I’m comparing a photo site I visit on Safari and Firefox. Safari handles the JavaScript fine. Firefox doesn’t. I’m hopeful that the Adobe/Mozilla deal will help resolve that problem.
Archive for the 'Mozilla' Category
Ok, Ok, I did it. Just like everyone else, I upgraded my Ubuntu’s web browser from FF 1.5.7 (or whatever the latest release was) to 2.0. And like everyone else in the world, I agree that it was a minimal upgrade on the surface but, for me anyway, it was a total revamp. I’m glad I did it even though Ubuntu 6.10 is going to have it built in.
First… IT’S FREAK’N FAST!!!!
WAY faster than 1.5 was at loading pages. I didn’t do anything different with the install. I just followed the instructions posted on UbuntuOS. The last two commands didn’t work for me so I think some of my settings were lost but I didn’t care. All I needed to do, really, was resintall my plugins and reset my home page. I’m sure that other things are missing but I never had any favorites saved - they are all on del.icio.us.
And another thing I love… SPELLCHECK!!!! Now I can blog without having to use a 3rd party app (which never worked perfectly anyway) and I don’t need to cut my text into my word processor and run the check there. I am SO convinced it was worth it and I’m sorry I waited until now to upgrade! I’ll probably blog a lot more often now with that hurdle out of the way.
I still have to get used to the new graphics. And there are some plugins that I can’t install (yet) but that doesn’t bother me. I’m going to reinstall my Ubuntu machine to a fresh install when the new release comes out tomorrow but I expect great things from my computer now that I got FF 2.0.
Oh… and FF 2.0 works better on my 64-bit Ubuntu box than my wife’s brand new iMac w/ an Core 2 Duo CPU and 2GB of RAM!
Take that!
I think I have a performance problem with PHP and Javascript in Firefox running on my Ubuntu computer. I just recently reinstalled Ubuntu and got the 64-bit version to work (after fixing the video driver problem) and the speed difference is amazing! I never thought I’d see such an increase in loading times. But I run a few blogs and two photo galleries on my host, DreamHost - which, by the way, did work out their performance issues and things are way better than they used to be. But I still think there is something going on and I think its my choice of browser/OS.
I first noticed in on my photo site. I have a Gallery2 for my pictures and the theme I installed uses AJAX to load pictures that you click on to view (you know, the full size pictures - not the thumbnails). On my Ubuntu/Firefox setup, the picture would not load when you clicked on it for the first time. On a refresh, however, the picture drew very fast - the way I expect it to. Then I asked a friend to log on to the site and tell me how his performance was. Perfect - and he runs Vista RC1 (or 2) with Firefox 1.5.7. Then, on a hunch, I broke out my laptop, fired up The Fox and went to my site. PERFECT! My only conclusion was it must be a combination of my OS or the build of Firefox.
Thinking it could be the OS, I went to my wife’s Mac where she has Firefox 1.5.5 installed. Same problem. I had to refresh the page just to see the image. Now I thought it was the browser but wondered why it happened on all but my Windows computer. Could it be that because OS X is based on Linux/Unix that was the problem. I tried updating my Java code from Sun’s website but I only find the JRE.
Its not a hardware issue. Like I said, my Ubuntu PC suffers from this performance issue. So does my wife’s Mac. But my laptop doesn’t. And my Windows latop is a POS by today’s standards. Its a 1.6Ghz processor - single core and one of the first Centrino based setups by IBM/Lenovo. It has 512MB of RAM (like my wife’s Mac running OS X 10.4.7) but minuscule to the 4GB I have on my AMD X64 2 box that is suffering from this problem. I’ve maxed out the hardware on my Ubuntu PC and there isn’t anything faster. The connection isn’t a problem either because the laptop is using WiFi and the others are hard wired.
I don’t even know for sure if its a Javascript issue. It could be a PHP problem or even a MySQL thing but the site’s performance has been great all things considering. I can see it in the site reports I have generated; the response time has improved by 200%. I also see this issue with the new K2 theme which has that AJAX scroller thing for past posts. Since AJAX is just Javascript, it doesn’t appear anything other than that kind of performance issue.
But I don’t know how to track down the core problem or how to fix it. Anyone out there have an idea on how to make things faster?
So the other day, the Mozilla Corporation released Firefox 1.5.0.5 for all operating systems and Windows XP. Being the good geek that I am, I downloaded the build to patch those vulnerabilities and to say I’ve got the most recent version of something running on my computer. The last time I upgraded Firefox was when I downloaded Ubuntu for the first time and, although not difficult, was not he easy install script that most Windows and OS X users are used to. But this time, I found a better way of upgrading.
Before, I uncompressed the .tar file’s contents into a temporary folder somewhere on the hard drive. Then, I followed someone’s instructions on how to backup the build’s original location and move over the new one. I then was asked to follow some other commands that either linked the existing shortcuts to the new directory or something. I didn’t really understand it but I followed it on blind faith knowing I could just rebuild the OS at any time.
But with some upgrades and some personalization already completed, I didn’t want to risk this (too much). So I downloaded the new version and proceeded to uncompress it like I did the last time. But foolish me couldn’t just overwrite the current directory; I forgot about those superuser permissions that get in the way. And, because I haven’t figured out all the nuances of Ubuntu and Linux in general yet, I couldn’t get anything I tried to work - even using the sudo command to become the superuser.
After 5 minutes of this, I just about gave up. But I did one last search for upgrade tips and found this script that automatically downloads the most recent version of Firefox for your local (and it asks you for your language), extracts it, and handles all the install bits that I don’t know yet. Even though I couldn’t trust the script, I did it anyway. If it failed, it failed. If it destroyed my browser, I could always try to fix it or rebuild the OS (something I would hate but not as much as having as OS without a browser). And if it worked, well I’d write about the script and give it praise.
Well, you can imagine that it work because it did. Although the script said it failed (I think because my previous upgrades may have broken something) it did, in fact, upgrade Firefox without any adverse effects. It still launches from the launch pad on top and the version checks out. All in all, I’m really happy with it.
I’m going to read the script to see what the developer (or someone using this space) did so next time I might not need it. But until then, all 1.5.0.x Firefox releases are going to be installed with this. If you need to upgrade, make your life easy and run it.
