Help me choose a new browser!

Help me choose
I never heard of Firebird. Is it a new one?

I think it's one of the million varities of Mozilla, but everyone who talks about it raves :-)

firebird is the trimmed down version of mozilla. it's smaller and faster. the mozilla team is expecting to eventually drop mozilla altogether and concentrate on the further development of firebird.

here's a review of Mac browswers...
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/003/software/mac/browser/mac-browsers-1.html

it's a slightly old review but it shows that camino is the fastest and firebird came in second. unfortunately it looks like the development of camino has almost halted.

I use Safari without any problems. Before that I used Camino.

Lets try to take some steps to fix Safari.
--How much RAM do you have? OS X is a RAM HOG! Anything less then 384 Megs is going to slow things down.
--Safari is under constant devolopment. I would suggest keeping up with upgrades. You should upgrade to 10.2.8 along with the latest versions of Safari.
--If you have the cash upgrade to Panther (10.3). It speeds everything up and I believe the newest version of Safari requires it.

Whould you mind sharing the specs of your Mac? Model, RAM, ect..

To check to see if you are low on RAM you can open the Terminal (/applications/utilities/terminal.app) and type "top -a" without the qoutes. Let it run for a few hours as you go about your computing. Let us know the number of Pageouts. And when Safari is freaking out you can check to see how much the CPU is using.

Good luck..

I have an iBook, and it's only got 128 megs of ram. . . and so, since I'm not looking to buy ram any time soon, I'm not going to stick with Safari unless some ram magically appears on my doorstep :-)

That's your decision. But let me just say I had a iBook 600 with the stock 128 megs of RAM. I went to 384 and the speed of the computer more then doubled. And the RAM was 70 dollars. With 128 your computer is constantly writing to the hard drive. This is for even simple tasks. With more RAM that info would go into the RAM and not the hard drive. Reading data from the RAM is so much faster then reading from the hard drive.

Getting more RAM is going to be like getting a whole new computer. But, it's your choice. It's super simple to install too.

Well, eventually I'll probably be getting some more but, at this point, I'm just looking for a new browser since safari is inoperable for me.

Hey, I'm a student. . . 70 bucks for new ram is not something that's factored in to my very tight budget until christmas. . .

So thanks for all the browser suggestions, guys. . . I've downloaded firebird and I'm working on getting used to it :-)

Hmmmmmm - testing Firebird - hmmmmmmmmmmmm....

But note that Mozilla Firebird 0.7/0.7.1 is a Preview, without any guarantees before version 1.0. I am trying the Firebird (Preview), and feel its crispness compared with (old) Mozilla.
And for multiple windows, RAM can be a definitive solution.



Try top command in your terminal application on Mac OS X, you will find a display like

[size=8]Processes: 44 total, 2 running, 42 sleeping... 116 threads 12:12:15
Load Avg: 1.17, 0.76, 0.49 CPU usage: 13.4% user, 8.4% sys, 78.2% idle
SharedLibs: num = 110, resident = 27.5M code, 3.12M data, 8.53M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 3712, resident = 64.6M + 9.08M private, 76.9M shared
PhysMem: 46.2M wired, 112M active, 142M inactive, 300M used, 212M free
VM: 2.32G + 71.3M 9538(0) pageins, 0(0) pageouts
[/size]
If pageouts are very high, it will improve greatly the performance of your machine to increase RAM.

Is pop-up blocking on by defualt in Firebird? I can't remember. If it's not turn it on. I can't remember exactly how to right now, but it's very easy. It makes the internet sooo much better. Even more so on dial-up. Tabs kick ass too.

{edit: and if you like it tell a friend. the more people who use it makes my life easier. Come on IE, support .png and css .

Hmmm - no ads, indeed.

Er - that isn't good news re this site, though.....

Tabs exist on Opera.

Will Firebird remember sessions for re-opening when you return to it?

ha! No.

Does this site have pop-ups? I've never seen them. :wink:

I wasn't aware you used Opera.

Like a passwork manager, yes it should have that. And I believe forum type sites use cookies. Give it a whirl, you will love it.

I am testing it now.

I mean Opera, when you close it, allows an option, upon re-opening, to return to where you were. I have several windows - which I am using to find things for the portal, open permanently - I find Opera's ability to do that very helpful.

Use whatever suits ya, deb. . .

Opera indeed has some cool features, but being a part time web developer I care much more about code compatibility issues and suchlike.

it won't remember where you left off but you can open multiple homepages upon startup.
just put a "|" between the pages you want to startup in the settings.

Satt, I like your avatar, just noticed it today...

(following this thread as a mac user, though I only have 9.02 in my antique imac).

9.0.2 is a fine OS, ossobuco :-) I loved my old imac for years and years running the very same. . .

Thanks. Then, please click on my signature, which can be played with QuickTime plugin on 9.02 also.

Elegant signature, for sure, Satt, a delight to hear.