not even 30MB (and there is YouTube, flash website, etc.). Moreover Maxthon being a front end to IE, I am using IE7 Final.
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Sorry to disappoint everybody, but that is not a reliable test.
For example, I am using Maxthon 1.5.8.112, and with 50 tabs opened the memory usage is not even 30MB (and there is YouTube, flash website, etc.). Moreover Maxthon being a front end to IE, I am using IE7 Final.
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Same results, IE 7 is a little bit more resource hungry, but Firefox, really is keeping the consumption low…
Besides RC1, I was having some issues with Flash heavy sites (too many tabs and i was on a turtle-pc)
But on the latest version, Is al going well, most of the time im with 20-30 tabs with a consumption of 100-120 mb
sweet!
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Same results, IE 7 is a little bit more resource hungry, but Firefox, really is keeping the consumption low…
Besides RC1, I was having some issues with Flash heavy sites (too many tabs and i was on a turtle-pc)
But on the latest version, Is al going well, most of the time im with 20-30 tabs with a consumption of 100-120 mb
sweet!
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Dillon, great tip! How cool is that!? π
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Dillon, great tip! How cool is that!? π
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I’ve always assumed IE to be faster than firefox…but maybe it’s because I have a fair bit of extensions in FireFox.
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Zimbra says IE 7 is a lot better than IE 6: http://www.zimbra.com/blog/archives/2006/10/ie_7_a_better_b.html
I am using Windows XP. Not Vista. I know Vista is better, but most people don’t have Vista yet.
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I’ve always assumed IE to be faster than firefox…but maybe it’s because I have a fair bit of extensions in FireFox.
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Zimbra says IE 7 is a lot better than IE 6: http://www.zimbra.com/blog/archives/2006/10/ie_7_a_better_b.html
I am using Windows XP. Not Vista. I know Vista is better, but most people don’t have Vista yet.
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Wow, talk about indepth conversations. Im still using Firefox 1.5.0.7 at the moment, but on my way to get 2 ;]
I left IE behind when I found Opera, and then later moved to Firefox. I find it to be generally better in everything, and less crashwise than Exploder.
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Wow, talk about indepth conversations. Im still using Firefox 1.5.0.7 at the moment, but on my way to get 2 ;]
I left IE behind when I found Opera, and then later moved to Firefox. I find it to be generally better in everything, and less crashwise than Exploder.
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At the moment of first tabs opening FireFox take less memory than IE, but I frequently observed that after 2 hours usage FF (latest version) consumes 300MB for 3 tabs.
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At the moment of first tabs opening FireFox take less memory than IE, but I frequently observed that after 2 hours usage FF (latest version) consumes 300MB for 3 tabs.
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All front page links: 250mb, a little sluggish, IE7.
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All front page links: 250mb, a little sluggish, IE7.
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Christopher Null, The Working Guy from Yahoo! Tech post an hands-on reviews on IE7. He received over 470 comments over 2-3 days. You can see a lot more problems with IE7. Imagine many may be using Yahoo Optimized IE7.
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/5116;_ylt=A9G_f.gt4zpF5ycAwlErLpA5
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Christopher Null, The Working Guy from Yahoo! Tech post an hands-on reviews on IE7. He received over 470 comments over 2-3 days. You can see a lot more problems with IE7. Imagine many may be using Yahoo Optimized IE7.
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/5116;_ylt=A9G_f.gt4zpF5ycAwlErLpA5
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what i’m seeing is the IE7 hangs just as much as IE6. Just ridiculous. And my flash player isn’t working with a beep. In other words, it’s not working at all.
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what i’m seeing is the IE7 hangs just as much as IE6. Just ridiculous. And my flash player isn’t working with a beep. In other words, it’s not working at all.
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Sorry guys. Memory leaks we refer to is about the Javascript Object. Javascript and DOM are part of AJAX.
Watch this video to understand and how to detect memory leaks. It also shows you the tool you can accurately measure the private memory, not virtual memory. The site use a AJAX tab that is commonly used in web 2.0 on the test.
http://www.barelyfitz.com/screencast/javascript/memory-leak/
Douglas Crockford http://www.crockford.com/javascript/memory/leak.html
explains IE’s own memory manager get confused and IE DOM is not managed by JScript.
