The new version of Mozilla, 1.1, is released for many operating systems. Release notes here. Opinion: Check the screenshot, showing Mozilla’s slow UI (XUL) performance on a dual Celeron @ 533. Before you comment on it, please read the already published comments, because we explain more over there. Update: I added a comment with the image attachment on Mozilla’s BugZilla. There was already a bug entry for this, which suggests more people having problems with this behavior. See? I am not mad… Update2: And here is another bug submitted by someone else, with the same problem, and his shot. His bug is marked as “Verified”. But it is still not fixed.
Mozilla 1.1 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I’ve noticed there are a lot of comments in threads relating to new software and OS’s about system requirements.
Could OSNews do a poll of its users asking simply asking simply Processor type ( X86/PPC/SPARC ), Processor revision ( Standard/MMX/Altivec ) and Installed RAM and RAM type ( SDRAM/RAMBUS/DDR )
I think a snapshot of the machines still in regular service among the users of a techy site like this would be useful to developers, and as a matter of interest generally, in seing how much spare power most people have for Widgets and effects….. ( but this thread isnt the place for it )
I mentioned BeOS since Byte Me indicated that the BeOS community is better at helping sort out bugs. And my posting was in reply to Byte Me as written at the start of it.
Is it me, or is everyone who has this bizarre problem on Windows running WindowsXP instead of Windows2000?
Mr./Ms. Shatai:
FACT: I could give a sh*# about the Mozilla versus Internet Explorer debate. I use Mozilla for the reasons I stated before, not some major altruistic purpose.
FACT: I can’t duplicate this behavior on my measily Inspiron laptop running at a paltry 900MHz w/ 100MHz memory bus and a GeForce2Go graphics card. Is it W2K or the theme? I don’t know. I just know that it is a FACT I can’t duplicate it using the same procedure as Eugenia has.
FACT: You can’t have as many simultaneous downloads going in IE as you can under Mozilla on either OS X or under Windows. I have learned this lesson the hard way. This includes downloading things through the download manager as well as loading up simultaneous web pages.
FACT: There is nothing amazing about either IE or Mozilla, they are just web browsers for god sakes. Both of them work well and both of them have their deficiencies.
FACT: You can’t state your opinion and they claim it to be FACT anymore than anyone else can. It is by its very nature an OPINION.
it doesn’t matter to me if the gui is slow …especially when the browser crashes every single time i try to read comments on this article (or any other article at osnews) … since i am here a lot, i can’t use the browser at all if it is going to crash..
That would be very interesting indeed. I think there is a lot more legacy hardware out there than most people realize. Requiring 1GHz+ machines for software to operate in a reasonable manner is very silly since not everyone can afford or is willing to upgrade their hardware annually.
Personally, the fastest non-server box I have access to is a dual 800MHz P3 which incidentally performs very well. My home comp is a Duron 750MHz and my workstation at work is a 300MHz PII (recently upgraded from 166MHz Pentium).
I’ve found that other resources but CPU cycles are a lot more important when the machines are used for work (programming, office stuff) and not highspeed graphics gaming. I’d take a really fast disk over a really fast CPU any day, same with a truckload of RAM or a good graphics card.
> 1. What is your video card?
3Dfx Voodoo 5 64 MB AGP.
>2. How does Mozilla work in the other themes for you?
The problem happens on ALL themes.
>3. You should go to bugzilla.mozilla.org and post a bug with your screenshots, and total system specs, including video and memory.
I will do so later, thanks.
4. Mozilla is a memory hog. However, I bet you have a lot of memory in your system.
I have 256 MB of SDRAM.
mozilla is very responsive on my system, I have a single processor Athlon 800MHz system here, with 256MB of SDRAM, using Linux. As fast as I could move the damned mouse I was never able to get an effect nowhere near what the screenshot displayed.
Mozilla is as close to other applications as I remember it to be in about any release, still a very useable feeling to it.
note: I am know the value of a cpu cycle, don’t give me that story.
Specs:
Pentium 533
Windows NT 4.0
256MB SDRAM
ATI w/ 16MB RAM
Although I love Mozilla, XUL is indeed slow. I can see a slight delay before menus are redrawn but nothing as bad as Eugina has found.
Judging from those who had this problem – perhaps it is XP specific? Or perhaps XP’s uses more memory and this excaberates the menu redraw problem for Mozilla?
Also, I’m not going to discount Eugina’s problem. But I also can’t discount the fact that many users (including me) seem to be running fine (not blazing fast no).
IMO the whole idea of developing an own cross-platform UI really sucks. Ok, Mozilla can look like NS4 for all OS’ but I’m talking about is the feeling. When I’m working on windows the interface is (more or less) responsive and acts like I ecpect it. But when I run Mozilla on OS X/BeOS it still feels like a (slow) windows-app. I just don’t get all the cool OS-specific stuff. I think the way Opera has chosen is the way to go. There is no reason why you shouldn’t have a cross-platform core but cross-platform UI’s …?…
Daniel Furrer
PS: I’m sorry that I didn’t read all the posts before.
I’ve found that having menu shadows turned on under Windows XP exacerbates the problem for some reason. I’ll probably pull down the source and play with it in a profiling sort of way tonight if I get bored.
Voodoo5 eh, how well supported are 3dFX devices in windows XP, i seem to recall reading about 2d performance issues when the v5s first apeared.
I have a dual AMD MP1600+ with a Matrox G550 on Windows XP. I see the same drawing issues plain as day. I don’t have to move the mouse very quickly to do it either.
Voodoo 5 works FINE. The driver is certified from Microsoft and it even supports overlay and other things. It is PLENTY fast on 2D.
