[extropy-chat] Firefox 2 [was: The End of Science]

[Robert Bradbury]

On 10/26/06, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:

> PS
> Isn't it nice the way the new Firefox 2 does spellcheck as you type
> into web forms, like gmail?
> At least if you type nonsense you've got to use valid dictionary
> words.  :)


Since *you* brought it up, I'll simply copy my comments to Digg regarding
people finding bugs in Firefox 2.


"Firefox 2.0 is just like Firefox 1.5.0.4-7 -- NOT READY FOR PRODUCTION USE!
I managed to produce 3 core dumps and file 3 Talkback incidents in the first
half hour of using it. All you have to do (under Linux) is use "ulimit -Sv
###000" to limit the amount of virtual memory to ### MB. Depending upon how
many extensions you have installed it generally crashes when its memory
usage hits between 100 and 120 MB of memory. This will crash it quickly. You
can set your limit to 1.3 GB and push it up into that range of memory
consumption over several days of normal use (50-100 windows, 300-700 tabs)
and it will dump at that level as well (of course taking 30+ minutes to
restore its state when you restart it -- grrrrr...).

Production level software fails gracefully when it hits system limits (close
a tab, close a window, print an error, etc. -- it doesn't abort the program
completely)! Firefox (at least 1.5.0.7) doesn't handle its heap memory
properly over days of use to avoid memory fragmentation (I can push it up to
1.2 GB, exit it and restart all of the same windows & tabs and have it
consuming 800MB). Until the memory limit core dump and excessive memory
usage problems are fixed it should be presented as a "toy" browser."

So long as they continue to add things (like spelling checkers) which are
bells and whistles without addressing fundamental issues like being a robust
and reliable piece of software I will not be singing its praises.

Robert
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20061027/2320d846/attachment.html>