Microsoft has documented the memory leak issues in many places including http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;830555. It mentions “This memory leak occurs because DOM objects are non-JScript objects”. And it states “This memory leak will end when the browser opens a new Web page or when the browser window is closed.”
Who do I trust more? I trust Douglas Crockford’s expertise and his extensive knowledge in browser. As long as IE is staying with their DOM strategy, web 2.0 developers will have to spend more time debugging IE7 and write more codes to handle memory leaks.
Firefox and Opera’s DOM strategy is on right track.
Now which headache is bigger? Hacking IE CSS on IE6 OR debugging memory leaks on IE7
Jeopardy question – music please…
CSS is usually handle by designer or interface engineer. Usually it is a one-person job. It is visual hack.
Almost all of the web 2.0 developers must handle AJAX. It is going to add burdens to the entire developer team. It is not visual fix. You have to use tool to audit the memory leaks. It is more time consuming to handle the memory leaks.
This bring up another issue. What you are experiencing on the memory overload on multiple tabs is something that IE has to work on. It seems like IE architectural strategy that IE team inherited is stepping on their own toe.
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Sorry guys. Memory leaks we refer to is about the Javascript Object. Javascript and DOM are part of AJAX.
Watch this video to understand and how to detect memory leaks. It also shows you the tool you can accurately measure the private memory, not virtual memory. The site use a AJAX tab that is commonly used in web 2.0 on the test.
http://www.barelyfitz.com/screencast/javascript/memory-leak/
Douglas Crockford http://www.crockford.com/javascript/memory/leak.html
explains IE’s own memory manager get confused and IE DOM is not managed by JScript.
Microsoft has documented the memory leak issues in many places including http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;830555. It mentions “This memory leak occurs because DOM objects are non-JScript objects”. And it states “This memory leak will end when the browser opens a new Web page or when the browser window is closed.”
Who do I trust more? I trust Douglas Crockford’s expertise and his extensive knowledge in browser. As long as IE is staying with their DOM strategy, web 2.0 developers will have to spend more time debugging IE7 and write more codes to handle memory leaks.
Firefox and Opera’s DOM strategy is on right track.
Now which headache is bigger? Hacking IE CSS on IE6 OR debugging memory leaks on IE7
Jeopardy question – music please…
CSS is usually handle by designer or interface engineer. Usually it is a one-person job. It is visual hack.
Almost all of the web 2.0 developers must handle AJAX. It is going to add burdens to the entire developer team. It is not visual fix. You have to use tool to audit the memory leaks. It is more time consuming to handle the memory leaks.
This bring up another issue. What you are experiencing on the memory overload on multiple tabs is something that IE has to work on. It seems like IE architectural strategy that IE team inherited is stepping on their own toe.
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Firefox 2 is hands down a better browser than IE 7. I don’t even know why Microsoft still makes IE – I want it off my computer.
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Firefox 2 is hands down a better browser than IE 7. I don’t even know why Microsoft still makes IE – I want it off my computer.
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I just recently switched to Firefox, simply because I want apps on my computer that I can build up myself. I still find IE7 pressuring me to use new functions, I don’t need all those “user-friendly” boogiewoogie! I only want the things I use. So the extensions in FF are still the best option for me.
Apps nowadays get packed with stuff I don’t want (think mobile phone with so many functions you hardly use).
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I just recently switched to Firefox, simply because I want apps on my computer that I can build up myself. I still find IE7 pressuring me to use new functions, I don’t need all those “user-friendly” boogiewoogie! I only want the things I use. So the extensions in FF are still the best option for me.
Apps nowadays get packed with stuff I don’t want (think mobile phone with so many functions you hardly use).
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@Dillon , Mossman
Re: typing a name in the address bar and getting a relevant result (bill gates microsoft profile or george clooney’s imdb page)
This is the result of the “I’m feeling lucky” option of google’s search.
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@Dillon , Mossman
Re: typing a name in the address bar and getting a relevant result (bill gates microsoft profile or george clooney’s imdb page)
This is the result of the “I’m feeling lucky” option of google’s search.
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I am sorry people, What the hell are you all on. If you want a browser that uses very little RAM try Mosaic. I think I still have a copy on one of my old Windows 3.1 machines if anybody wants a copy.