And if it was slow, the Windows native menus should have been slow too. They are not. Only Mozilla’s are.
Judging from those who had this problem – perhaps it is XP specific? Or perhaps XP’s uses more memory and this excaberates the menu redraw problem for Mozilla?
I have read with interest all the, “Mozilla is slow”, posts. I have spent some time today checking Mozilla to verify these complaints; as I have been using it for a long time and haven’t had any complainst performance-wise.
At work I am running Mozilla on a Windows 2000 machine, a Windows XP machine and my desktop, A Debian machine. With the exception of the XP machine, Mozilla works great. On the XP machine, however, Mozilla’s menus suck. However, I’m not concerned with that since the menus on VS.NET, C++Builder, Outlook and Windows XP itself also suck. My experience has been that XP has a major issue with repainting the screen (and people try to say it’s better than OS X – Ha).
Mozilla may not be perfect, no software is, but before I launched a devastating philippic against Mozilla, I would at least try it on some other machines and operating systems. You may just find that Mozilla is not to blame.
THANK YOU dFunct.
Some people are trying to make me think that I am losing my mind. It seems that I am not.
>You may just find that Mozilla is not to blame.
Read my previous comment above. All my native Windows menus ARE FAST. *ONLY* Mozilla’s are not.
Eugenia:Some people are trying to make me think that I am losing my mind. It seems that I am not.
You’re right, some people were hounding you a bit. From the experiences of Camel, who can cross compare a bunch of OS’s side by side, it appears to be an XP problem. Interesting…
Well, not really.
It happens on my Mandrake and Gentoo Linux as well here. Not just XP PRO.
It happens on my Mandrake and Gentoo Linux as well here. Not just XP PRO.
Sorry. I meant on the Windows side, it appears to be an XP problem.
Working on a windows 2000, 1ghz ibm thinkpad. Mozilla’s menus are fast (faster than outlook menu’s for example).
Sorry, but whoever sais that the Mozilla GUI is slow on _every_ PC up to 2 Ghz is plain wrong.
I do happily believe that it’s quite slow on 500 Mhz as many people have reported it but not on my P3-1000. Nope, nada. I know what a bad GUI is and I know what a medium fast GUI is. Mozilla 1.1 is just as snappy as every Gtk and Qt application (well almost). There are absolutely no redraw problems and I really really try to spot them. Don’t tell me my eyes are bad. They aren’t. So if there is a problem, it’s _certainly_ not with every CPU > 1000 Ghz. And this is Linux, which was always slower than the Windows version before (can’t try it now).
I noticed though, that the GUI rendering sometimes suffers when pages are loaded or it’s otherwise stressed. So I’m talking about a freshly loaded Mozilla here (with one page loaded).
i said than i had no prob on my P3@933 (win2OOO) but i got thoses slowness with a K6-333 though (win98).
BTW eugenia, you’re not mad just weird :p
This menu problem exist for real, but I really think it’s related to the hardware/drivers, assuming you have your three OSes on the same machine.
As I wrote before, my computer is only a Celereon 566, with 194 MB SDRAM and i810 for video card, and the UI works fine for me, on Linux Mdk 8.0 and on Win98.
Another problem is that 1.1 crashes more than 1.0, I have already send 8 reports through Talkback.
———————–
http://korbinus.fr.st
I didnt bother to read all of these comments (insane thread!) but I just wanted to point oout that moz 1.1 *IS* indeed a different branch. If your looking for “stable” then moz 1.01 is currently going through release candidates. wait for that one. Your news post is quite flamable and i’m surprised by it.
moz’s aim is not at the end users btw, its at creating the infrastructure for developers to make end user apps (galeon, komodo netscape etc). i’m sure that doesnt make you feel any better …
FACT: You can’t have as many simultaneous downloads going in IE as you can under Mozilla on either OS X or under Windows. I have learned this lesson the hard way. This includes downloading things through the download manager as well as loading up simultaneous web pages.
erm, this is a registry setting in IE dealing with simultaneous connections to the same host. offhand i dont remember where it is located, but a search on google should turn up what you need to change
i cant say that the menu’s feel all that slow, although when i do move accross i can see on occasion one being drawn in over the top of another.
windows xp, matrox g550, 512 megs, p3-1.13
im wondering if the issue is with the video drivers and the exact way that the menus are being rendered to the screen. im running 1.0 (no plans on upgrading yet)
personally i think that the xfree version is more responsive feeling once it loads, but the windows version loads a hell of alot faster.
Athlon 1.3GHz 256Meg DDR Radeon 7500 64M DDR WinXP Mozilla 1.1
No problems here, the menus redraw only a fraction of a second slower than IE6 or Word or Excel. If some people have having problems though I think it should be looked into and fixed, but I dont see it as being quite a severe a problem as people make it out to be.
Sean – probably speed of rendering pages and starting up.
Eugenia – speed of the UI.
So I agree with both of you. I find the UI sluggish too.
No, Mozilla is just fast…. Actually I think the inital startup is slow, but once it is loaded and Quick Launch is ready to go it is fine.
I have no problem with the speed of the UI at all. It is fast both rendering pages and rendering the XUL ui.
My machine is old (PII – 266, 128RAM). I do see this Eugenia screenshot problem and I still use Mozilla as my default browser, even knowing that it’s not an end user product. For several reasons like security, standards compliance, tabbed browsing, cookie manager, popup blocking, google on location bar (type and press up), bannerblind, DOM Inspector, etc, etc…
I know that with the classic theme there are some native widgets for WinXP and GTK, but I dont know how much speed improvment you get using classic theme.
