Microsoft Can Kiss My Ass

[toasty]

I know there has been some discussion about the new Firefox browser in the past, but I feel compelled to rain yet more praise upon it. If you haven't already got it, do so and force yourself to use it for a few days. Once you get used to Firefox, IE just seems barbaric by comparison.

I feel like a great weight has been lifted, like I was blind before but didn't know it. Fucking eureka.

[rubyraks]

I use it just to stick it to microsoft, but it's really good too!

[PsynceFiction[MS]]

Too bad it slows down my web ... Good browser though

-Psynce-

[vibe]

Since I had install FireFox, I never used IE again
This thing-y really and it's far better than IE.

CHEERS

[MJ]

Re: Microsoft Can Kiss My Ass

I have it installed but never use it.

Why is it better than IE?

[Lorn]

Firefox is definately a better alternative at the moment.

[lopark]

I used the full Mozilla client for a while, then switched to Firefox about a year or so ago. I love it. Best browser, period (though to be fair, I haven't used Apple's Safari yet.)

BTW, here's a little trick to speed it up a bit. Enjoy

basically after getting to the hidden config settings you set the browser to request more data that it usually does.

1.Type ?about:config? into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set ?network.http.pipelining? to ?true?

Set ?network.http.proxy.pipelining? to ?true?

Set ?network.http.pipelining.maxrequests? to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it ?nglayout.initialpaint.delay? and set its value to ?0?. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

If you?re using a broadband connection you?ll load pages MUCH faster now!

[ubiqe]

[GrantT]

I agree completely with the Firefox praise.

There's a couple of key things I like.

One is the tabbed browsing abilities - as someone who typically has a lot of browser windows open, it helps keep things grouped. (eg: I have one [ms] window but open new tabs for each of the threads I'm going to read.)

The second thing is the rendering speed of pages. I normally run my machine in 1280x1024, which is a lot of work for the average computer's graphics card. IE is certainly poor at rendering complex webpages when compared to Firefox. There's no competition in that arena.

Definitely give it a try I say... first decent IE alternative that I recall in recent years.

[thefncrow]

I used the full Mozilla client for a while, then switched to Firefox about a year or so ago. I love it. Best browser, period (though to be fair, I haven't used Apple's Safari yet.)

BTW, here's a little trick to speed it up a bit. Enjoy

basically after getting to the hidden config settings you set the browser to request more data that it usually does.

1.Type ?about:config? into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set ?network.http.pipelining? to ?true?

Set ?network.http.proxy.pipelining? to ?true?

Set ?network.http.pipelining.maxrequests? to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it ?nglayout.initialpaint.delay? and set its value to ?0?. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

If you?re using a broadband connection you?ll load pages MUCH faster now!

Actually, don't do that. The pipelining is good, I'll give you that. However, maxrequests going up is bad bad bad. What that does is hammer servers badly with a ton of requests. I'm just going to paste this from another board I'm on, as I feel this explains the maxconnections problem fairly well:

EDIT: D'oh, I'm a moron. maxrequests, not maxrequests-per-server. Nevermind. Maxrequests going up is fine as long as per-server is left as is. I'm a dumbass, but I leave the information here for others who might not know.

Connection Tweaks
The "other" type of optimization commonly seen instructs you to alter the "network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", "network.http.max-connections-per-server" and other related settings. These are EXTREMELY DAMAGING "optimizations" to apply and should be avoided at all costs. These settings violate the HTTP protocol, which recommends a limit of 2 connections per server. When you increase it beyond that, a lot of bad things begin to happen:

The web server is often the hardest hit. The Apache web server maintains a number of "slots" which are processes lying around to handle requests as they come in. Since they usually come in at a steady rate, the server can create and destroy extra processes as needed to handle the load. When you and your "optimized" settings hit the server however, almost all of the slots that are idle are suddenly taken up by your browser. This forces the server to suddenly create a bunch of new processes to handle other traffic which is a CPU-intensive task. When you are done hogging up the slots, the server suddenly finds itself with way more processes than are needed for normal traffic, so it will kill off the extra ones.

What's worse is that since most tweaks involve such a high number of connections, once one element has been transferred, the connection is never used again. This forces the web server to hold all the connections in "keepalive" state as under normal circumstances, more than one request is sent per connection. TCP never gets a chance to automatically find the best RWIN for greatest speeds, load on routers between you and the server is increased thanks to all the extra packets... the whole basis of the HTTP/1.1 specification was to get away from the "one connection per element" days of HTTP/1.0, by applying these tweaks you are simply going back to the 1.0 days.

It's also worth pointing out that there exists an Apache module and netfilter settings that could cause your additional connections to be blocked from the server, resulting in very slow page load times, broken images and possibly even a complete IP ban for this "flooding" behaviour. Please, stick with pipelining and do not touch these settings. There is a very good reason why they are not the default.

If you have read and understood this entry thoroughly, you will notice that enabling pipelining will give you HIGHER performance than increasing the maximum number of connections! This is because with pipelining, even though there are only 2 connections to the target web server, you are still sending all your requests at once. Since you are re-using the same connection, TCP has a chance to tune the Receive Window, keep-alive is made useful and everyone is happy.

Intialpaint at 0 is good, as is turning on pipelining. However, turning up maxrequests(EDIT: My bad. maxrequests-per-server, not just maxrequests) is bad bad bad bad bad. It might be faster for you, but it puts other people's resources under severe strain. Don't do it.

Firefox is great, yes. The extensions make it just an incredible browser, and I only keep IE around for a small handful of sites which won't work without it(otherwise, IE would be blocked from ever running again on my machine).

[arielus]

i can't go online with my pack of extensions

i need adblock, mouse gestures and i'm used to tabbed browsing now.

FIREFOX

[picklemonkey]

yeah. I adblock all those huge annoying signatures that people around here use, and adblock all the iFrames in shit like Hotmail, etc. Awesome.

[demonAfro]

Re: Microsoft Can Kiss My Ass

I've gotten so used to using Opera and Firefox doesn't really do much for me. But i'm sure it is great at whatever it does

[Digger]

Re: Microsoft Can Kiss My Ass

yeah pretty damn fast, good browsing, good plugings......cant complain......

just one thing were can i download korean lenguages like IE coz i regulary enter to korean pages but only said ?????????, so i have this friend who can translate it ........and some scripts firefox cant run it well just IE.....

im a broodwar player so i reagulary download replays of professional games on this site

http://act.it.sohu.com/war3/xingji.php

so when you put your mause on some name a javascrip apliccation pop up.....

someone know how to fix it?......i only see the page well with IE to be honest :S

[toasty]

Re: Microsoft Can Kiss My Ass

I have it installed but never use it.

Why is it better than IE?

Tabbed browsing, for one -- much cleaner and feels faster b/c it doesn't have to create a new window. Also, pages in new tabs load in the background, which is nice.

The host of extensions make it highly customizable -- you can add on all sorts of little additions to add functionality, but you only need to add what you want, which I assume saves resources. For example, there is an extension that puts an alert on the status bar that lets me know when I have new email in my Gmail account.

It is also fully skinnable -- not really a functionality thing, but cool nevertheless.

Firefox also has lots of little bells and whistles that improve my efficiency. For example, when I arrive at work, I have like 5 pages that I religiously check as part of my morning ritual. Firefox lets you put them into a bookmark (read: favorites) folder and open them all with one click.

I could go on and on. I had it for awhile before I started using it regularly, too, but now that I am getting used to it, I can't think of any good reason to use IE ever again...