Tag: chrome

Oh Firefox, You Little Resource Hog

I love using Firefox as my primary browser. I prefer using it for a variety of reasons. Lately, though, I’ve noticed that it’s become a bit of a resource hog, and I can’t work out why? I’ve disabled add-ons that I don’t need, and it still uses about 1.4GB of RAM at a minimum for pages that Chrome uses a quarter of RAM for.

Has something changed in Firefox’s architecture? One thought I had is that maybe this has to do with something like page pre-fetching (I think Firefox does that), or something along those lines. I want to sort this out. Chrome seems to be so much better at resource management at the moment.

Update (2018-03-18): Mozilla shared this page to help troubleshoot Firefox memory issues: Firefox uses too much memory (RAM) – How to fix | Firefox Help

Photo by ideadad on Unsplash

Still keen to try a #Chromebook? @Dell has a nice one.

I’m pretty keen to try a Chromebook and see how much of what I need to do at work can be done with just one of these. This Dell Chromebook looks pretty compelling, if I was going to buy one …

Here is an intro from the product announcement:

Dell today announced the continued expansion of its collaboration with Google with the launch of the Dell Chromebook 13, a premium 13.3-inch professional Chromebook solution. Designed for today’s on-the-go lifestyle, the Dell Chromebook 13 offers class-leading performance from up to 5th generation Intel® Core™ i5 processors, an ultra-sleek design, stunning display and up to 12 hours of battery life. Along with powering businesses with the speed and simplicity of Chrome for Work, the Chromebook provides customers with manageability and security software and applications, which allow it to fit seamlessly into any professional computing environment. The Dell Chromebook 13 joins Dell’s Chrome portfolio and further showcases the commitment Dell and Google have made to developing innovative and flexible solutions to meet the evolving needs of the mobile workforce.

Image courtesy of Dell.

Facebook is not friends with Chrome

Jeez, why does Google Chrome always have a hernia when uploading more than 20 or 30 photos to Facebook? Something about that process radically slows the browser window down to the point where it freezes.

Weird rendering issues in Firefox on my @squarespace site

I noticed some off rendering issues in Facebook when I view this site in Firefox (pretty much the last few versions), compared to Chrome. This is what this site looks like in Chrome:

Paul Jacobson's Hub - in Chrome 17 stable

This is what the site looks like in Firefox (I’m running the stable version 11):

Paul Jacobson's Hub - Firefox 11 stable

I notice 2 issues in Firefox’s rendering. The first is that the grey background visible in Chrome gives way to a black background in Firefox. The second is the horizontal scrollbar at the bottom of Firefox suggesting there is more on the page to the right of the visible area (there isn’t).

I contacted Squarespace Support about this a while ago when I was running a beta version of Firefox and received the usual response that they don’t support beta browser versions but this issue has persisted. I’m going to point them to this post when I submit a ticket but I’m curious if anyone else has any ideas about possible causes.

Massive memory usage in Chrome isn't a bug, its a feature

I took a look at Chrome’s memory usage a few minutes ago. I switched back to Chrome last week or so after using Firefox for a while as my default. I didn’t have a particularly compelling reason to switch to Chrome from Firefox. I just loaded Chrome and it looked a little cleaner than Firefox and I liked having a simple, effective Instapaper extension in Chrome.

I have 6 tabs open in Chrome:

This was Chrome’s memory usage:

About Memory on Chrome

Chrome has displayed that note about over counting its memory usage since Chrome was in the single digits (or low teens at least). With all of Chrome’s advances, the team still hasn’t fixed how Chrome measures its own memory usage? I’m beginning to think this bug remains unresolved on purpose. Contrast these metrics:

About Memory - Chrome details

… with these metrics from Firefox 11 running the same tabs:

about:memory - Firefox

Maybe this bug report isn’t really a bug report, its a feature highlight.

It was in space, man

I love this ad. In fact these Chromebook ads are all pretty funny:

This site is now powered by Squarespace

Update: The site subsequently returned to WordPress. 🙂

After an aborted attempt to migrate this site from its WordPress home of many years over the weekend, I completed the migration to Squarespace yesterday. I really like Squarespace as a platform and while WordPress worked just fine for years I felt it was time for a change and to consolidate my various blogs. My plan now is to post the stuff I would otherwise have posted to my Tumblr blog to this site too and to use this site as my canonical hub on the Web down the line.

I noticed that while the site looks awesome in Chrome, Firefox doesn’t seem to like the theme or stylesheets all that much. Here is what the site looks like in Chrome:

Paul Jacobson's Hub - Chrome screenshot

And this is what it looks like in Firefox 9 beta:

Paul Jacobson's Hub - Firefox 9 screenshot

The new site feels a lot snappier to me and its apparently incredibly difficult to bring a Squarespace site down so this site should be a lot more stable and responsive than its previous version.