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| When the Mozilla FireFox project started to take shape, it was so promising. An open source, cross platform browser that emphasized security and standards performance. How could such a thing be bad? Well, after being an exclusive FireFox user for some time, I've finally decided to part ways with the upstart browser. The reasons are numerous, some of which I've decided to outline here. |
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| • Performance/Memory: It’s no secret; FireFox uses more memory than the average elephant has to offer. The fanboys and even developers will come up with various excuses for the massive memory usage: everything from “it’s a feature!” to “who cares, my system has 10tb of ram!.” Shoddy programming is shoddy programming people. If the rest of the browsers on earth can open three web pages in less than 75 megs of ram, FireFox should be able to as well. |
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| • The Developers: I’ve dabbled in several open source projects around the web, and I know a fair share of programming. I’m no Linus Torvalds, but I know my way around a source file. And I can say, without hesitation, that I find the FireFox developers somewhere between annoying and downright offensive. From my experience on the bugzilla, they are a very elitist, holier-than-thou group. Ideas deemed unworthy are often outright insulted, and they’re quite rude to people who are merely offering ideas, or even assistance. If you’re not in their circle, you’re not worthy of their time. I think the lack of patches being submitted by 3rd parties speaks for itself. If you want to see a successful group of OSS developers, go browse the Linux kernel mailing lists. That lot knows how to work with people to make progress. |
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| • Bug/request handling: In addition to the above, they show no decent review process for bugs and feature requests. All it takes is one dev with a hangover to read your request and WONTFIX it into the abyss. I’ve offered several requests, a few of which received support from several other users via votes and posts. The process is always the same: the request stagnates for a year or two, after which a WONTFIX is fired like a sniper shot with no discussion, and usually no more than a sentence of explanation. You could argue that maybe my ideas just were bad from the go, but I’ll say this: at least a couple were for common features in most other web browsers available today. |
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| • Fanboys: This one’s plain and simple: FireFox fanboys definitely suck. You won’t hear me promote any alternative browser here, because quite simply each has its merits and problems, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a biased zealot. Fanboys are annoying no matter what they promote, however FireFox has managed to spawn one of the more rabid followings of today’s age. These are the people who blindly attack other browsers, even if they’ve never used them, and will never admit to FireFox having a single flaw. So what if it’s using a gig of ram? That’s why systems today can have multiple gigs installed! There are some times in life where people just need to keep their opinions to themselves; two that come to mind: religion and web browsers. |
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| • Hypocrisy: Since the beginning, the FireFox team has made a big deal out of emphasizing that the actual FireFox web browser will be a minimal core, and that all features should be extensions. Well no sooner do they gain some market share and recognition than they throw their own rules out the window and start adding in “features” that have nothing to do with the core browsing experience. One perfect example: a new feature in the upcoming 2.0 release is a spellchecker for web forms. Since when is spellchecking a core requirement of anything beyond a word processor? This feature screams “extension,” and I know that personally, I don’t need any of these “features” causing FireFox to use even more memory than it does already. But hey, it still makes a good excuse to WONTFIX other peoples suggestions, doesn’t it? |
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| • Extensions: Extensions are a good thing, in theory. A system that allows anyone to extend functionality of the core sounds very promising. The problem is extensions are more often than not written by people in their spare time with mixed levels of programming experience and very limited quality control. The result is often buggy extensions that can produce a host of problems during the browsing experience: everything from memory leaks, to broken web pages, and browser crashes. The popular adblock series was infamous for big memory leaks. It took me a long time to figure out that my tabmix extension was causing certain javascripts to unexplainably stop working (which to date has not been addressed). Add in the fact that each minor version upgrade seems to break all your extensions, and the whole thing is suddenly looking much less attractive. Some browsers out there offer many of the features that people need to use tens of extensions to duplicate, and they do it with equal or less memory. |
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| • Focus: The direction of the development is deplorable. It’s a fairly easy task to find valid bugs in the bugzilla dating back several years! And yet new releases are focusing on adding new features! It’s not a complicated concept guys: fix the code you already wrote before writing more new code. |
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| • Compatibility: A low blow? Maybe, but the list wouldn’t be complete without it. Mozilla browsers seem to be infamously strict with their code compliance, and there are still plenty of corporate intranets that won’t work with it. Of course, you can always place the blame for this gripe on the web developers, but the bottom line is, when choosing a web browser, this one doesn’t always “just work.” Oh, and how’s that Acid2 test working for you? |
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