gogoblender 3,068 Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 I don't believe this. This is actually something that we noticed just a wee while bit back...but the horror of the discovery forced me to keep my mouth closed while we ran tests with Schot and a few others to see if this is right... and it is! This browser, that we'd had so close to our hearts for years now, is falling behind miserably ( I mean MISERABLY) ) in almost every speed test for page refreshes against almost any other browser. Even, and I'm ashamed to say it... Explorer! I've been running speed refresh/compares with the different browser on all the different sites I go to, and for some reason with our two sites, FF is just the pits. In fact, when it comes to doing edits on SacredWiki, I have begun to secretly switch to a hidden key that unleashes a version of Chrome in which I can fire through pages of work on the Wiki in the blink of an eye compared to the morass of time wasted with the almost interminable waits that firefox demands. Has anyone else noticed this? Does anyone have a suggestion, hopefully solution? Is there hope in sight for beloved Firefox? gogo Link to comment
Dragon Brother 619 Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 Well...I dont know...I use firefox exclusively and it works fine for me. I think alot of it may be psychological...someone tells you its faster so you feel that maybe it is, but who knows...firefox 4 is coming out in the near future...could be the speedfix you need. Link to comment
gogoblender 3,068 Posted January 19, 2011 Author Share Posted January 19, 2011 Actually, DB, would you mind testing for me? Me, Schot and Knuckles all see a multiple of speed increase when we use Chrome. And for example, when I"m doing a lot of edits on Wiki, a lot of the times, FF just hangs on me. If you have time, would you be able to run just a few refreshes with any other browser besides FF to see if you get improved speed? gogo Link to comment
locolagarto 15 Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 I can't say that I have done any side by side tests. But I us FF at work with a 50(fifty) MB/s internet connection and Chrome at home with a 2.5 MB/s internet connect and I see a noticeable amount of lag at work the sites both hang when loading on FF. I think it might have to to with the Ad banners? . There are only about 15 users on the internet connection at work. I have at least 3 of us online at home all the time. Link to comment
Dragon Brother 619 Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 Well...I had a quick look then...all 3 of chrome/ff/ie seem to load the page to the points where its useable fairly similarly, although I noticed what loco mentioned, ff does seem to take a bit longer fully loading the page ads and thus takes longer to finish filling its progress bar to 100%. All in all though, for me...firefox is easy...I dont like IE and chrome just doesnt do it for me, Ive tried it and find ff to suit me best. Link to comment
Silver_fox 397 Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 (edited) The only thing I can say is that with my Internet connection Chrome is the only thing that works really fast. Not only with DarkMatters and Wiki, but with all the other sites as well. And I didn't notice that DarkMatters and Wiki work somewhat slower than other sites. In fact I've seen a lot of slower sites, especially in russian Internet (which is funny because fast Internet connection is unbelievably expencive in my country). The fact that Wiki works faster in Chrome doesn't mean that you do a bad work, that just means that Google employees do a nice work. Looks like these guys in Google really managed to create a simple and very fast browser. Edited January 20, 2011 by Silver_fox Link to comment
Knuckles 904 Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 What I've noticed is FF works ok and then for a 30 min period everything bogs right down to the point where I time-out often. This can happen 2-3 times every night. Makes wiki work impossible. Chrome seems to be faster but I can't stand having the tabs at the top of the page Link to comment
chattius 2,522 Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 Did a search for an english page instead translating a whole german forum: http://www.webgapps.org/firefox/preferences-tweaks I got a big speed up when switching pipelining on, allow more silmultanous connections, cache DNS queries (some domain name servers respond really slow),... Pipelining, quote from link above: These will allow Firefox to request various web page elements simultaneously when loading a page, instead of waiting for each request to complete to send the next, which greatly reduce page loading time. * Type about:config in Firefox address bar to open the advanced preferences * Type pipelining in the filter field and hit enter * Double click network.http.pipelining in order to set it as true * Double click network.http.pipelining.firstrequest in order to set it as true * Right-click on network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and change the value to 8 * Double click network.http.pipelining.ssl in order to set it as true * Double click network.http.proxy.pipelining in order to set it as true Warning: I do not use Windows or Linux. I run Firefox at work on a Realtime OS (variant of QNX- QNX will be the operating system of the to come Blackberry PlayBook), so my slow original settings for firefox may be caused by the need for real time reaction to interrupts from control elements. But it is worth a check, perhaps the standard firefox settings for Linux and Windos are way to conservative for modern links and multicore CPU's. Link to comment
podgie_bear 184 Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 (edited) I know that I am rather old fashioned and behind the times in this modern, superfast era, but what I find works for me is an old fashioned thing called...... PATIENCE Edited January 20, 2011 by podgie_bear 1 Link to comment
Stormwing 40 Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 Well, can't say I've noticed anything negative in using FF. It's the only browser I even want to use, seeing it's been with me since the beginning. The others just don't catch my fancy. Also, with my connection it really doesn't matter, as it hangs every now and then in any way. Opera would be way better with some things, but I just don't like it's desing, same with Chrome. You could call me an old coot in this thing. Link to comment
bhj 24 Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 *slaps gogo for even thinking something like that* *and again for posting it* dont have any problems of any kind at this end atleast (using FF 4) Link to comment