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I am sorry people, What the hell are you all on. If you want a browser that uses very little RAM try Mosaic. I think I still have a copy on one of my old Windows 3.1 machines if anybody wants a copy.
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both are still memory hogs…i would use konqueror or galieon, but neither have flash support as far as i know!!
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both are still memory hogs…i would use konqueror or galieon, but neither have flash support as far as i know!!
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I’m not using FF 2.0 (I’m using 3.0a, Minefield, so the memory situation is slightly improved when compared to 2.0), but I find that FF tends to be faster than IE7 (although, granted, I’m still using RC1 – do I even apply to this situation anymore?). But IE7 stalls. A lot. It also freezes. A lot. Could just be my system, but it just dies. A lot.
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I’m not using FF 2.0 (I’m using 3.0a, Minefield, so the memory situation is slightly improved when compared to 2.0), but I find that FF tends to be faster than IE7 (although, granted, I’m still using RC1 – do I even apply to this situation anymore?). But IE7 stalls. A lot. It also freezes. A lot. Could just be my system, but it just dies. A lot.
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Try
Start -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Internet Explorer (no add-ons)
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Try
Start -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Internet Explorer (no add-ons)
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I have been using FF since a long time and then I checked out IE7 due to fr8 amount of hype that it had created.
I am sorry to say that I was utterly dissapointed by IE7. It has greater tendency to crash as compared to FF 2. Memory consumption of IE7 is much higher than FF. I usually open around 25 tabs at a time and IE7 becomes sluggish in this case as compared to FF. On top of that, it cannot open many sites properly such as gmail etc.
Now Microsoft has admittedd this fact and have provided a tool “User Agent String Utility” for people through which they can use IE6 engine to open a site in IE7.
Apart from this, I was amazed that there was no “Check Updates” link in IE7. You have to use Windows Update for it. They should have provided this link in the Help section of IE7 itself. Moreover, they have not given much tweaking tools to the users. The settings are almost same as IE6 and the new features such as Tabbed Browsing should have options to personalise.
All in all, Microsoft has reitrated the fact that they ship old wine in new bottles. So it would be insane on the part of users to expect something new from Microsoft.
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I have been using FF since a long time and then I checked out IE7 due to fr8 amount of hype that it had created.
I am sorry to say that I was utterly dissapointed by IE7. It has greater tendency to crash as compared to FF 2. Memory consumption of IE7 is much higher than FF. I usually open around 25 tabs at a time and IE7 becomes sluggish in this case as compared to FF. On top of that, it cannot open many sites properly such as gmail etc.
Now Microsoft has admittedd this fact and have provided a tool “User Agent String Utility” for people through which they can use IE6 engine to open a site in IE7.
Apart from this, I was amazed that there was no “Check Updates” link in IE7. You have to use Windows Update for it. They should have provided this link in the Help section of IE7 itself. Moreover, they have not given much tweaking tools to the users. The settings are almost same as IE6 and the new features such as Tabbed Browsing should have options to personalise.
All in all, Microsoft has reitrated the fact that they ship old wine in new bottles. So it would be insane on the part of users to expect something new from Microsoft.
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Cool Developer says:
“All in all, Microsoft has reitrated the fact that they ship old wine in new bottles. So it would be insane on the part of users to expect something new from Microsoft.”
This is not correct. Have you looked at Vista, IE7, Office 12? They have tons of new code in it. Also, Software devlopement does not mean that you release a new OS, or a tool and you write it from scratch. Only insane people will do that. There are tons of things new from MSFT. Look at Xbox 360, Zune (coming up), Windows Live. You cannot make a cmpany this big by selling repetitive and bad software.
IE7 release never claimed that MSFT has written the browser from scratch. Yes, IE7 came a bit late in the game but I believe realising mistake and learning from it is a much bigger thing. There are tons of improvement done in IE7. This is not only limited to tabbed browsing, phishing filter and RSS feed. There is a lot of improvement in printing, choosing multiple search provider and a cool new look. Not to forget number of bug fixes, tons of improvement in javascript engine and all. And pretty of smaller stuff like ‘Delteing the entire cache in one go’, ‘Having a X in the tab’, ‘Hiding the menu bar’, a better favorite organizer, capability to Import/Export fav/settings in a better way, Quick tabs. All this has involved lot of effort.
