Re: Firefox 3 goes on a diet, eats less memory than IE and Opera

The upcoming Fire Fox version 3 is looking to be an outstanding browser; it uses less memory than IE, Opera or FF 2.0.0.12. :sunglasses:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080317-firefox-3-goes-on-a-diet-eats-less-memory-than-ie-and-opera.html

Seems really ripping fast, I just extracted the source code for FF 3.0b4 from mozilla.com.

[original attachment deleted after 2 years]

Is it stable now?  How many more betas before it’s ready?

Seems stable enough.  It is now at beta 4, I’m not sure how  many more betas before the final release:-)

Uses less memory O__O nice nice

Ah you had all my hopes up :wink:

The rendering still isn’t as nice as Safari / webkit’s.  It still doesn’t do sub-pixel rendering properly.

On top of that, they’ve added this crazy GUI.

[original attachment deleted after 2 years]

Take a look at this line.  Which is rendering better, the top or bottom?  Click for the large version.

This will only look right on an LCD, I think:

[original attachment deleted after 2 years]

The rendering for fonts in FF 3b4 isn’t as good for me on my Slackware box as FF 2.0.0.12.  Hopefully they’ll clean that up.

Firefox has never rendered fonts all that well, at least compared to Opera.  That’s why i always set it to use one font of all web pages.

I tried Opera, the only reason I didnt stick with it is because everytime it’s loads it asks if you want to start a new session or continue from where you left off last time.
This is a great feature for when you want to continue after a system crash, but I just hate how it asks every single time. Is there anyway to disable this? I couldnt find it in options.

Plus Opera is just plain ugly. I felt like I was surfing on IE5.

I can’t wait for FF3, I miss the speediness of phoenix or firebird, whatever the hell it was called before.

You can set Opera to start at a home page of your choosing.

Been using the Beta for a week, I like it.
Asides from no ‘home page button’ (which I want!), it seems quicker, hasn’t crashed once.

Are you guys talking about on a Mac or Linux, I haven’t noticed anything odd about fonts at all on my XP laptop.

The fonts seem a bit crappy on my Slackware box for FF 3b4.  FF 2.0.0.12 seems to render fonts better for me on Slackware 12.  I haven’t tried FF 3b4 on Debian or OS X (I’m running FF 2.0.0.12 on those units).

Fonts are fine in Firefox 2.0.0.12 for I, and omgosh I’m on Win XP Home

Maybe you guys have some unfortunate font issues?

it’s possible that you’re missing a certain font, and that Firefox is using a random font to compensate?

mmm

I can’t wait until 3.0 comes out!

Can you post a screenshot?

It’s not that the fonts aren’t there.  It’s that Firefox doesn’t handle sub-pixel rendering properly.  If you don’t see a difference in the example above, then don’t worry about it :wink:

Hmmmmmm…some screenshots.  I think FF 2.0.0.12 is just slightly better for me on Slackware 12, but, not by much.
compare1.jpg is FF3b4 and compare2.jpg is FF 2.0.0.12.

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did you want me to post a SS of just what my FF window looks like?

If you google around, you’ll see what I’m talking about.  Take a look at this blogger’s post, he has screenshots and gives some opinion:

brokenkode.com/archives/font-rendering/

The thing is, most people are ok with “good enough.”  I mean we all used 9-pin dot-matrix printers in the past, but once you’ve used a 600- or 1200-DPI laser printer, you’re just not going back to dot-matrix.

Well, the same thing happens with font rendering.  Once you’ve seen text on a screen that faithfully reproduces a font the way the designer wanted, then you can’t go back to smooshed fonts and stuff like that.  Good enough all of a sudden isn’t good enough.

Windows Cleartype is pretty good, actually.  But it still makes sub-pixel decisions based on its algorithm, not on what the font designer intended.  So sometimes the descender on the ‘g’ doesn’t look right, or whatever. 

But yeah, if you don’t really care about fonts and stuff like that, then “good enough” is good enough for you :wink:

You can see the difference without even having to download the attachments.
Wierd.
I noticed no difference at all between 3beta4 and 2.0.12 on the XP laptop.

No, I guess I was just hoping that Firefox would take some of the work the other open-source browser project has done in the area of font rendering and incorporate it into FF3. 

They’ve just kept the same renderer as FF2. 

Meanwhile khtml has leapfrogged everybody and is doing awesome shit with CSS3 and it’s had the proper font-rendering stuff in there for a long time. 

css3.info/khtml-356-is-the-m … nt-of-all/

There’s no reason that Firefox shouldn’t be out in front.