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willmore · May 26, 2005, 02:33 PM

Has anyone experienced any slowdown once they have installed Tiger using the firefox browser?

I use both safari and firefox. Now that I've installed firefox there is a definite slowness in using it as a browser, unlike when using safari. I read that Tiger was designed to be used with safari, so is that what my problem is?

I have re-installed the latest edition of firefox but it has made no difference. I have also contacted my internet provider regarding any slowness in the system, but to no avail.

Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated - it simple english! I'm not a tech person!

Thanks in advance to anyone who response!

Millennium · May 26, 2005, 02:40 PM

Could you describe exactly where you're feeling "slowness" in Firefox? When I upgraded to Tiger, I experienced the opposite: dramatic speed gains in both browsers.

mpancha · May 26, 2005, 03:15 PM

the first couple times I started firefox it felt really slow loading up and loading pages. But after that, its running smoothly.

willmore · May 26, 2005, 07:08 PM

Hi there - I'll try to explain as best I can - but remember I'm not a tech person.

It seems to be mostly when I try to connect to the internet when using firefox - either it takes forever to connect, and I go to safari or doesn't find it at all.

When I do use ff to go to different web sites - it also takes a very long time to connect. However this does not happen when using safari.

I also wondered if there might be a connection to the home page I'm using. Right now I use Shaw (my internet provider) as my home page. As far back as a year ago I was having trouble connecting to this home page (even before I used ff), and finally just switched to the apple home page.

Today I was thrown off ff at least 3 different times!

Thank you in advance!

Any advice (in simple terms) that you can give me would be apprecited.

ZXspectrum · May 28, 2005, 12:59 AM

it is slow under 10.4

druber · Jun 2, 2005, 09:09 AM

I'm seeing a lot of slowdowns with Firefox as well. G4 1.2 iBook with 768 ram and 10.4.1. I usually limit my open tabs to 3 or 4, and one of them is frequently my Gmail inbox. Others are often mac news sites or Sage RSS feeds. I get a lot of spinning beachballs, sometimes when switching between tabs, and sometimes just when loading a page. Other apps (like Safari) don't seem to experience the same slowdown at the same time. There are times when I'm typing an email at Gmail when there's a full second lag between a keypress and the letter appearing onscreen.

I do have a couple extensions installed in Firefox: Sage for RSS reading, Tab X Mac to give a more Safari-type look, Greasemonkey, and Flashblock. All are up to date. I understand why Greasemonkey or potentially Flashblock could buck on certain pages that would require extra work of them. But Gmail?

I'm pretty frustrated by its performance, but Safari doesn't come close to replacing Firefox, if just for Sage, Flashblock and general image-blocking. If Firefox is running great for you under Tiger, would you mind sharing which extensions you have installed? Cheers.

Zimphire · Jun 2, 2005, 09:23 AM

I can't stand Firefox for OS X.

Makes a nice Windows browser however.

Millennium · Jun 2, 2005, 09:48 AM

I'm still not seeing any actual slowness, but I have noticed another issue: Firefox under 10.4 doesn't seem to like downloading files over a certain size. After it gets to a certain point -it's somewhere in the 1-10 megabyte range- it suddenly stops the download, but it leaves the file in place. Trying to open the file will reveal that it is corrupt.

The annoying thing about this is that whatever the cutoff point is, Firefox's own nightly builds are larger than that, and this makes updating a real pain. The funny thing is, this only seems to affect dual-processor machines; my Ti/400 can still download just fine.

willmore · Jun 2, 2005, 01:32 PM

Originally Posted by druber

I'm seeing a lot of slowdowns with Firefox as well. G4 1.2 iBook with 768 ram and 10.4.1. I usually limit my open tabs to 3 or 4, and one of them is frequently my Gmail inbox. Others are often mac news sites or Sage RSS feeds. I get a lot of spinning beachballs, sometimes when switching between tabs, and sometimes just when loading a page. Other apps (like Safari) don't seem to experience the same slowdown at the same time. There are times when I'm typing an email at Gmail when there's a full second lag between a keypress and the letter appearing onscreen.