I have been using IE6 throughout my life and I simply loved IE7. If a page displays a second late here and there I really don’t care. Plus, I open 5-6 tabs at the most. I have a laptop at home which is having XP Home and 256 MB RAM and I am pretty happy with IE7.
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Cool Developer says:
“All in all, Microsoft has reitrated the fact that they ship old wine in new bottles. So it would be insane on the part of users to expect something new from Microsoft.”
This is not correct. Have you looked at Vista, IE7, Office 12? They have tons of new code in it. Also, Software devlopement does not mean that you release a new OS, or a tool and you write it from scratch. Only insane people will do that. There are tons of things new from MSFT. Look at Xbox 360, Zune (coming up), Windows Live. You cannot make a cmpany this big by selling repetitive and bad software.
IE7 release never claimed that MSFT has written the browser from scratch. Yes, IE7 came a bit late in the game but I believe realising mistake and learning from it is a much bigger thing. There are tons of improvement done in IE7. This is not only limited to tabbed browsing, phishing filter and RSS feed. There is a lot of improvement in printing, choosing multiple search provider and a cool new look. Not to forget number of bug fixes, tons of improvement in javascript engine and all. And pretty of smaller stuff like ‘Delteing the entire cache in one go’, ‘Having a X in the tab’, ‘Hiding the menu bar’, a better favorite organizer, capability to Import/Export fav/settings in a better way, Quick tabs. All this has involved lot of effort.
I have been using IE6 throughout my life and I simply loved IE7. If a page displays a second late here and there I really don’t care. Plus, I open 5-6 tabs at the most. I have a laptop at home which is having XP Home and 256 MB RAM and I am pretty happy with IE7.
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A lot of dumb asses here that shouldn’t even attempt to test. Yes, IE7 is must different on vista than XP. The guy that claims to be a web developer and hates IE. lol, makes me laugh. Ok, here’s one thing that sucks about FF. If you highlight an area on a webpage and say view specific source, it doesn’t give you the exact source, it reorders it. Ex: it will move parameters around, add quotes, etc. How is this helpful? it’s retarded! As a “real” web dev., I want the “real” source! Hahaha.. catch the jab there? at the wannabe web dev’s that work on their buddies site and hate one browser or the other cause they don’t know $hit. No real web dev. hates any browser. They all have their good and bad points. Just code and shut up. I’m anti MS, but you have to hand it to them. They don’t make a browser for 6 years. Release one and it’s just as good as the competition. And FF only managed to get a max of 10% of the market at best in that time. Pretty sad. MS basically let them. IE is integrated with the OS, FF is not. It’s hard to compare the 2.
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A lot of dumb asses here that shouldn’t even attempt to test. Yes, IE7 is must different on vista than XP. The guy that claims to be a web developer and hates IE. lol, makes me laugh. Ok, here’s one thing that sucks about FF. If you highlight an area on a webpage and say view specific source, it doesn’t give you the exact source, it reorders it. Ex: it will move parameters around, add quotes, etc. How is this helpful? it’s retarded! As a “real” web dev., I want the “real” source! Hahaha.. catch the jab there? at the wannabe web dev’s that work on their buddies site and hate one browser or the other cause they don’t know $hit. No real web dev. hates any browser. They all have their good and bad points. Just code and shut up. I’m anti MS, but you have to hand it to them. They don’t make a browser for 6 years. Release one and it’s just as good as the competition. And FF only managed to get a max of 10% of the market at best in that time. Pretty sad. MS basically let them. IE is integrated with the OS, FF is not. It’s hard to compare the 2.
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The whole comment above from “DJb” has got to be the stupidest thing I’ve read in a long time. Thanks for the laugh, moron!
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The whole comment above from “DJb” has got to be the stupidest thing I’ve read in a long time. Thanks for the laugh, moron!
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Good test, helpful to chose right browser, but i like and often use Ff.
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Good test, helpful to chose right browser, but i like and often use Ff.
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Yeah I found that FireFox 2 is way faassterr than IE7. The fire in FireFox rages furiously!
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Yeah I found that FireFox 2 is way faassterr than IE7. The fire in FireFox rages furiously!
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I have found that upgrading to IE7 was a mistake I made this year.
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I have found that upgrading to IE7 was a mistake I made this year.