By Zenja (IP: 203.102.221.—) – Posted on 2002-08-27 06:16:12 Eugenia, its a hopeless battle. The ‘speed is OK’ crowd have never experienced BeOS, so they have no perception of what fast really means.
As former editor in chief of BeNews, I tend to disagree with your stereotype.
erm, this is a registry setting in IE dealing with simultaneous connections to the same host. offhand i dont remember where it is located, but a search on google should turn up what you need to change
I’m not talking about the links actually not getting downloaded (ie queued up). I’m talking about the browser loosing responsiveness. The whole systems comes grinding to a halt if you try and load up too many web pages, or leave too many browsers open. Since the problem is mirrored on both OS X and Windows, I’m chalking it up to a design flaw. Unless you can point me to the registry setting under OS X that fixes it…
I finally have Moz 1.1 running
Does anyone else get really bugged that Opera and IE6 both have Shift-click to open a link in a new window but Moz has Control – click?
I swap around browsers based on whats best for the page, MSIE for MSN chat and messageboards, Mozilla for Java chatrooms and Opera for everything else
Different behaviour really peeves me.
FACT: My post isn’t about XP versus Win2K. Sorry to upset you.
FACT: If it makes you feel a little more secure about your Mozilla, you can call my statements opinion; however, like it or not, it ran like crap on the three systems I tested it on.
FACT: I am getting tired of typing this ‘FACT’ crap out
.
Like others here, Mozilla menus display fine on my main W2K 1.2GHz Athlon w 640MB RAM. I do notice a slight difference in speed of display, but not really an annoying one. I couldn’t get a screenshot of the “Eugenia Effect” here.
On my P2 266 (192MB RAM) Laptop at work (running Win98
), I was able to get a shot of the effect, but it took some furious mouse shaking. Interestingly enough, I was able to get an odd screenshot in IE because I still have that sliding menu effect enabled.
I do remeber trying early mozilla builds on my old trusty P200 w 128MB RAM. The Eugenia Effect was definitely noticable and annoying with regular use there. I wonder how a recent build would fare. I’ll have to try, those machines are still in use at my house.
In fact, that is a good point. A P200 machine with adequate RAM is still a perfectly useable computer (ignoring the limitations of an OS such as Windows 98. I haven’t yet tried W2K on such a machine) for browsing, email, WP, and other office use. It is also fine for games of its era. Almost half our computers here at work are that speed or slower. Native Windows menus have no problem displaying quickly on such systems. Mozilla does.
In the end, this whole conversation reminds me of something that a friend said to me a few days ago. I was in the local CompUSA trying out Jaguar on the Macs they had on display. I was vigorously shaking the windows and violently resizing them to gauge any improvements in responsiveness compared to the machines there still running Mac OS X 10.1.5 (not much difference IMO). My friend came over and asked what I was doing. When I told him, he retorted, “but when are you ever going to do that to your windows in real life?”. Point taken
The page-renderer itself is mostly good, _very_ sluggish on pages with fixed backgrounds. The interface, from what I understand, is entirely scripted, and doesn’t compile or cache responses, which might explain the results I’m seeing. On a P4, 1.4GHZ machine with half a gig of RAM the interface is sluggish compared to any other windows application (well, with the exception of OpenOffice
. I’ve occasionally helped Mozilla (reporting bugs, websites) so I don’t say this casually but this is less performance that what I expect.
It seems prior to 1.0 people were complaining at the speed of opening new windows, and the UI. Since 1.0 those complaints have stopped, but for me nothing has changed. It’s more stable, more bug-free, but the performance is the same.
I’m not talking about the links actually not getting downloaded (ie queued up). I’m talking about the browser loosing responsiveness. The whole systems comes grinding to a halt if you try and load up too many web pages, or leave too many browsers open. Since the problem is mirrored on both OS X and Windows, I’m chalking it up to a design flaw. Unless you can point me to the registry setting under OS X that fixes it…
never ran into this, and i commonly have open 15-30 ie windows (well at home i do anyway. my machine at home is just a tad more beefy than this box, but i commonly have open 10-15 ie windows on this machine). not tried under moz yet, but i will.
system specs for sys at home:
dual athlon mp 1.2ghz
768MB registered DDR
ati radeon 64DDR VIVO
winxp
oh wait
are all the windows members of the same or different processes? thats likely the difference
i usually have no more than about 3-4 windows per process of IE running (habit, used to ie would choke on javascript/java intensive pages if you had a bunch of other windows open in the same process it seemed like)
ill try opening up 30+ tonight in the same process
i miss the browse in new process option (havent bothered to find what reg key is needed)
I’ve not read all 237 comments yet, but… I’ve felt Mozilla to be disgustingly slow (GUI-wise) on BeOS since day one. On MacOS it was not much better (a little, but still not worth using).
I have always been bothered by cross-platform software that does not use the OS’s GUI. I hate it. The custom GUI controls are often non-standard in behavior and appearance (learn all over again what controls do) and they are ALWAYS slower, compared to the native GUI of any OS.
I’m very “hot-blood” man. My temperament don’t allow me to use even full Win98 on 500 MHz machine with 128 MB RAM – too slow for me. As IE.
But i was forced once about 2 month to use Mozilla 1.0 on P-100 machine with 48 MB of RAM (Win98lite). And its UI speed was really acceptable for my temperament, though slower than Opera’s. (Using moder IE on such machine was nearly like suicide).
So i think that WinXP (for which you gave so lot of compliments last time) just need “medical” assistance.
Or investigation from DoJ.
Mozilla isn’t thread-safe. This is problem for BeOS port.
