Well, as I was careful to point out in my post, different people have different needs, and that my assessment that the tradeoff doesn't work is mine. The goal of my post was to (1) nit about multiprocessing and (2) point out what the tradeoffs are. As for whether the majority of people need such things... well, the majority of people don't really care which browser they use and will be happy to use whatever they are given, so yes, I would say that the majority of people don't care about such things or about what anyone has to say in this thread, for that matter.

Yeah that's true also. The majority of people are fine with IE, whether due to ignorance, apathy, convenience, preference or whatever. But if we go by the majority of people who use Firefox (and therefore are likely know the advantages Firefox brings), most will (eventually, hopefully) be able to find an equivalent extension for google chrome to those they depend on through greasemonkey alone.

And I hope we shall never see such a dark day. A web browser made by Microsoft Version 2 powered by an engine made by Apple is not my idea of a rosy future, even if they are nominally open-source.

some times it's the add-ons and chrome script tweaks that make it run slower

On my PC Chrome is faster than ff 3.5 which in turn is faster than 3.1 and Internet Explorer 8. I will stay loyal to Firefox.

Well it is true that the motive of Mozilla is much more noble that Google. Mozilla is non-profit while Google isnt. I'm sure this influences some people to use one or the other. But I think the majority of us are more concerned with the product itself. Same goes for the engine they use. People who prefer Mozilla over Apple may disapprove of the use of webkit instead of gecko for that reason alone, while others may only care about the engine itself. Same goes for the SDK used too, I guess.

Once Firefox add 1 process per tab (they said they will for 4.0 or before), it will be better, for now minor updates should fix little regressions. If you don't remember guys, the same thing have been said with 2.0 to 3.0 and if you try them now, 3.0 is faster than 2.0. But having a 200mb history DB like mine does not help, but I love the AwesomeBar completion so more entry I get better it is.

i just updated to 3.5 and it seem to be faster than 3.0

I thought Firefox and Chrome (and IE) all had similar functionality with their address bars now. What are the differences?

I never said that they don't, I was just pointing that it work like a charm with a 200mb database, but it slow down the browser (SQLite is a slow beast). And every browser have variant. Chrome integrate Google in the main address bar, not Firefox and so on. I did not test IE8 that much yet, I just used it to install Firefox and Chrome (I am not a Windows user).

I have a P4 machine with 768mb ram and 4096x2 Physical memory!! but it works awesome , also if u want to make it bit more faster , have this

What's this about creating a new profile? How do you do it?

I've tried clearing my cache, but it's still slow. I don't remember FF ever being this slow (I'm using FF 2.0.0.20).
I used to have 20-30 tabs open and whizzing through, opening and closing tabs without so much as a hiccup. Lately (past few months) I've noticed a serious lag.
A friend suggested I update to FF 3, but then I'm afraid that some of my add-ons will no longer be supported, and from what I've heard - it's a real PITA to go back to FF 2.
Even some Youtube videos load extra slow. I've resorted to having to use IE 8 *blegh* to open some text and graphic "heavy" pages, such as eBay.

I've read this thread: http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=634949
and I'm willing to give Tencent traveler a whirl for tab intensive sessions. I'd rather get FF 2 back on its feet though. I've shut down a lot of non-essential add-ons, but haven't noticed an improvement. 15 tabs open, using a steady 188mb,

This machine's specs:
Intel core 2 duo x6800 2.93ghz
3.25gb ram
512mb video ram
winxp sp2

Creating a new profile:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Creating_a_new_F...file_on_Windows

Also backing up a profile:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Backing_up_your_...s,_and_settings

and FWIW, Firefox 3.x has greatly improved in memory usage and IMO is faster (especially 3.5).

Features != slowdown

and 3.5 was a major performance improving release as was 3., firefox has been improving speed every release. Comments like this make no sense.

Not sure what I'm doing wrong but FF is fine for me.

I suggest you take a look at mozillazine or support.mozilla.com forums. You'll see that tons of people are having speed problems. In fact, FF 3.5.1 was released to fix the "sluggish" performance that everyone said wasn't there.

Hello,

We had a P1 critical performance regression in NSS @ bug 501605 that was fixed in Firefox 3.5.1 - it is advised that you update to Firefox 3.5.2 that was released on August 3rd.

Thanks,

AaronMT (Mozilla QA)

firefox is fine for me so it sounds like your running too many addons/plugins.

I don't really understand this complaint. Firefox is plenty fast in my opinion, and not only that, but they've been greatly improving speed with 3.5... Perhaps you have a add on that's causing some trouble?

mines running super fast in windows 7 rtm. go under "about:config" in your browser setting and disable ipv6, should speed things up a bit.

Only if you're behind a router that has bad IPv6 support (if you aren't there won't be any difference)

I totally agree with you, love Firefox but it ain't that fast. I've compared it against IE8, Chrome, Safari 4 and Opera (on my personal computers) and Firefox was one of the slowest (with Chrome and Safari being the fastest). Don't get me wrong, Firefox is still my default browser but it just isn't blazing fast for me like many others claim it is.