I do have a couple extensions installed in Firefox: Sage for RSS reading, Tab X Mac to give a more Safari-type look, Greasemonkey, and Flashblock. All are up to date. I understand why Greasemonkey or potentially Flashblock could buck on certain pages that would require extra work of them. But Gmail?

I'm pretty frustrated by its performance, but Safari doesn't come close to replacing Firefox, if just for Sage, Flashblock and general image-blocking. If Firefox is running great for you under Tiger, would you mind sharing which extensions you have installed? Cheers.

Those are exactly the same problems that I am experiencing. Any assistance (in plain english) would be greatly appreciated!

Rogue 5 · Jun 2, 2005, 01:55 PM

I used firefox exclusively in 10.3 but after upgrading to 10.4, not only was safari faster, but I also found it was far more stable than firefox. Firefox is a great browser and I look forward to future versions being faster and more stable, but right now Safari is it. I know it was not the current build of Safari but I read in a article not long ago that an internal build of safari was the first to pass some standards test. Forgive my lack of detail on that, I read it a few weeks ago in wired or on slashdot I think.

willmore · Aug 9, 2005, 01:16 PM

Thanks for the info guys - guess I'll go back to safari - I was even thinking of going back to panther because I had alot less problems with firefox using it .

Anyone else considered doing this?

mportuesi · Aug 11, 2005, 12:47 PM

I'm running 10.4.2 on a Mini with Firefox 1.0.6 and I'm having no problems whatsoever. Works like a champ.

wataru · Aug 11, 2005, 10:31 PM

I haven't had any of the issues people mentioned here. I'm currently running the 7/29 nightly.

threestain · Aug 16, 2005, 02:24 PM

Has anyone had any experience of safari being UNBELIEVABLY awful in Tiger?

I mean its sucking memory like nothing else and hangs repeatedly. Admittedly I'm only on 512MB RAM, but when your swap file gets to 7.5GB there's something amiss.

Is there anything I can do help matters, aside from cache cleaning and memory adding (cos I don't have £150!)

willmore · Aug 16, 2005, 03:02 PM

No I'm having the opposite problem actually - having a terrible time with ff and tiger.....safari has been my saviour!

leperkuhn · Aug 16, 2005, 03:07 PM

Originally Posted by threestain

Has anyone had any experience of safari being UNBELIEVABLY awful in Tiger?

I mean its sucking memory like nothing else and hangs repeatedly. Admittedly I'm only on 512MB RAM, but when your swap file gets to 7.5GB there's something amiss.

Is there anything I can do help matters, aside from cache cleaning and memory adding (cos I don't have £150!)

safari has been really unstable at times. i usually leave it open till it crashes though.. i never quit anything.

Todd Madson · Aug 17, 2005, 02:33 PM

What kind of Mac are you running? G3? G4? G5?
What is your speed in mhz?
Memory amount?

Are you on dial-in? Dial-in is slow no matter what browser you're using. Get high speed
internet at all costs.

selowitch · Aug 17, 2005, 03:00 PM

My frustration is that no Mac browser handles multiple search engines as elegantly as Firefox. Too bad that FF's performance and stability under OS X is not as good as Camino. If Safari (or any other Mac browser) could handle search engines the way FF does, I'd switch in a second.

I just love the convenience of pulling down PriceGrabber, Amazon, whatever I want and just typing in my search terms. It's such a luxury that am I reluctant to give it up.

wataru · Aug 17, 2005, 03:39 PM

Try a nightly. They're very good now.

osxrules · Aug 17, 2005, 10:38 PM

FF had issues with Javscript websites all the time when I used it, it was slow to launch and it hogged memory. I swicthed to Safari and I've been happy ever since. If you need to add functionality to Safari, you can use On My Command, which is a contextual menu plugin that lets you execute scripts (applescript javascript shell script) from anywhere you right click.

I think that's much easier than Firefox's setup. OK things like flash block are different but then you get PithHelmet for Safari.

wataru · Aug 17, 2005, 10:46 PM

There's no way that scripting like that can approach the flexibility of extensions. Firefox's extensibility is its main advantage over Safari. Also, PithHelmet isn't free and is an unsupported hack, whereas Adblock is free and takes advantage of a fully-supported API. They're really not comparable.