But main crasher today for BeZilla in SMP configuration are tooltips. Try to disable it in Preferences-Appearance.
Also get latest build (24 Aug or later) – two other crashers are removed there.
Btw, even on that “slowest” port called BeZilla i cannot notice these artifacts under PII – 333 128 RAM.
If i do, i definitely will try to find reason in code.
ok, i apologise euginia, i’ve bumped up my screen res and managed to reproduce the problem but with an older build http://sealsystem.sourceforge.net/bgp/mozredraw.jpg further proof that you’re not going mad
There is bug which causes Mozilla to be slow under SOME conditions in systems with theoretically equal performance.
Not that “Mozilla GUI speed sucks”.
World is odd: I know guy who complained that Mozilla (port) start takes about minute on his 400 MHz machine.
Same Mozilla started in 12 seconds on “slower” machines.
What about my personal preferences – as “multitasking” person i really prefer Opera, despite my late involvement in Mozilla work.
> Not that “Mozilla GUI speed sucks”.
Depends how you see that.
For me, this behavior is true, on all my machines, on all OSes, for two years now.
When this builds up on you, you do not see it as a “rare bug” anymore. You see it as an everyday reality.
If you read my first posts on this thread, you will see that I was taking for granted that everyone sees these artifacts, but they do not realize that this is considered “slow”.
This was my only “mistake”. But for me, the “bug” it is still here, on all OSes, on all machines (but much more visible on WindowsXP for some reason) since I remember Mozilla, 2-3 years now. For me, this suggests bad UI performance/quality in general. It is not just a “bug”.
There is a bug in IE that makes it slow under ALL conditions due to the lack of decent ad-blocking/Image Manager feature integrated in the browser
Until then I will use superior, free alternatives like Moz.
😉
if it is going to our perception specifics, all arguing is going to be more or less time-wasting.
For me, XP and especially IE are really irresponsive and “slow “for my purposes (loading lot of things in numerous windows, why dealing with reading and using UI) – for you both are super-perfect.
True, i never said that usage of interpretator (even for running JS bytecode as it is in latest Mozillas) is faster than usage of native system widgets, compiled in machine code, but i’m really wondering your case. And as someone mentioned here, Win32 port of Mozilla is more closer to native level than some other.
And now about menus. This is really funny. Because when you move mouse from one superitem to another, Mozilla just calls two native commands:
for opening menu
::SetWindowPos(mWnd, HWND_TOPMOST, 0, 0, 0, 0, flags);
(menus as rule are precreated and its content – cached)
and for left menu
::ShowWindow(mWnd, SW_HIDE);
even if there is lag, buf or inconsistency in Mozilla internal messaging, those two are simplest anv very effective calls of native API. And even if filling topmosted menu may take some time, there is no excuse for OS or hardware which cannot execute simples hide command in sufficient tempo
))
Text input. At least in some ports.
Mozilla tends to handle all characters’ input by its own methods, from key pressing to calling API DrawString (or such) methods. Loooong-loooong way, especially if it reflows/redraws whole string while adding single character.
Second. As far as i remember, in ancient Win9* such eye-candies as live update of windows content on move/resize were off by default.
WinXP, full of proud for its power and multitasking, have those features on by default. Dunno, if Win32 Mozilla is affected by those options, but it may be one of reasons.
i usually have no more than about 3-4 windows per process of IE running (habit, used to ie would choke on javascript/java intensive pages if you had a bunch of other windows open in the same process it seemed like)
This would be many windows hanging off of one or two instances of an IE executable. The different windows would all be in various states of downloads. Stability drops quickly, as does responsiveness. The only way around that on Windows is to do as you say, and work with multiple instances of the application. On OS X I had no choice but to go with a different browser.
If you are trying to test this, consider going to a standard news site, like CNN and Foxnews and start opening up all the different articles you see from various different news sources. For example, have the cnn, foxnews, osnews and maccentral websites all open in the same browser in different windows. Now start spawning off the articles in new windows. I do this to create a very nice repository of articles to read whenever I have 5-minutes here or there. The same can be done with dejanews or something like that too, where multiple parts of the message boards are spawned off.
I was thinking about your registry setting comment earlier, and I never noticed a limit on the number of connections per se during large file downloads. Usually I’d hit the upper limits of the other servers first (perhaps upwards 30 simulatenous file transfers). I never ran across the limitation in IE. I remember back in the old Netscape days they would limit the total number of simultaneous downloads to 4 or something like that by default, but I haven’t seen something like that for page browsing in some time AFAIK.
my menu’s dont draw slow.. i have an nvidia gforce 3 and an athlon 1800+
From the news item:
“Check the screenshot, showing Mozilla’s slow UI (XUL)
performance.”
I would like to know how do you, Eugenia, know that what you
are seeing, is due to slowness of XUL? You see slow operation
in Mozilla UI, OK. How did you reach the conclusion the reason is XUL, and cure is optimization of XUL?
Is it not possible that
– the slowness and rendering is an artifact of the
particular implementation of XUL, not inherent slowness of
XUL itself.
– the slowness and rendering is an artifact of the
client of XUL (Mozilla), not XUL or implemenation of it.
– the slowness and rendering is an artifact of a bug in
XUL or its implementation, and the reason is not
inherent slowness in XUL design.
And, of course, it really doesn’t matter what the reason is,
it should be fixed. I’m just interested how you know the
reason actually is XUL in particular.
Check out Joel on Software for a discussion on Mozilla’s UI woes. A contributor mentioned some of his thoughts on how to improve the situation.
http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixP…
The article which started it out, with Mozilla postmortems:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/news/20020825.html
I suggest everyone to read moderated section comments. I think that Eugenia should get a clue before she comments like she did in this thread, and before she decides, what goes to moderated comments. I haven’t said anything personal, rude or so, what could not be posted as normal message.
