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Browsers, You Can’t Live With ‘Em…

This post is meant to explain why I’ve been slacking off on the Firefox builds lately and to let off some steam about the current browser crap we have to live with.

All Browsers Suck
On a daily basis, I use these browsers: Opera, Minefield, Chrome, WebKit and NetNewsWire. My default browser at the moment is Chrome (dev channel). The other browsers I have open and actively do stuff in them, each handles a certain aspect of my web life: Opera -> location based apps, Minefield -> blogging/EA, Chrome -> Twitter, WebKit -> Twitter apps/Flash (clicktoflash), NetNewsWire -> reading.

Opera
Actually, I don’t have any huge complaints here. Things could be sped up and some sites don’t recognize the Agent String so minor problems here and there.

Minefield
This was my default browser for a long time. Leaks memory like a sieve, but has the most useful UX of all browsers. It is fast, but leaving it open for an extended period will drag down your machine, hard.

Chrome
Fast, though not nice. Somehow Chrome will extract 150% of your processor to load tabs and bring everything else to a screeching halt. This can be a good thing if you are solely focused on Chrome. It minimizes memory use by unloading tabs that have gone unused for a while. This makes it worthless in the long run because you sometimes have to load a tab twice (load back from memory, then reload) to get fresh content.

WebKit
It’s so-so. Load up 20 tabs and you’ll see the spinning beach ball. Things will just slow down as more resources are required. I don’t heavily use Safari WebKit anymore so this isn’t a big deal. Much polish is missing, surprising to see an Apple product this unpolished. The WebKit team could do well by paying attention to Firefox, especially focusing on tab behavior.

NetNewsWire
This is WebKit, but I use it as a reading queue. I’ll leave 20-40 tabs open and either read them within NNW or put them in my Instapaper-like app in Minefield. I have to quit NNW several times a day, especially if I’ve loaded more than 10 tabs during a single session. This is a straight leak and can cause havoc on my entire system. I tread carefully.

Firefox Builds
I’m currently using the nightly of 4.0b7. We’ve had betas thrown at us like no tomorrow and things are still wonky. I can’t load Google Maps without a crash. Each build, 32-bit or 64-bit, takes me several hours during which time my machine grinds to a steaming pile (odd that the 32-bit builds take so much longer).

Basically, I can’t keep up. My current hardware is too limited and I don’t see the wave of betas slowing down. Plus we have JaegerMonkey builds.

The bottom line to this is:

• I don’t have the resources to build all the variations of betas that are coming out so rapidly
• Since there are so many releases, it is beneficial to the Firefox community to use an official build so you can a) properly report bugs and crashes and b) auto-update to the next version
• The speed of my builds is becoming increasingly marginal. If I can get GCD in there or build with Clang, this might be something worthwhile. As it stands, my optimizations will only save you a couple hundred milliseconds here and there.

Once things have stabilized, I will do builds again. My future focus around Firefox will be to:

• Create a new installer for OS X
• Add Sparkle for updates
• Investigate GCD and Clang

In the meantime, grab a 64-bit nightly or beta from Mozilla.

Other browsers that have come and gone include Camino, Cruz, Fluid, Shiira and Stainless.