The new version of Mozilla, 1.1, is released for many operating systems. Release notes here. Opinion: Check the screenshot, showing Mozilla’s slow UI (XUL) performance on a dual Celeron @ 533. Before you comment on it, please read the already published comments, because we explain more over there. Update: I added a comment with the image attachment on Mozilla’s BugZilla. There was already a bug entry for this, which suggests more people having problems with this behavior. See? I am not mad… Update2: And here is another bug submitted by someone else, with the same problem, and his shot. His bug is marked as “Verified”. But it is still not fixed.
Mozilla 1.1 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Probably there is a problem with WinXP or with double CPU or with graphic card drivers.
Then the problem would also crop out in IE, right? Doubt it is a Windows XP problem nor a graphics card problem because it happens to me on my three machines, one running W2k, the other WXP and another Linux.
Eugenia:
First of all – I have a Celeron 366@550, I have no such problems. Having said that, I reckognice that you have managed to post a screenshot of Mozilla painting overlaps.
However, this does not mean that this is mozilla’s fault!
If I were to post a screenshot of IE behaving badly (which it does ever so often), does this make IE generally buggy? – Indeed I would only have proven that IE is buggy on MY computer.
As for hotmail, I can use it just fine…
Secondly:
You mentioned browsing experience as being important. Why do you then not praise:
– popup blocking (and other JS stuff)
– tabbed browsing
– bannerremoval (bannerblind.mozdev.org)
– gestures (optimoz.mozdev.org)
– etc.
I know that 3rd party applications can do many of these features, however we’re talking the browser only here.
I used to use IE exclusively, but especially pop ups have made me use Mozilla, that and a more SECURE browser/mail client.
Thirdly:
Talking about dethroning IE, isn’t Mozilla king on?:
Mac OS X
Mac
Linux
AIX
HP-UX
OpenVMS
OS/2
BSD/OS
FreeBSD
Solaris
Tru64 Unix
BeOS (performance is sucky, but at least it renders correctly!)
The reason for IE’s dominance is not because of it’s superiority, but a lot of other factors (which I am not going to discuss here).
The ONLY time I use IE, is when I need to access some crap site, specifically tailored for IE.
*Applause*
Oh my god? WTF does this mean: “At all. At people who don’t get it, at developers who created a Frankstein monster, at the zealots who released a 1.0 version and they hope to dethrone IE.”
I really get the impression that you are now viewing the Mozilla developers really really badly (zealots), and in your opinion their product is worth nothing (Frankenstein monster).
Based on the little contact I’ve had with Mozilla developers, via http://www.Mozilla.org, they certainly are not zealots. The developer community seems to be professional people, who are writing a browser. They got to decide when to release 1.0 and they did it. In my opinion, 1.0 was and is quite good. And I don’t think that they, as such, hope to dethrone IE. I don’t think Mozilla is for them means to any end, but an end in itself. Come on, why should the hope to dethrone IE, what good would that be for Mozilla developers?
And I do believe Mozilla is a very good product all in all. So, you see the menus drawing. Well, I see them too, on an 300Mhz PII with 128 MB of memory, and I daresay I could get a similar screengrab. But that does not detract from my browsing experience. I don’t spend my day playing with my mouse and the menus, and for those moments I do it, the fact that menus are drawn oddly (but very fast – faster than enough) doesn’t make Mozilla any worse.
And I’m really thankful they’ve done the job, because they’ve given me a good browser to run for free on NetBSD and other similar platforms.
The main reason behind this is that it is XML-based. And there is a lot of negative speed impacts as a result of its usage.
The XML file need only to be parsed when the program starts, so it should not affect menu drawing speed.
But XUL had served in more ways than making a potentially pretty looking UI. It makes porting much more easier between platforms so that Mozilla for Windows and Mozilla or Linux won’t differ too much.
Still it is a very inefficient implementation. XUL is neither the only nor the first approach in cross-platform UI frameworks, but it sure is amongst the slowest. Take wxWindows as a positive example.
Yeah, tabbed browsing is *great*. I never thought I’d like it until my Linux installation didn’t want to run two instances using the same user profile. (Yeah, I probably made/make a mistake, I’m a stupid newbie.) Now I basically can’t use IE anymore, because it lacks this feature. Especially with the new “New Tab” button in 1.1b (and now 1.1). I just wish popups would open in a new tab, too.