So, Eugenia, you just lost one of long time OS News readers, and don’t even try to contact me once again privately, before you stop being narrow-minded. You don’t need to repeat me your arguments once again.
I will not discuss with someone who refuses others pov and uses inappropriate power to reduce such opinions ..
Can you see? I don’t even have to use “f*uck” in my post, to express my opinion …
-pekr-
Hold on, pekr. While I’m a Moz fan, using it all all machines I have with very few criticisms, I find Eugenia’s criticism fun and enlightening. That’s why I come here and recommend this site for reviews. If she didn’t emphasize these problems on low-end machines, I wouldn’t have known or thought hard about it. Look at this quote from your nuked comment:
> Young lady, I think you should calm down.I think that you
> are being arrogant.
Come on now. It was in clear violation of the terms, which may be very subjective but reasonably fair. You didn’t have to phrase it in such a way. And while the “young lady” may be a Be fan, it’s not exactly a hidden fact.
> I worked 4 years for Amiga Review and 2 years for Czech
> Amiga News, and I was too sometimes nervous that my
> belowed system doesn’t work as expected, but never
> publicly reacted like that …
Maybe you should have. Commodore needed a kick in the ass the most! Reconsider the meaning of the word “professional.”
But please, have the HONESTY to say it: XUL SUCKS BAD. I’m looking for a qt gecko alternative for Linux (I dont want to install GTK…)
There is Qtzilla from Troll Tech, but I don’t think it is supported anymore.
fred: the problem is, it DOES stand for something, whether you like it or not. And that “something” covers your own freedom to choose the better product …
So a worser product for jls is actually a better product for him? Sorry, but I don’t get what you are talking about.
Scott: Or, perhaps more plausibly, it is a problem with WinXP that IE manages to bypass or work around due to better information on the workings of XP. (Surely MS wouldn’t do that would they?).
Or perhaps IE’s UI was using standard Win32 APIs. I wonder why Opera and an old copy of K-Meleon doesn’t have those problems Mozilla has…
Hank: When did IE take the lead from Netscape? Not when it surpassed Netscape in user experience, but when Microsoft started building it into Windows95.
When IE’s market share increased in a landslide, Netscape was much more slower than IE (many blamed it on Windows, we know better). It was so bloated too. There must be a reason why Netscape decided to take a 4 months rewrite.
But ask any Windows 95 user, what they used IE which was bundled in for. Most, if not all, would say “To download Netscape”. Netscape droped the ball.
kyle: oh, and for the record; mozilla 1.1 under os x 10.2 renders the menu’s as fast as any other app does. maybe it’s just a…. god forbid…. windows problem *gasp*
For the Mac version, Mozilla uses native menus. That’s why they appear on top the screen. On Windows, Linux and other versions, it is not a native menubar, but an XUL-based one.
If you manage to get the OS X version to replicate what Eugenia had done, it is OS X’s problem, not Mozilla’s.
petr krenzelok: Before you start maddeing once again, while experience of most users is quite different, just try to think if your Celeron 533 (I wonder how does second CPU help) or so, is the right machine for WindowsXP. Try the same setup with Win98.
With her amount of RAM, Windows XP should be significantly faster than Windows 98 especially when it comes to rendering. Windows XP is just a memory hog, but it can run on older processors, as long as you have enough memory.
Hank: Is it me, or is everyone who has this bizarre problem on Windows running WindowsXP instead of Windows2000?
I have this problem on Windows 2000 because it is on a slower machine than what Windows XP is running on. Windows XP does have UI problems but to the naked eye, it is hardly noticible. On Win2k, it is noticible.
Assimil8or: I think the way Opera has chosen is the way to go. There is no reason why you shouldn’t have a cross-platform core but cross-platform UI’s …?…
The worst part of Opera is that is has a cross platform UI too.
Sean Graham: No, Mozilla is just fast…. Actually I think the inital startup is slow, but once it is loaded and Quick Launch is ready to go it is fine.
The load up speed is fine by me, it is about the same as Opera. But the rendering of the UI is too slow for my taste. It is not only the menu bar, but the buttons, the toolbars, the address bar and the scroll bar.
Which is the only reason I don’t use Mozilla (I prefer the UI over Opera, MDI and mouse gestures is okay with plugins).
kreechah: There is a bug in IE that makes it slow under ALL conditions due to the lack of decent ad-blocking/Image Manager feature integrated in the browser
You could always download plugins for ad blocking and image management (I normally disable animated GIFs) for IE.
-pekr-: So, Eugenia, you just lost one of long time OS News readers, and don’t even try to contact me once again privately, before you stop being narrow-minded.
If you actually READ the rules…. your post wouldn’t be moderated down. I often have very different opinions than Eugenia, and she had private mail me a few times, but I never see her as narrow minded.
I will not excuse my bad English knowledge. I have several times met ppl have problem with my expression, translated directly from Czech into english, but “young lady” was meant as compliment of a kind – that Eugenia is rather young & wild in computer industry, and not all the veterans could share her opinion.
Robert:
“there is no fun in something like”
“If you had read all my comments before you start your ranting”
“Are you all blind over here?”
“When someone (me
manages to grab such a *screenshot* so easily, something is really f*cked up.”
“Hahahahahaha…
HAHAHAHA….
I just grabed a better screnshot.
ENJOY”
“At all. At people who don’t get it, at developers who created a Frankstein monster, at the zealots who released a 1.0 version and they hope to dethrone IE.”
