Mozilla Firefox 3 still as slow and sluggy as before!
Mozilla Firefox 3 has been officially launched today. I use Firefox 2 as my main browser and due to the nature of my work I normally have many windows open, with multiple tabs grouped together within those windows. Firefox 2 with its numerous memory holes usually slowed down to a grinding halt after an hour or so of work, with CPU usage hovering between 60% to over 100% sometimes.
With the knowledge that Firefox 3 was approaching launch, it was getting just too annoying to bear with so I stopped using Firefox 2 for awhile and switched to Safari as my web browser. I was really quite amazed at the speed at which webpages appeared. I don’t think Safari downloaded things any much faster but it is probably more of the way it renders things.
Firefox 3 comes with a new default theme
Anyway today Firefox 3 is out, and although the main site’s access is quite intermittent, I grabbed a copy from Facebook’s Mozilla mirror - you can grab yours there too just by following the link.
I installed Firefox 3 and prepared for it to just take over the 2.0 browser’s job, with the same windows and tabs as the most recent session. I thought this would provide me with a fair comparison on browser speed in the conditions that I work in.
Firefox 3 in action, hogging all the CPU!
I am sad to say that it’s just still the same… really slow and sluggy response! The spinning beach ball icon very frequently pops up and stays there for minutes on and on, and opening the Preferences panel took a good few minutes thanks to the delayed response.
I am only sticking to Firefox because I like the way it renders web pages as well as its keyboard shortcuts that I am very familiar with since I switched to a Mac from Windows, but I think its time to learn how to be comfortable with Safari.
June 18th, 2008 at 4:02 am
I am using Firefox 3 right now. While I’m typing, your page is still technically loading. Why? Hmm…
June 18th, 2008 at 4:51 am
As for slow page loading, you might want to google on how to speed up firefox. Although the instructions and steps given are based on FF2, you can still apply them in FF3 in the about:config page.
There’s some tips on how to fix firefox memory leakage problem as well, but how efficient it is, I have no idea. I don’t see any harm in trying though.
June 18th, 2008 at 6:06 am
It is optimized using Fasterfox already.
June 18th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Same here. I expected great speedups but it seems to be slower than FF2.
Scrolling is especially slow in combination with the fullpage zooming.
June 18th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Unfortunately it is true that firefox 3 final is slower and even worse than 2.0.14. I used two copies of firefox 2.0.14 on two computers, one is XP sp3, one is Vista sp1, both of them have plenty of unused memory. My experiences are sometimes firefox 3 stacked at pages where 2.0.14 works perfectly well. I’m a firefox old user and feel bad about the new version.If as Jason at http://jasonmumbles.com/ said you can speed it up with some tools or addons, the new release should be tuned up before releasing rather than expecting users to do that job.
June 19th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
And the strange thing with my FF3 is that it let my hard drive ‘do things’ at regular intervals. But this is really annoying since every time this happens, my computer almost crashes if I want to do something…:(
But as for the hard drive thing, I really don’t have an idea what it is doing, maybe swapping some data, cleaning some temp files,…
But it should be processed at the background!
Btw, I didn’t have this issue in FF2.
June 20th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
I’ve been reading up online and apparently the disk activity is because of the SQLite being used to manage config files.
July 7th, 2008 at 2:42 am
firefox 3 is very very slow
and the page is hanging
July 9th, 2008 at 1:40 am
Foxfire is very slow, and I am using Safari which was slower in the past. My recent use of Foxfire on my home Mac and my office PC is almost like having dial-up again.
Apparently, MicroSoft and Safari are still having their compatibility problems. MSN Hotmail won’t work on Safari. MicroSoft blames Safari, and Safari blames MicroSoft. Bottom line: I have to use Foxfire to pickup my Hotmail email, but use Safari for everything else because Foxfire is so derned slow. Pain in the arse. What happened to Foxfire?
July 9th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
i feel like the beta versions were faster than the release candidate.
July 19th, 2008 at 6:20 am
Somewhere on FF3 promo it says it works with one’s antiviral to check pages while loading. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it., or maybe FF2 did the same thing. It seems very slow at times, and I’ve download FF2 just in case promotion seems more cost-effective to them than listening.
I’m very suspicious of an ostensibly egalitarian group that seems to listen less, and address not inconsiderable annoyance less, than I.E. and their ilk. I’ll hang on to I.E., though, if it comes to it.
July 19th, 2008 at 6:21 am
I’m using XP, incidentally, though I have a Mac elsewhere.
September 7th, 2008 at 1:14 am
Installed FF3, caught in my foolish belief the upgrade is really an UP-grade, blinded by the trust I put in mozilla until today
This ff is:
- a bit slower to start (ok ok)
- SLOW to load pages
- EVEN SLOWER when it comes to file transfers
I benchmarked this thing and compared it to the other browsers I have on my system.
Even the values I get @ speedtest.net differ a whole LOT hen using firefox 3.
While I can be sure my line downloads at around 1,2 MBytes (not Mbits, lol), since I tested it with other browsers and another proggy, I cn’t get more than 120-150 KB/s with this crap.
You won’t really notice the difference while surfing, but try to load a youtube clip and then spit this firefox right in DA FACE
September 10th, 2008 at 9:56 am
ive tried ff3 twice now and it is like having internet below slow speed.
gone back to ff2.0.0.16 and it is way faster.
could it be plugin’s or something else?
September 13th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I have had the same problem with firefox 3, this is what i did, it may also work for you.
1-Firstly install the latest java. 2-Uninstall firefox, reboot pc. 3-Do a pc registry clean, I did it with Tuneup Utilities, then reboot. 4-Install latest firefox 3,only include the add on u need mine is add-blocker, then reboot again, hopefully its working as good as mine. I think the problem is with one of the add-ons that was causing all the problems but i couldn’t figure out which one. Hope this helps guys
September 22nd, 2008 at 2:26 pm
hi everybody
i think this is best answer to this big problem.
i am using that little fake and Firefox3 working fast and correct.
step by step>>>>>>>>>
start Firefox3 and go to Tools Menu >>> Option >>> (in the new window) chose Advanced >>> Network Tab >>>
(in connection Table) press Setting button >>> (in the new window) chose Manual Proxy Configuration >>>
type in the HTTP Proxy Field: 127.0.0.1 >>> and Port: 0 >>> click OK >>> click OK >>> restart your firefox3
no need to uninstall any Adds-ons , Extension , Plugins . . .
no need to change your security setting , firewall , anti virus . . .
no need to clean your firefox3 cache , history , cookies . . .
no need to restart your windows Xp , Vista
no need to change , uninstall , disable your firewall and anti virus
Just Do It And Enjoy
September 29th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
FF 3.x so slow that it cannot be used.
Switched back to FF 1.5 for those times when I have a site too rotten with Javascript to work with my usual browser, Opera 9.x, which is by far the fastest browser.
Safari is nice but doesn’t load PDF files properly.
Some bank sites–the same folks who have terrible customer service and hidden fees–only work well with IE. I only use IE when forced (like when using a Microsoft service on my XP computer).
September 30th, 2008 at 12:06 am
I am on FF 3.0.2 and it’s UNBEARABLY slow. Should I go back to 2.0, Safari or what?
October 4th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Ummm for my mac ff3 only takes up 2.5 % of cpu usage I went to activity monitor
October 4th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
it only takes up a little bit of cpu for me on my mac with 2.5%cpu usage i checked with the widget and activity monitor