The last time I tried Firefox 3.1, or even the trusted latest, greatest Firefox 3.0.x install, I had walked away feeling very disappointed by the performance I could get from them. The main reason for wanting to use Firefox 3.1 was Tracemonkey, which is a considerably more optimized and faster version of Spidermonkey, ideally resulting in better performance with heavily AJAX-ed applications like Gmail, Google Reader and Google Docs.

That time, Firefox 3.1, with Tracemonkey enabled, was breaking Google Apps (Spreadsheets, to be more specific), which is a complete deal-breaker for me. The Firefox 3.0 installs and the Minefield nightlys that I used to run otherwise were gobbling up about half a gigabyte of RAM, with the extensions enabled and on a Macbook with just a gigabyte of RAM, which too was a deal-breaker. Thus, I wound up in bed with Camino.

With Firefox 3.1 now getting very close to the release candidate stage, I decided it was time now give it another spin. This time without any of the extensions and with a brand new profile. And I am happy to report that it has been a nice experience till now. Google Docs no longer break even when Tracemonkey is enabled and what even more heartening is that enabling it has led to a reduction in RAM usage.

I always keep Gmail, Google Reader and Google Docs open in my browser and the lowest I have ever seen on browser, in terms of RAM usage, for the same is at 110 MB. After I enabled Tracemonkey and slapped the Google Gears extension, RAM usage has dipped to around 104 MB, often dipping under 100 MB. Now, THAT is what I call a performance boost.

For me, the browser is the primary productivity suite. I use it for everything from email to keeping documents, workflows and many other things. Even to the extent that my browser instances can run for close to a week without being restarted, that is when they don't wind up being sluggish like a drunk mule, which happens way too often for my liking.

I started with Firefox when it was called Phoenix and did not have an installer. I have tried all sorts of browsers, K-Melon, Opera, every version of Internet Explorer till version 7 and many more that did not last for more than a couple of days at the best on my computers. But if there is anything that has been constant with all of them, it is that they have grown progressively worse with every release in terms of resource utilization.

Now, that was not so much of an issue when I moved to a Mac about a year ago. It was a Macbook Pro that sported 2 GB of RAM, which leads you to kind of be pretty okay with the RAM-tastic excesses the browsers tend to indulge in. My development environment, including Apache and the various databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL and CouchDB) and other nicknacks had about a GB to play with, while the browser itself could use 500 MB of RAM and I could not give a damn.

It is a different story altogether that even with 500 GB of RAM, the venerable Firefox would slow down with usage, and even in the stock-install extension-free mode, it would still consume memory much worse than a lifetime AA member knocking back glass after glass at an open bar. I loved my extensions, but seriously, this was getting to be way too much, with or without them. I had to find a new browser and the move to a Macbook with just one GB of RAM made it even more urgent.

Last updated: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:12:17 GMT User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1a1pre) Gecko/2008060302 Minefield/3.1a1pre Extensions (enabled: 7, disabled: 35):

• Better Gmail 2 0.4 [disabled]
• Better GReader 0.2.5 [disabled]
• ChatZilla 0.9.82.1 [disabled]
• ColorZilla 1.9 [disabled]
• CoLT 2.4.1 [disabled]
• Distrust 0.7.1 [disabled]
• DownThemAll! 1.0.1 [disabled]
• FaviconizeTab 0.9.7.5 [disabled]
• FEBE 5.3.1 [disabled]
• Firebug 1.1.0b12
• FireFTP 0.97.1 [disabled]
• FormFox 1.6.1 [disabled]
• FoxyProxy 2.7.4
• Google Gears 0.3.14.2 [disabled]
• Greasemonkey 0.7.20080121.0 [disabled]
• HackBar 1.1.1 [disabled]
• HostIP.info Geolocation Plugin 0.4.3.5 [disabled]
• IE Tab 1.3.3.20070528 [disabled]
• InfoLister 0.10
• Intel MashMaker
  

Firefox has this irritating issue that pops up during every other point release. Every now and then, it will just freeze up on you, and in case of the Mac even the OS at times, and bring all your browsing to a standstill. I have had moderate success with getting rid of this by disabling certain extensions, but the problem just refuses to go away.

The last release that I had used on Windows 2.0.0.11 had the same problem and unfortunately it followed me all the way to the new Mac and no amount of tweaking or coaxing would fix it. It got so frustrating that I ended up looking for other options like Camino and Safari, but could just not get around the idea of having a life without my choice of extensions.

It was on this quest that I finally decided to give one of the nightly builds a try to take advantage of the newer checked in code and accidentally downgraded to the 1.8.13 version before finding the Bon Echo 2.0.0.12 pre build and slapped it on and it has been a much improved show this far.

The freeze ups have disappeared totally, while I am glad to report that all my extensions are working quite fine. Now all that remains to be seen is if it ends up hitting the same old problem of crash reports every time I would restart Firefox.