If I were to post a screenshot of IE behaving badly (which it does ever so often), does this make IE generally buggy? – Indeed I would only have proven that IE is buggy on MY computer.
I tried to get IE to display incorrectly in screenshots but it won’t. Try it yourself take several of IE vs mozilla and you should see Mozilla play up.
As for me not being able to see it except by screenshot. Remeber I am running a very fast computer. Those with lesser speced systems might have problems. There is no reason Mozilla cannot do this. XUL or XML do not slow things down so much that you draw crappily. It is somewhere in the rendering algorithms.
> And I’m really thankful they’ve done the job, because they’ve given me a good browser to run for free on NetBSD and other similar platforms.
I use it too on OSes that IE does not work or work correctly. On these OSes, Mozilla is the browser of my choice. But not on Windows, where there is IE, and it is better for me.
>But that does not detract from my browsing experience. I don’t spend my day playing with my mouse and the menus,
It does for me. I do not like using Mozilla feeling slower when using the menu or when I use that stupidly slow URL drop down bar (which is equally slow as the menus), when there is IE that works faster.
Mozilla might have a nice HTML engine, but the UI is just not there. And this is for me a reason for not using it. Maybe it is not a reason for you. But it is certainly for me. Different users, different needs.
Kindergarden again.
It’s obvious tht the Mozilla’s GUI is *perfect* on a fast machine (the line seems to be around 800 Mhz). I’m running P3-1000 here and no problems whatever I try. Menu switching is instantaneous. Yes, I was able to catch some overlapping in a screenshot, it was already drawing the contents of a new menu while an old one wasn’t erased yet but it’s impossible for me to spot that while hovering the menu. There is also no delay when switching between two menus (I tried it a lot). Scrolling is fine as well, weither I use the scrollbars or the arrow keys. Perfectly smooth scrolling. Another thing that has improved again is the text input. It’s much faster and responsive (like it should be, but Mozilla 1.0 had still problems). The URL popup is also instantaneous. I have to say, that the Mozilla 1.1 GUI in some cases feels more responsive than the Galeon GUI with Mozilla 1.0.
So to summarize, the XUL GUI indeed needs a fast CPU. This is sad, but not a problem for those who got such a fast CPU. For those who don’t, it’s a problem but still no reason to laugh and bitch about the project. Plattform-dependend GUI’s like K-Meleon, Chimera and Galeon will hopefully also make it usable for people on low end computers while Mozilla will still improve. It became faster now with every release and I don’t think that this trend will revert again.
No reason to get so nasty… Mozilla is doing great. Sure, IE is still probably the best browser for Windows but having a free alternative that is cross plattform and can almost compete is DAMN important. People shouldn’t always expect that every software can blow MS software away. MS is the largest and richest software company in this world and they are certainly creating some of the best proprietory software that exists today. Beating them in anything (and especially in an area they are focusing on like operating system or web browser) is close to impossible. We can only keep trying and I don’t think we are doing bad.
I am using Mozilla 1.0 in my 1533 MHz 256 RAM Debian box and menus are as fast as opera menus! except for the new windows and startup time is very fast, perhaps it helps that I am using LittleMozilla as theme
Yes, but you have a fast nachine. I don’t. Point is that XUL should run fine on a 500 machine. It doesn’t. That’s the whole point of this conversation.
Then the problem would also crop out in IE, right? Doubt it is a Windows XP problem nor a graphics card problem because it happens to me on my three machines, one running W2k, the other WXP and another Linux.
Not necessary. It can be a bug that only arise with a compination of factors.
Anyway now I’m able to reproduce the problem here.
It’s not easy. You have to open a menu and then run over other menu without leaving the menu bar. And it’s barely visible. In the normal use it’s not visible and I’m not speaking of a fast machine (P3 at 500Mhz) neither a fast grafic card (an old ati) or a fast os (NT4).
I thing that in some system the problem became bigger, in my case it’s not a thing you could speak of.
I’m wondering if it’s related to skin, I’m using littlemozilla btw.
Blowing away Microsoft is never a good motivation.
The motivation should be building the best browser ever, and in order to achieve that goal, users have to speak up on issues that hold Mozilla back from being the best browser. When it takes at least 800MHz for a responsive UI, then that is a serious issue and blindly ignoring it because Microsoft is evil is stupid.
