Ask Slashdot: Life After Firefox 3.6.x? 807
Mooga writes "I am a hard-core user of Firefox 3.6.x who has chosen to stick with the older, yet supported version of Firefox for many years now. However, 3.6.x will soon hit end-of-life, making my life, and the lives of similar users, much more complicated. 3.6.x has been known for generally being more stable and using less RAM than the modern Firefox 10 and even Chrome. The older version of Firefox is already having issues rendering modern websites. What are others who have been holding onto 3.6.x planning on doing?"
My friend, we have just the thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Get over it already (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not an issue (Score:4, Interesting)
The advantages to sticking with an older version are, you already know it works, and your add-ons work with it. You also know that the good gentleman at Firefox haven't decided to rearrange the interface again for no apparent reason. Finally, of course, the new versions don't actually seem to have any interesting new features.
I updated from 3.5 to the latest version, recently, because of some problem where the browser would just stall out for 3-4 seconds, becoming completely unresponsive. The update does seem to have fixed that problem. Otherwise, I haven't really noticed any significant difference, which is really just fine with me.
Pet peeve - luddite != against technology (Score:1, Interesting)
It's a common misconception that the luddites were against modern technology - in fact, their campaign was about job protection.
They didn't ruin all of the texture factories - just ones where people were losing jobs as a protest against the loss of jobs - not against the (more) modern technology.
Re:As users, we're getting fucked over. That's why (Score:5, Interesting)
here's what you were really asking through your raging: Why did Firefox drastically increase build numbers for only minor releases?
great question AC, here's the answer. Public opinion held consensus that the higher the build number, the more advanced the browser. As IE was in build 9, Google chrome was in version 10, and Opera was in version 11 when Firefox version 4.0 came out, Mozilla decided to abandon their convention for build numbers and play catch-up. Nothing more than public opinion.
I think this was a smart decision.
Re:Chrome (Score:4, Interesting)
I hate Chrome, but it has it's uses. It's fast too. But totally sucks for configuring stuff, navigating my hundreds of bookmarks, importing said bookmarks in a sane way, and very anti-intuitive. Give me back a fucking menu, or keyboard shortcuts. God what an awful interface.
Other than that it's a wonderful browser.
Give me back my clutter.
Re:As users, we're getting fucked over. That's why (Score:2, Interesting)
Really? I seem to recall a FireFox ad placed in the New York Times. Once they start advertising, the whole 'you get what you pay for' argument is useless.
Re:Why the anxiety? (Score:2, Interesting)
I am back with XMarks and Firefox sync will never again come back.
Re:Why the anxiety? (Score:3, Interesting)
"A PowerPC iMac I have is more than adequate for light office use,"
Huh? you have a wierd idea of it's capabilities. I edit Full HD video on one weekly. a PPC machine has a lot of horsepower in it to do heavy lifting.
in fact, the PPC Quad core 2.5ghz box here is FASTER at rendering HD video than the new Quad Core i7 box they bought. I'd say old PPC machines still kick the arse of the new stuff.
Re:As users, we're getting fucked over. That's why (Score:5, Interesting)
So? Does that mean they owe him a good product or anything?
Company offers free product, of course in the hopes of attracting people.
People shrug and move on.
End of story.
Some people of course feel like they have a right to bitch and moan instead of simply moving on to greener pastures or actually getting involved in producing a product that they like (which in the case of Mozilla is an actual option). That doesn't mean these people aren't a pain in the rear.
Re:Why the anxiety? (Score:5, Interesting)
The answer is Soulskill. Have you seen the last dozen or so stories on the front page? Ridiculous.
Re:Why the anxiety? (Score:2, Interesting)
There is a good article about why upgrading a webbrowser is pointless [in-other-news.com].
There has not been a new web-technology that I really need for the last 5 years, possibly longer. Please, fix the bugs first, don't break the extension-API and let the extension-programmers create all the bells and whistles. There is no reason to break compatibility more often than - say - every 5 years or maybe even longer.
Re:Why the anxiety? (Score:5, Interesting)
10 might take more disk space. But it is far supieror in memory usage.
I keep the browser open for weeks with multiple tabs open and i've quite often seen it hit 1GB+ of memory use, but around version 8-9 that it went down. while it's still one of the more memory hungry it's memory usage doesn't seem to be stacking up as much.
The only reason that I can see for holding back from the latest version would be, because of potential compatibility with existing sites. But this is mainly for corporates with intranet sites which might still have legacy html. I've personally not run into any such issues. For personal use I see no reason not to update to the latest version. In my experiance while in some version there have been regressions, it's generally been faster and more memory efficient.
I think mozilla messed royally up with this fast update cycle. Had they slowed it down just a tad bit and not publically said anything about a fast updating and version numbers, most people would just update to the latest version without so much anxiety.
Re:Not an issue (Score:5, Interesting)
> There is no excuse for a web browser process to hit the GB mark, none.
So if all the images that are open in your web browsers all add up to 2 GB of uncompressed pixel data then the browser still shouldn't use hit the GB mark? I want my computer to be magical too.