Furian67 14 Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 Did a search for an english page instead translating a whole german forum: http://www.webgapps....ferences-tweaks I got a big speed up when switching pipelining on, allow more silmultanous connections, cache DNS queries (some domain name servers respond really slow),... Pipelining, quote from link above: These will allow Firefox to request various web page elements simultaneously when loading a page, instead of waiting for each request to complete to send the next, which greatly reduce page loading time. * Type about:config in Firefox address bar to open the advanced preferences * Type pipelining in the filter field and hit enter * Double click network.http.pipelining in order to set it as true * Double click network.http.pipelining.firstrequest in order to set it as true * Right-click on network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and change the value to 8 * Double click network.http.pipelining.ssl in order to set it as true * Double click network.http.proxy.pipelining in order to set it as true Warning: I do not use Windows or Linux. I run Firefox at work on a Realtime OS (variant of QNX- QNX will be the operating system of the to come Blackberry PlayBook), so my slow original settings for firefox may be caused by the need for real time reaction to interrupts from control elements. But it is worth a check, perhaps the standard firefox settings for Linux and Windos are way to conservative for modern links and multicore CPU's. I tryed this but the line * Double click network.http.pipelining.firstrequest in order to set it as true was not there. all others were. Link to comment
Furian67 14 Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 And I need to say that the changes did make a noticeable difference. I just popped over to the wiki and clicked on random set pieces and pop pop pop they showed up. Link to comment
chattius 2,522 Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 For me it made a lot of difference. Mainly if a page contains a lot of items. Have you read into all the listed tweaks? Pipelining Max-Requests Page delay RAM for page cache Name server cache ... Instead 12 seconds some pages were done in 2. You can create missing entries by right clicking into the list of settings. At home I use 3.6.13 of Firefox. Link to comment
lujate 575 Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 Has anyone tried this: Fasterfox Link to comment
chattius 2,522 Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 As far as I know Fasterfox is mainly a macro using the inbuild firebox setting variables (which you can edit manually). So it is for people who do not want to know the inside of firefox and just want stuff to run fast. But if you use a machine at work or if you have a provider who is paid by amount of data transfer: link prefetching (the biggst feature of Fasterfox) and all these nice extras make your browser faster but also add data volume. So I prefer to do the settings on my own and comment why I did them. If I would use Fasterfox then for its inbuild page load timer while trying to fine tune settings. Change a setting, write down time for page setup, increase pipeline number or number of erquests, write down new time,... Probably it even has good starting values depending on a link, cpu and ram test so not much need to fine tune. But once I am done with this I would disable it again, out of the above reasons. Call me a dinosaur, but I grew up with cars I could repair and understand, with computers I build from buying chips, ... Somehow I like to know what I am doing and have as much control as possible. Now you buy a car and bring it to service to be told: "Sorry I am just the mechanic, you need the mechatronic guy." Hope my old Mercedes Van withs its diesel and rapeseed oil engine and with no electronics except a radio (kids wanted USB player in it) will do it for another 40 years. So if you use your own machine and have a flatrate for data traffic costs, I think you can use it. But at work at a realtime OS, no thanks. The computer is needed to control explosives and I want to know which programs are installed; as few as possible Link to comment
lujate 575 Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 I used Fasterfox some years back before I got DSL. The results were not life-changing, but I think it helped. Here in the States, limited access wired internet if practically unheard of, so I never considered the pre-fetch to be a problem. I normally access the two sites from my Droid, but when I am on my desktop, I have never seen any issue with FF (on Linux) although I never compared it to any other browser. Link to comment
chattius 2,522 Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Yes that is the problem with international forums, internet access depends on where you live. Even I live in germany I live in countryside where DSL isn't installed yet. Costs for my radio/satellite mix of internet access is traffic dependant. At work we are directly linked to the ultrafast research networks, but company pays for this on a traffic depending rate. Back to editing settings: Prefetching does also other stuff: The site counter of a site may raise even if you didn't click on the link, because the prefetching did it for you. At work you may get in troubles because the administrator thinks you would be the one who did all the clicks on x-rated sites found on banners, ... So if you switch prefetching on (even blank firefox can do this with a setting) you need good filters what stuff you want prefetched. Firefox's standard setting is so that it runs on a 80486 machine with 64MB RAM and a telephone modem. You can switch a lot of settings on: pipelining, more requests same moment, give RAM to cache, ... From Fasterfox page: Options as in Fasterfox 0.8.1 (Firefox 1.0.7) Default Courteous Optimized Turbo Enhanced prefetching off off on on Page load timer on on on on Memory cache -1 65536 65536 65536 Disk cache 50000 76800 76800 76800 DNS cache expiration 60 3600 3600 3600 DNS cache entries 20 512 512 512 Max. connections 24 24 40 48 Max. connections per server 8 8 16 24 Max. persistent connections/server 2 2 6 8 Max. persistent connections/proxy 4 4 12 16 Pipelining off off on on Pipelining first request off off on on Proxy pipelining off off on on Max. pipelining requests 4 4 6 8 Initial paint delay 250 0 0 0 Submenu delay 300 50 50 50 Disable popups from plugins off on on on You see the settings where done for Firefox1. So probably you can manually set every machine to the settings listed under optimized or turbo for modern machines. Made a big difference for me. Link to comment
Knuckles 904 Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 One thing I've noticed is Firefox seems to be much quicker on Win 7 than XP. Been on XP for quite awhile as Sacred runs better on it, but needed to go to Win 7 to do my Database project. So far load times for the forum have been much much quicker. But the slow downs always seems worse around 8pm so will see what it does then Link to comment
Silver_fox 397 Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 So far load times for the forum have been much much quicker. But the slow downs always seems worse around 8pm so will see what it does then Could I ask you about your exact timezone? I just noticed that wiki server becomes incredibly slow in some periods of time. I just want to compare the time when it works slower for me with what you experienced. Link to comment
Knuckles 904 Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 Right now it's GMT-5 Link to comment
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