“Get a clue. Wake up. IE is the king. I wish Mozilla was the king. But it ain’t. Not as of August 27th 2002.”
“You know nothing”
Is that enough to back up my opinion?
I am not the only one wondering why Eugenia has to react at such way. It has NOTHING in common with her opinion. She has the right to bring in some criticizm, but it is either usefull, or not. I find her style of comments as “maddening”, as it is clear that our voice here will NOT help HERE to become Mozilla better. Besides that many more ppl reported another experience while using Mozilla.
You know what? What terms violation are you talking about? Because – we could easily found other terms, stating, that it IS enough to put facts stright once, and if not adding to it, it is not necessary to repeat yourself.
Redefine “professional”? If Eugenia moderated that way for our mag or site, she would get into trouble probably. We could afford something like that with Czech Amiga News, but OSNews became one of sites under radar … and even with our Czech Amiga News, I was several times informed, that I should not present my own opinion directly in news message, not even point to it from news article. No one is interested in my emotions ..
Rajan: “narrow-minded”? I prefer not reading rules. Rules are just that – rules. I am sure, that once everyone of us would read own messages/articles after some time passes by, we would only few of them let unchanged 🙂
-pekr-
that last comment should probably not have been moded down, yes euginia, it is a dig at you, but everyone’s airing their opinions of each other here, just because it was directed at you shouldn’t mean it gets censored really, although i can understand that you might wish to do such a thing, and i supose it was modded down not just removed so i think i’ll stop now…
You said:
“If she didn’t emphasize these problems on low-end machines, I wouldn’t have known or thought hard about it.”
Which is fine, and I believe Eugenia is correct in emphasizing those problems on low-end machines. But also I would like to emphasize that I see no problems on a low-end machine (300 MHz PII, 128Mb mem… way lower than Eugenia’s double-celeron). I can get a glimpse of the menu drawing, but can’t – as Eugenia can – *watch* how the menus are drawn. The GUI is really snappy for me.
So, the problem is not low-end machine or XUL slowness as such. The problem is something else. I believe it is a bug that is seen only in some – or many? – configurations, but not all. On fast machines the bug may also exist, but since they are so fast, people can’t see it. On slow machines Mozilla GUI either is slow or not.
I think it’s all weird but interesting. All of a sudden, there are a lot of “cruel” sites out there like The Register or fuckedcompany.com, where once you get past the lack of daintiness, are very useful and refreshing.
Maybe OSNews is wrong here. I think Eugenia has some form of madness at times. But it is far better than the conventional journalism I’m used to. All of the sites I frequent, except maybe places like Lambda the Ultimate, are a bit rude.
I don’t believe Moz is slow. All I know is that it’s slow for Eugenia, and have suspicion that people may or may not find it slow at those speeds. There is no way I’d switch back to IE even if this were true, since Moz’s features are far better. But since OSNews is really “Eugenia’s blog,” I’m willing to accept that it’s biased and sometimes wrong. These places are still much better than CNN or USA Today.
Maybe not for you. But good for me.
Still, maybe Eugenia should look at modding down some of her own posts, since they deserve it… 😉
When IE’s market share increased in a landslide, Netscape was much more slower than IE (many blamed it on Windows, we know better). It was so bloated too. There must be a reason why Netscape decided to take a 4 months rewrite.
I’ll have to be frank here and say that my memory is a bit shaky as to which browser was faster back in 1996/1997. I remember giving IE a spin many times before IE 5 came out to see if I could use it instead of Netscape, and I was never satisfied until I guess IE 5.x came out, circa 1998-1999, when it became by default browser. I remember the one neat feature about IE, even early on, was its superior way of drawing partially downloaded pages. However, I also remember a lot more page drawing problems back in the day as well. The real explosion coinciding with the integration however is not a technological one or a coincidence, as I’ll say later.
But ask any Windows 95 user, what they used IE which was bundled in for. Most, if not all, would say “To download Netscape”. Netscape droped the ball.
This was exactly my point. Even if Netscape was the far better browser, most users wouldn’t download Netscape and install it. Many of us power users forget how intimidating the computer can be. I routinely have to go over to relatives’ and friends’ houses to do simple things like install software that they buy. The concept of them actively seeking out an alternative browser (assuming they knew about it in the first place), downloading it and then running it would be remote. Forget the fact that in 1997 most people couldn’t sit through an 8-16MB download over a less that 56K modem connection.
Perhaps if Netscape was a far and away better browser they would have held on to more market share longer, but it was just a question of time. Their demise was garaunteed as soon as the browser was bundled and made to look like an integral part of the OS. Replacing software is one thing, but apparently tampering with the computer at that scale would be down right intimidating. Microsoft successfully banked on the fact that most people’s policy on updating and replacing computer software is “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. This stings them in the back sometimes too, witness the number of Windows95 and Office95/97 users, however in this case it caused them to hit a grand slam.
In a continuation of my last thought…
Integrating the browser in the OS was one step, and a legitimate one for Microsoft. However the fact that no computer maker could ship with an alternate default browser is where the bad apples lie. If both were installed on the system and Netscape were the default browser, the migration to IE would have been significantly different. Major hardware vendors, Dell and Compaq come to mind first, would have had Netscape the default browser. Once again, the users would have stuck with what worked and probably kept it. This was the one of the bases for the monopoly problems Microsoft had to deal with.
I regulary open a whole bunch of websites (news/comics/…). In mozilla I can just open them all at once in tabs, in ie I have to continuously go to Favorites, and open them. The bookmarks, search and history bar in mozilla works alot better too.