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On my toshiba m200 tablet w/ vista keeping memory usage down is a must.
A> Ie7 used an average of 50-70 mb’s ram with under 10 tabs open. Firefox would use over 100 mb’s ram with the same amount of windows open, and if they were left open for several hours (which is ALWAYS the case) then the memory would climb to 200-300 mb. Closing all but a few tabs would no cause firefox to release the memory, only periodically restarting the program could start at 100 again.
B> So i switched to ie7, but when 10 tabs are open, scrolling is horrifically slow, especially on long pages. Ie7 can’t seem to be able to handle more than 10 tabs without slowing to a crawl.
Conclusion> buy more ram. Memory usage on firefox sucks, but the speed blows away ie7.
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On my toshiba m200 tablet w/ vista keeping memory usage down is a must.
A> Ie7 used an average of 50-70 mb’s ram with under 10 tabs open. Firefox would use over 100 mb’s ram with the same amount of windows open, and if they were left open for several hours (which is ALWAYS the case) then the memory would climb to 200-300 mb. Closing all but a few tabs would no cause firefox to release the memory, only periodically restarting the program could start at 100 again.
B> So i switched to ie7, but when 10 tabs are open, scrolling is horrifically slow, especially on long pages. Ie7 can’t seem to be able to handle more than 10 tabs without slowing to a crawl.
Conclusion> buy more ram. Memory usage on firefox sucks, but the speed blows away ie7.
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FF 1.5 is SO much faster then FF 2 and IE, so personally I stick with it on my computer.
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FF 1.5 is SO much faster then FF 2 and IE, so personally I stick with it on my computer.
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I am getting sick of IE7. My browser closes for no apparent reason. I am not the only person having this problem either. I have switched to FF 1.5. I haven’t downloaded FF 2 because I heard many plugins do not work properly. IE 7 has gone in a new direction than previous versions. It may look the same, but they have drastically changed the way it works, which means new bugs as well. Unfortunately, MS has a bad habit of releasing software before it is ready. In response to question above, the reason why FF has such a small market share is because it doesn’t ship with Windows, not because there is anything wrong with it. Most people don’t even know how to download a different browser.
I agree that IE and FF are not concerned with memory consumption. In short, they should be. Before IE’s tabbed environment I opened up several windows (with alt-tab, I really didn’t have a problem with this). I didn’t use up half as much memory as I do now. Why does a tabbed environment on IE7 make it run so much worst than IE6. The solution of “just add more memory” just sucks. Why should I upgrade (or buy a new computer in some cases) just to be able to do what I did last year? My computer shouldn’t slow down just because I have 7 or 8 webpages open. What’s the problem? I’m sick of companies releasing code as quickly as possible and leaving it to hardware upgrades to make it usable. It’s like a car manufacturer blaming gasoline for not giving it better mileage. BUILD A BETTER ENGINE!!!
By the way moron (aka DJB), partial source in IE doesn’t give exact HTML either.
For people who want to turn this into an MS versus open-source debate, do it elsewhere please. I work
in computers. I love MS because it’s easy and it makes me money. I love Linux because it’s open and it makes me money. π
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I am getting sick of IE7. My browser closes for no apparent reason. I am not the only person having this problem either. I have switched to FF 1.5. I haven’t downloaded FF 2 because I heard many plugins do not work properly. IE 7 has gone in a new direction than previous versions. It may look the same, but they have drastically changed the way it works, which means new bugs as well. Unfortunately, MS has a bad habit of releasing software before it is ready. In response to question above, the reason why FF has such a small market share is because it doesn’t ship with Windows, not because there is anything wrong with it. Most people don’t even know how to download a different browser.
I agree that IE and FF are not concerned with memory consumption. In short, they should be. Before IE’s tabbed environment I opened up several windows (with alt-tab, I really didn’t have a problem with this). I didn’t use up half as much memory as I do now. Why does a tabbed environment on IE7 make it run so much worst than IE6. The solution of “just add more memory” just sucks. Why should I upgrade (or buy a new computer in some cases) just to be able to do what I did last year? My computer shouldn’t slow down just because I have 7 or 8 webpages open. What’s the problem? I’m sick of companies releasing code as quickly as possible and leaving it to hardware upgrades to make it usable. It’s like a car manufacturer blaming gasoline for not giving it better mileage. BUILD A BETTER ENGINE!!!
