Mozilla Corporation continually seem to be going backwards when it comes to development of the popular Firefox Web Browser.
Firefox 3.6 introduced a number of bugs that took almost 16 versions to iron out but all the while the Mozilla Team were spending more time developing Firefox 4 and making promises that FF4 would be the bees knees.
I resisted trying any of the Beta’s or Release Candidates of Firefox 4 until final code was pushed out. I then downloaded the final version of Firefox 4 released a week or two ago and only got around to trying it out yesterday.
Initially the new browser looked ok, a bit cleaner looking than Firefox 3 but within minutes the problems started to rear their heads.
First of all whenever I open my Firefox I have about 15 tabs of web sites I go to daily. In Firefox 3 the browser opens in about 5 seconds and all tabs load in under a minute. In Firefox 4 the browser opens in the same time (5 seconds) but then all tabs load up and one by one off they go refreshing until each and every tab has been refreshed. This process takes Firefox 4 about 3-5 minutes longer to load up all tabs compared to Firefox 3 …… so immediately THUMBS DOWN to Firefox 4. There is also no menu option or setting to prevent Firefox from doing this.
Secondly, Firefox 4 is much more sluggish than Firefox 3.6.16. It seems fast for a short while but then starts slowing down as you start your work day until eventually it’s so sluggish that you have to close it down and re-open it to get it to speed up again. Another THUMBS DOWN because I only ever open Firefox once a day in the morning and only ever close it at night when I shut down at the rate FF4 got sluggish I would have to kill and reopen it about 20 times a day.
Lastly, it’s a memory HOG. This morning with 25 tabs open Firefox 4 was using over 1GB of memory and became as sluggish as hell. I dumped Firefox 4 immediately, copied FF 3.6.16 back to my applications folder fired it up and immediately the same 25 tabs were using only 346 Mb of memory, so another big THUMBS DOWN to Firefox 4.
I’ll stick with 3.6.16 for now as it works and is finally a stable version. I’ll only relook at Firefox 4 once it reaches 4.0.16 or somewhere around there. I would advise others to stick with Firefox 3 and resist the temptation to move to Firefox 4.
Sorry Mozilla but Firefox 4 really SUCKS !!!
Firefox 3.6.16 is still available at this link – http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-older.html
and older versions of Firefox can be found here