I never had to wait for a popup menu to appear in either browser, or viewed two menus simultaneus.
I do like Galeon the best though. Altough that may change as I saw someone mentioning mouse-gestures for mozilla. And mozilla having a good download manager, and all that.
I use Mozilla and like the project, but I really must agree with Eugenia that the GUI is WAY too slow. I’ve never been a fan of the whole XUL concept. It is slow and I don’t like GUIs that don’t use native widgets (If I’m on a PC, it should look like a PC app. If I’m on a Mac, it should look like a Mac app).
I tried a recent dev build of K-Meleon and the one thing that struck me was how much faster it was than Mozilla. With that said, K-Meleon is also VERY rough at this point (I hate the plugin hack they use to simulate tabs). I hope this project gets some traction, but I can’t complain since I’m not willing to devote my time to it.
Remaja:
Make your posts shorter. You’re doing the same thing that you did at OSO (if that’s not true, you have an evil twin).
Most people won’t take the time to read your 3,000 word posts. You have good points, but why 50 of them in one post?
Clarity. Pointedness. Accuracy.
Get it?
You are an old “timer” reader as you say. You should have known better about who am I and why I do what I do.
You only quoted, *out of complete* context, my own words on things that have a lot of context and there were in the middle of other conversations, when I WAS STILL trying to convince people that the problem is real. I might had reacted overboard at some points, SIMPLY BECAUSE people did not believe it!! Until we found the bug entries and more shots from other people, people were trying to convince me that I am wrong!
How do you react when they say that you are a lier? Huh?
For me it matters a lot. I am an honest person. ALWAYS. I was brought up like that.
And you did not quote the parts that I explain my “behavior” to readers. Neither yesterday’s post that I explain that I thought that this Mozilla slowness was for ALL users and not just for me.
If there is one person in this board that really makes me angry right now, it is you. You really act like a narrow minided fanboy. Think out of the box please.
I do not care if Mozilla or Opera or IE is your favorite browser. It is not my job to favor things. If I find something wrong with whichever, I will FREAKING WRITE IT DOWN. And if I am not believed on it, I will MAKE WHATEVER IS NECESSARY to prove my point.
Get it?
This is what osnews is all about. As I said earlier, I do not suck dicks, as other “journalists” do. I write the truth, as I see it on my monitor.
And there were your problem is. The consequences of when trying to write down what I see. You call that “non-journalistic”. I call it non-licked.
I have really enough. So if I try to stay correct as an editor, I suck someone’s dick? Or just whom you adressed your comment to?
I KNOW very well that your comments were cut out of context, but I haven’t tried to missuse that fact. If you think so, then well, but it is not simply true. It was not meant that way and I thing that if you will read my post once again, you will notice what I had in mind – it was not adressed to you, but other folk here.
Bear in mind, that each message, behind its words, carries also an attitude. And it is your attitude, which is wrong to me. “Get it?” – why reactions like that? What do you want to prove to me? I have the same facts – many of us have – on our machines Mozilla runs OK. Does your set-up have any problem running Mozilla? Well, OK, submit a bug, but –
– don’t try to preserve your problem as general truth
– don’t laugh at ppl spending hundreds of hours coding
– I have not said anything about Mozilla being my favorite browser
– so if someone has objection to your attitude he/she is narrow-minded?
You know what? Go to http://www.zive.cz, there is short message about new Mozilla. The first reaction to it is message, posted in BOLD – don’t install new mozilla, it is not stable, it has bugs – go to see article at OSNews. Haven’t I told you, that OSNews is under the radar – visited by other sites? You can easily influence other’s opinion. And such power needs a bit of balance in a first place. Or would you like some other site would quote some of your opinions? And believe me – they would be probably even more out of the context 😉 I was quoted once that way – and it was not kind of a good feeling 🙂
I have not told you to shut up or anything like that. In fact if you would know me, you would also know, that I was/am one of the most vocal voices towards some of Amiga or Rebol happenings – but – it happened on closed lists, not publicly.
I would still like to continue to read OSNews. So – don’t call me a fanboy, as – 1) I can’t translate it 2) it iritates me anyway 🙂
Well, if you can’t live with my messages already, then even my apology will not help here, but as I alredy told to my boss – “I don’t fight you, I fight your arguments” …
So … stay cool!
Cheers,
-pekr-
I this thread is pretty, sad..
so it takes a thread of 264 posts, to find out that:
1>most people have NO problem with Mozilla and are able to use it just fine
and
2>that Eugenia, is one of the Rare People that seem to FIND every OOD bug, and at First belives its ALL Mozilla users
that have this Probelm,. When its just Her OR
a set of things that may effect mozilla…
For a Professional IT person this is truly pathitic(spelling sux and i am in a hurry)
I use Mozilla , on Windows and Linux,
on
Windows it my main Browser of choice, not only does it run prefect but i was ALSO unable to repilcate her issue.
maybe it the fact that I am on windows 2000 Pro and she is using winXP, witch i do not care for,
A true tech /IT person would not have ran at the mouth, about how this product, sucks before trying to find out why?
if most poeple can run it fine and YOU can not?
WHY?
winXP?
themes?
drivers?
software conflicts?
FAT?