By the way moron (aka DJB), partial source in IE doesn’t give exact HTML either.
For people who want to turn this into an MS versus open-source debate, do it elsewhere please. I work
in computers. I love MS because it’s easy and it makes me money. I love Linux because it’s open and it makes me money. π
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Everyone should try Opera IMHO.
I think it is even better than firefox when dealing with dozens of tabs! Responsive instantly! Firefox is good as well, but i usually end up overloading it with plugins to do my job.
IE drains all my system’s resources and i cannot open a window after some hours.even when i close many tabs, ie still holds 150MB+
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Everyone should try Opera IMHO.
I think it is even better than firefox when dealing with dozens of tabs! Responsive instantly! Firefox is good as well, but i usually end up overloading it with plugins to do my job.
IE drains all my system’s resources and i cannot open a window after some hours.even when i close many tabs, ie still holds 150MB+
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We have all been fooled again by Redmond. IE 7s memory usage is by far greater than that of FireFoxs. I know what your thinking you check out both the program names under taskmanager and firefox is showing to be using more memory right… Well thats where we have been fooled IE 7 mask some of its memory usage under svhost.exe. Firefox doesn’t pay attention to the commit charge and load them both see what happens… Load Firefox first IE 7 doesn’t clear the memory in svhost.exe on exit.
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We have all been fooled again by Redmond. IE 7s memory usage is by far greater than that of FireFoxs. I know what your thinking you check out both the program names under taskmanager and firefox is showing to be using more memory right… Well thats where we have been fooled IE 7 mask some of its memory usage under svhost.exe. Firefox doesn’t pay attention to the commit charge and load them both see what happens… Load Firefox first IE 7 doesn’t clear the memory in svhost.exe on exit.
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I have used IE7 and FF2 in Vista. FF2 consume more memory than IE7 (may be because of plug in). However, FF2 is faster than IE7 and has more features than IE7 after the plug in. At first I consider how much memory they use. I don’t care about this anymore when the one which consume more memory actually work faster. Even they are pretty much the same sometimes FF2 still has more features that I cannot find in IE7.
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I have used IE7 and FF2 in Vista. FF2 consume more memory than IE7 (may be because of plug in). However, FF2 is faster than IE7 and has more features than IE7 after the plug in. At first I consider how much memory they use. I don’t care about this anymore when the one which consume more memory actually work faster. Even they are pretty much the same sometimes FF2 still has more features that I cannot find in IE7.
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Not sure about IE7 but IE6 seems to suck far more memory than the ‘Fox on what I thought would be an IE-friendly site (live.com) I blogged to this effect (http://turangal.blogspot.com/) and took the liberty to link with your blog. After I did so, I realised IE will suck a lot less when one cuts of what they call “binary behaviours” (most people use these for transparency [DXTrans:alpha] the ‘Fox supports this natively through Opacity). Is your experience any better if you disable CraptiveX’s and Binary Behaviours?
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Not sure about IE7 but IE6 seems to suck far more memory than the ‘Fox on what I thought would be an IE-friendly site (live.com) I blogged to this effect (http://turangal.blogspot.com/) and took the liberty to link with your blog. After I did so, I realised IE will suck a lot less when one cuts of what they call “binary behaviours” (most people use these for transparency [DXTrans:alpha] the ‘Fox supports this natively through Opacity). Is your experience any better if you disable CraptiveX’s and Binary Behaviours?
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I am now using Fire Fox and it is good and has good options too.
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I am now using Fire Fox and it is good and has good options too.
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Try it with Vista on 4gb of ram.
At the moment I’m looking at IE7 in taskmanager. The figure is 975,420K. That’s a Gb folks.
I have a total of 5 tabs open. None of them are web 2.0 stuff particularly. Just forums oh and stumbleupon.
I’ll try firefox later on, though I recall it being about 200mb.
Any cure?
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Try it with Vista on 4gb of ram.
At the moment I’m looking at IE7 in taskmanager. The figure is 975,420K. That’s a Gb folks.
I have a total of 5 tabs open. None of them are web 2.0 stuff particularly. Just forums oh and stumbleupon.
I’ll try firefox later on, though I recall it being about 200mb.
Any cure?
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