>You have to open a menu and then run over other menu without leaving the menu bar
Exactly.
>I’m wondering if it’s related to skin, I’m using littlemozilla btw.
I tried all skins I have here. The two included and my favorite, ‘Pinball’. They all have the same problem. It is not a skin problem.
And there is not a problem with XP. I get the same problem on my Mandrake and Gentoo Linux, on the same machine.
Yes, you misunderstood me… I agree that building the best browser possible should be the goal and I’m not saying that everything what Mozilla does is perfect just because they stand up against Microsoft. It’s definetly a bugger that it isn’t a good user experience with 500 Mhz. Then again it’s no reason to laugh or bitch at the project just because it can’t keep up with IE yet.
BTW, I forgot the write… The “clipboard pasting in windows” is no bug of course! The guy saying that it would be a feature is more than right. It’s the X tradition that middle mouse button will paste the clipboard. And what should happen when pasting the clipboard into the browser window? Right. Every X browser does it, I think even Opera. Konqueror didn’t at first, this was reported as a bug, now it does it as well. Once you get used to it it’s very nice and I use it all the time (there is no similar convenient alternative).
Can’t understand it, because here @ work (800 MHZ PII,256 MB, Win2K) it works great! Even the GUI is very fast!!!
I thing that Microsooooft WinXP has a build-in MozillaGUISlowDown task!
🙂
-A
> I thing that Microsooooft WinXP has a build-in MozillaGUISlowDown task!
Keep your political supposedly-funny joke away please. If you had bothered to read just 3-4 comments above, you would see that the exact same behavior happens on Linux as well.
BTW, I just came back from reading Slashdot. I am not alone it seems:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=38748&cid=4147263
Opera on my P133 laptop with 40MB ram runs better then Mozilla on my 1.2 ghz desktop with 1200MB ram. Nuff said.
Windoze GUI Programming and X11 GUI Programming is a completely different thing!!!And as Mozilla additionally uses a own API and Implementation of a own GUI on top of another (X11 / Windoze) you cannot compare the speeds of the ones that easily!
Dot.
Pleaze look at the code of the Mozilla GUI and tell me that you can.
-A
PS:”political supposedly-funny jokes” – ha ha
I actually installed mozilla basically on EVERY PC I can touch and I don’t think that the mozilla UI is THAT slow.
Surely isn’t the fastest thing out.
Eugenia how’s possible that Mozilla on gentoo 1.4 as slow as on winXP on the dual celeron?
I’m using it right now while compiling kde3.1cvs with the -j4 makeopts and isn’t crawling (p4 and not so such ram)
(damn the cvs ebuild just failed on arts!)
Eugenia: Keep your political supposedly-funny joke away please.
I think you need a good night’s sleep 😀 It can cure crankiness fast 🙂
If mozilla is to continue to address as many platforms as it does, it will always be slow. No amount of begging and complaining will make it faster. Mozilla is not interesting. Gecko is interesting. Wrap gecko in a native gui of your choice and you should find a more pleasing performance.
Of course you can compare it.
Remember, were not talking about some abstract programming difference. Were talking about how an Axe feels in your hand and how well it cuts, not what mold it was made in.
> Eugenia how’s possible that Mozilla on gentoo 1.4 as slow as on winXP on the dual celeron?
I run Gentoo 1.2, I haven’t made the switch to 1.4 yet, because each time I -update world, it breaks a sh*tload of things.
I am using Moz on Linux. My machine is one Celeron 566 Mhz, 194 MB, so it’s not the fastest system possible. I don’t have your problem with the menu, Eugenia. The worst I can have is one menu staying pulled down while the mouse cursor is over another menu. It occurs only with a theme enabled; under the “classic” theme, it doesn’t happen.
The UI experience depends from several factors: the CPU speed, the OS, the themes in Mozilla, the UI skinning for Windows or the wm under Linux. These are probably not the only parameters.
————————————–
http://korbinus.fr.st
Now that I browsed a little and have many tabs open, the “Go” menu is a problem. Not a real problem, but when I quickly switch between Go and another menu I notice a tiny delay and overlapping. Not so bad that it would annoy me but noticable. When I move quickly above the menus it tends to “forget” the Go menu. It also contains quite a lot of items.
it’s odd that you have such speed issues with Mozilla on you dual celeron system, i run it on a Celeron 500 which until a couple of weeks ago had only 80MB of RAM and even with the modern theme the interface was nice and fast, under linux i find that it starts quicker and behaves itself better but is still not slow, a port of galeon would require use of GTK on windows which is ok for GIMP but otherwise pretty pointless especially since MFC embeded mozilla and kmeleon already exist, wouldn’t it be much quicker to pick up the 0.6 sources for K-Meleon and continue with that?