NTFS?
there has to be a reason and it most like is with your machine.
did you even try it on a clean install of win98, or windows 2000? or even winXP with the themes all turned off? and No extra apps?
no, i dont think you did.
you installed, and did not even check the box to have mozilla stay in memmory, played with it some maybe installed on your other boxs, ,maybe even try to tweak it, but thats it no real troubleshooting or NOt trying to find out WHY it has issues on your machine. when it has no issues on other peoples or at least very few?
what version of windows was it complied on?
i would bet windows 2000 pro.
did you try it on win2k?
i have been reading this site for a little while not and most the content is Ok, but these Rantings by Eugenia
are mostly just her opionions, that are sometimes badly formed or wrong and sometimes dont take into account a “work in progresse”
and starts off with
this suxs
sheeesh
how about starting off like a human being with some thought in your mind,
start off with some of the good things, break down some of the changes and then go into what you dont like,
Nex6
My good friend Billy, send me this URL with this DHTML demo:
http://www.brainjar.com/dhtml/menubar/demo2.html
Now, it is really funny that this DHTML (which is known to be “slow”) runs without a hitch and is faster than Mozilla’s menus. And that’s not only on my machine. Billy has an AthlonXP 1800+ and his PC _does not_ exhibit my Mozilla problems. But even for him, it seems that this DHTML is faster than XUL or whatever creates the slowdown.
Nex6, just go and shove it. NOW. Don’t get on my nerves.
IF YOU HAVE READ my comments, you would see that the problem is also on the TWO of my Linux installations. For me, it is not just a WindowsXP problem. The damn thing is just slow. I do not even believe that this is a “bug”. It is just plainly slow. I see it everyday for two years. And I had installations with Win98 and 2k before installing XP, last March.
but why? is it slow for you? and almost no one else?
i have ran it on different OS, it works fine for me…….
what is different for you that YOU can NOT?
just ranting OUT that it is slow doe not make it so…
get a clean machine, with a screen resoltion set to 800×600
or 1024×768 and then try it.
most ppl are fine so FIND out WHY its slow then you can post , and say hey, Mozilla slowness caused by xyz….
what a thought…..
Nex6
If you read the comments, you will see that I AM NOT the only person with the problem.
>get a clean machine, with a screen resoltion set to 800×600 or 1024×768 and then try it.
Why? My machine is clean enough. I do not install crap on it. And XP was installed only a few months ago.
AS for the resolution, I use 1280×1024. Why should I downgrade to 800×600? Just to favor Mozilla and say: “there, it is faster now”?
You are out of your mind.
i read almost the Entire pathitic thread,
maybe i am more geeky, then you. but i always find out why something doesnt work,
i will hunt that pesky DLL and find out why its causing my app or machine to run slow i will change screen resolutions(JUST to TEST!) to see if that effects anything.
becuase i REFUSE to let any machine beat me at anything,
(maybe thats why i do what i do)
and i would also setup a test machine and install the problematic app on it in different configs to see how it is effected and do memmory traces and FIND out WHY!!!
and not just rant….
yes i know a few others in the thread said they had issues but that was AFter you ranted and ranted….
Nex6
> i will change screen resolutions(JUST to TEST!) to see if that effects anything.
I have already did that, 2 nights ago. Same result.
>yes i know a few others in the thread said they had issues but that was AFter you ranted and ranted….
This is because I always want to use high quality software. I do have high standards. I am not easily pleased. This is true. But I do want to use Mozilla, I believe it is a great project. But here, it just doesn’t work as I expected to. End of story.
YES:
Mozilla is a great project,
nothing more to say, users, and people are intitled to there ways and opionons
have a nice day
Nex6
>Mozilla is a great project, nothing more to say…
Exactly. This is the problem of most of you here. “Mozilla is a great project and there is nothing more to say”. And if someone says otherwise, you will try to call him a lier, a bitch, or whatever. Congratulations goes to you.
well,
most of us dont have your problem,?
and you didnt truly troubleshoot it?
or investigate it?
what else can i say?
yourm just like a typical user,
it dont work, it sux…
and lets rant and rant about it so the programmers and system engrs will fix it to shut us up?
so the world does not work that way
…
nex6
First of all, please do not put so many empty lines on your comments, or they will be shooted down for looking bad and destroy the looks of this site. (yes, I go anal about it)
>and you didnt truly troubleshoot it?
I have this problem, everywhere, since I remember Mozilla. I HAD NEVER THOUGHT that this was not a normal behavior. Simply because I can reproduce it everywhere, with closed eyes. This LED ME TO BELIEVE that this is not a bug, but simply BAD PERFORMANCE.
Which part you don’t understand and keep repeating the same arguments, even when I am trying to explain to you the situation?
Post another innacurate, uninformative post and it will be moded down. I had enough with bozos over here.
I am bowing out since we cant even agree to disagree,
thank you its been funn
(shesh)
Nex6
tested those DHTML menus, pointed by Eugenia.
For my feelings, this DHTML version in my Mozilla is about 3-5 times slower than those XUL menus in appearance.
I tested the DHTML with IE and it was extremely fast.
I now tested with Mozilla 1.1 and yes, that DHTML was slower than IE’s. BUT, the DHTML rendered by Mozilla, is still FASTER than Mozilla’s own menus. For me.
Eugenia wrote:
Exactly. This is the problem of most of you here. “Mozilla is a great project and there is nothing more to say”. And if someone says otherwise, you will try to call him a lier, a bitch, or whatever. Congratulations goes to you.
Actually, It was you first to call Mozilla developers “zealots”, and I can’t recall anyone here calling someone else “a bitch”.
I agree with petr – this is NOT fair journalism.
Michael Dominic K.
The XUL menus are faster than those DHTML menus. And why? Because the XUL menus are multithreaded, which allows you to use more cpu power during a short period, instead of using less cpu power but for a longer time.
When you have to make a choice between pretty and fast, I’ll take fast..
> Because the XUL menus are multithreaded,
And I have dual CPUs, where multithreaded code really favors and works better on. Still, they are ugly slow here.