On a 3 year old Celeron 400 with 32MB of RAM.
And I don’t get your menu drawing problem.
Menu redraw is as fast as IE6s menu redraw.
Using Win98SE.
When using the classic theme in windows XP, menu loading is instant just like any other windows application. When I switched to the fisher price default theme, menu loading was as slow as eugenia is saying.
Basically, I think this is a problem related to thinking the fisher price theme is good looking enough to be used, as opposed to a problem with mozilla menu speed.
To those saying its slow and does not render new menues quickly. I am posting this from a P3-933 with 768 ram and it it butter smooth in the area of new menues being drawn and old ones closed. Perhaps my machine is far too powerfull…. hmm well really I think not. Perhaps that you notice it says there is still optimizations still needed. But I will certainly say that im liking Mozilla more and more. Besides the skins make it nice and you can set it up to “work” quite well. I do like IE 6 I will admit but im liking mozilla’s tabbed browsing more and more.
>I’m wondering if it’s related to skin, I’m using littlemozilla btw.
I tried all skins I have here. The two included and my favorite, ‘Pinball’. They all have the same problem. It is not a skin problem.
I tried Pinball theme and the problem is *a lot* more visible there.
I’m running Mozilla 1.1 on a P3 450 with win2k and it’s as responsive as a native application. Opening a new window takes a fraction of a second, menus open instantaneously and I’ve never seen any redraw artifacts.
I am running Mozilla 1.0 on my machine and I am so happy with the performance and stability I removed the IE icons from my desktop to stop byself from running IE, out of habit.
I do not notice any of the performance issues, but I am on a 2.26(533 fsb) P4 with 1gig of memory and a NVidia GeForce Ti 4400.
On my Linux install I did notice some GUI slugishness with Moz, but I also noticed it with many other apps. Then I installed the accellerated NVidia drivers and those problems cleared up and the GUI was much more snappy.
When mentioning how responsive the UI is for you it might be helpfull to know what video card you have.
Chris ([email protected])
People can enjoy slow UI, or different UI, unresponsive UI, the fact is there is a market, and usually promoted virtues of an app are: consistency, responsivity.
So if all the people here say they’re happy with Mozilla, well fine, I’m happy too with Mozilla, I’ve ditched IE and its security holes (yup, that’s another quality an app should have, especially a browser).
Maybe they’re not even lying when they say “it is okay there on my 14ghz P4”.
But please, have the HONESTY to say it: XUL SUCKS BAD. I’m looking for a qt gecko alternative for Linux (I dont want to install GTK…), and for my Win2000. It’s a 96mb, 2.5mb video ram, pentium 266. It takes between one and 2 secs to draw a menu, and switching between them takes 0.5sec and is painfull. And let’s not talk about memory footprint…
Still, I use Mozilla, and I’ve been using nightlies for months already b4 1.0. Don’t insult Eugenia for just stating facts, and look at a wider range when you put your comments. Your single experience is not everyone’s experience, and your motives are not everyone’s motives (politics…).
Keep the good job Eugenia
It’s faster than 1.0. It’s getting better all the time.
Hey guys,
There is obviously something going on here that we’re not understanding. This XUL GUI slowness cannot be a general thing since many of us do not see this on our platforms. It does not mean Eugenia is not experiencing it.
I have 2 platforms right in front of me.
1. Duron 600, 256MB RAM
Linux-mandrake 8.0 (updated X to 4.1, KDE 3.0.2)
2. AMD K6-2 400, 192MB RAM
Win2k no service packs
I downloaded mozilla binaries for both platforms. I certainly cannot get mozilla to perform slow enough to be able to get a screenshot like Eugenia’s! The performance on machine2 is only slightly slower than on machine1.
I have used BeOS and I know how fast it is, please don’t think others are necessarily inexperienced/ignorant of “fast guis”. While XUL performance has not been super-fast, it is as fast as other programs on the 2 respective platforms above. Mozilla 1.1 seems a tad bit faster than 1.0.
From the mixed reactions on this comment list, I can only conclude that there must be something else here that is not necessarily mozilla’s fault. Perhaps this feakishly slow gui only affects certain platforms? Euginia might just happen to have all the ones that are affected?
I don’t know what you’re talking about for “responsive” gui.. i’m running gentoo 1.2 compiled using 2.95 series gcc with i686 optimizations. Before that i was running i386 compiled mozilla on debian, I have NEVER had the problems you’re talking about with the UI redrawing speed. that machine is a p2 450, not overclocked, with 256mb ram. As another example, i’ll use my p3 650 laptop with 128mb ram, it also does not have any redrawing problems with the UI, it’s responsive, not AS responsive as a native windows GUI, but it is plenty fast to get more than enough work done. To the point where it does not bother me at all. the laptop is running windows xp, yes.. on 128mb ram. it runs just fine. Mozilla is the only browser i use at home. No IE except for testing webpages i develop for… making sure it looks the same in both. I prefer mozilla, and i tell everyone to use mozilla simply because its much easier to develop for.
Sorry, here’s bit more info on the 2 machines:
I have 2 platforms right in front of me.
1. Duron 600, 256MB RAM
Linux-mandrake 8.0 (updated to: XFree86 4.1, KDE 3.0.2)
Running X at 1152 x 864 x 32bit, Geforce2 32MB
2. AMD K6-2 400, 192MB RAM
Win2k no service packs
Running at 1024 x 768 x 32bit, Riva TNT2 16MB
Both use the Modern mozilla theme
After spending half a hour reading this incredibly long and rather depressing thread, i must say i am dismayed at how people on fora like this can be completely detached from reality. And i am sure that most of you are serious professionals (like Eugenia) with many years of experience in the industry. Still you seem to live in a world of your own where only technical questions exists and economics and politics are just the arguments of “zealots”.
Do I have to remind you why Mozilla exists in the first place? Of course all of you know, but it doesn’t show in this thread. Briefly, mozilla exists to prevent microsoft to be the ONLY corporation providing acces to the web, that’s what at stake here.
In order to do that, Moz has to (again very briefly) a. exist and b. be completely standards compliant so that MS cannot determine web standards for its own interest. In a world without LINUX on the sever side and MoZ Ms could easily do that, and i’am sure you all agree about the native consequences of this. So the point of Moz is NOT to be the best browser in the world (nonsense), or compete with IE in market share (another nonsense, as someone already pointed out), nor is it to provide the best web-surfing experience you can get. The point is to make sure you don’t have to use MS sotware to access the web.
ESR has said it very well on a numer of occasions.
From this point of view the interface is simply immaterial, Gecko is what counts. The renderer has to be so featureful as possible (and be free, of course) so as to make it possible for you to do everything you usally do with IE. Sure, a sluggish UI makes for an unplesant experience, and I hope Moz developers will be able fix that, but the point is NOT to have more users than IE, the point is to defend open standards (if Moz is doint it well is another issue), and by so doing protect ALL users, including IE users.
In this context, Eugenia’s (and others’) cries for technical perfection are disingenious, to say the least. When something so important as the open nature of the web is at stake you simply CANNOT repeat the mantra “this is software, i am a reviewer, nothing else counts”.
Or rather, you can. And so we have the spectacle of adult people, with years of experiency in the industry, who only use the browser which is one second faster for them, as if these choices had no other consequences at all in our lives.
So, let me remind you that we live in a world in which advanced technology is more and more important, and those cut out of it suffer more and more – thus making the role of OSS software absolutely crucial. So for us that do care about these issues (which are big issues, mind you, so please, don’t call us “OSS zealots”) the scene of all of you insulting each other about how fast menus are redrawn is simply disgusting.
Moz 1.1 has crashed on me more times since I installed it 4 hours ago than Moz 1.0 did in 2 months of usage.
This is probably similar to problems with slow XUL. I think they broke something.
Guess I am not the only one who’s disappointed about those broke features.
Same here. Mozilla 1.1 keeps crashing on this forum 😉
Yep, OSNews keeps crashing throughout the whole 1.1 branch. And apparently Moz also doesn’t like being exited while still loading. I filed at least two dozen of these crash incidents via talkback.
regards,
Stephan
wow.. someone has certainly nailed themselves to the cross.. what bullshit.. why should someone use a piece of software that is IMNSHO ungodly slow (even on my WinXP and BeOS P4 1.8ghz machine) because they think it stands for something. the bottom line is I will use the better product, which currently, is MSIE6 on XP. this is not an issue of open standards and politics, its a freakin web browser. jesus.
why should someone use a piece of software that is IMNSHO ungodly slow (even on my WinXP and BeOS P4 1.8ghz machine) because they think it stands for something.
the problem is, it DOES stand for something, whether you like it or not. And that “something” covers your own freedom to choose the better product …
This is starting to sound like the people who argue, bicker, and complain about Swing’s GUI responsiveness. I personally have no problems with either swing or mozilla’s interface. It is fast, customizable, and I never experience symptoms such as those in the snapshots this eugenia person exhibits. Sounds like buggy video drivers or something. Second, if this person has such a problem with Mozilla, than stick with bloody IE. MS will love you for it. Otherwise, stop complaining. You sound like someone who actually thought BeOS was fast! Hah, maybe 5 years ago. QNX is definitely much faster.
In Moz 1.0 if you download a few files from time to time & eventually take a look at the Tools->DownLoad_Manager & try to empty the list, for only a few pages it seems to take O(n^3) time or something, sometimes it takes 30mins while 100%ing the cpu (1GHz Athlon).
At least some of the developers on the Moz team need some CS schooling, otherwise the performance is ok but not as fast as IE. I would guess that ELQ celery pc may have some issue with the menu resources being badly spread over the HD or fragmented registry etc.
When I replaced a really terrible slow HD with a more recent WD HD, the HD speed was 10x better, & W2K was finally useable, & I had been blaming MS for poor speed, my fault for hanging on to really lousy HW. I also clean & defrag the registry quite often to get rid of gremlins with SystemSuite etc, I think it makes a difference.
I don’t experience the speed issues. I noticed them on my box when I had a 600MHz Duron and 128MB of RAM, but Moz was certainly useable. Now that I have a 1GHz Duron and 640MB of RAM in my box, Mozilla just flies, even if I’m using VESA video.
jls, I admire fred’s determination. I don’t think Mozilla is that important, but I’m happy that there are developers who want to work on projects like this. Thanks to them, I can use a web browser that works just fine under Win32 and Linux, and handles JavaScript well.
However, I’m not too sure about Mozilla being the only alternative to MS. What about Opera? IIRC, it’s almost as popular as Mozilla among the general public. And, it certainly has enough speed
Do I have to remind you why Mozilla exists in the first place? … Briefly, mozilla exists to prevent microsoft to be the ONLY corporation providing acces to the web, that’s what at stake here.
And Opera, OmniWeb, etc don’t count for jack, apparently.
the problem is, it DOES stand for something, whether you like it or not. And that “something” covers your own freedom to choose the better product …[i]
So I choose… Opera?
[i]This is starting to sound like the people who argue, bicker, and complain about Swing’s GUI responsiveness.
Perhaps because people want responsive GUIs? Has this not been shown time and time again?
I personally have no problems with either swing or mozilla’s interface.
Well that’s great, how does it feel being in the 0.00001% of people who actually use a graphical Java application with any regularity?
Sounds like buggy video drivers or something.
ROTFLMAO. Umm, you’re blaming her… video drivers before XUL? I’m sorry, I’m not going to dignify that comment with a response.
You sound like someone who actually thought BeOS was fast! Hah, maybe 5 years ago. QNX is definitely much faster.
TROLL TROLL TROLL
Here’s the chant: On a P2-350 machine, 128MB RAM, Windows 98SE, GeForce2 MX-200 video card, I noticed exactly the behavior Eugenia describes. I didn’t especially care for it, but IMO the features in Mozilla were worth it.
After upgrading the machine to a P3-500 and 256MB of RAM, things only improved a little. But the features still made it worth my time.
Later the computer was upgraded again to a Duron-1100, SiS 735 chipset, Windows XP. Much much nicer now – I almost never see UI delays anymore.
On the other machine (Celeron-533A, 512MB RAM, Voodoo3 3000 PCI, Debian Linux or Win98), things with Moz 1.0 are about like the first box in its Intel days. Moz under Linux is slower than its Windows counterpart, but that’s why $DEITY made Galeon (and Links, and Lynx). Moz 1.1/Linux is noticeably faster than 1.0, nearly eliminating overt UI delays. Haven’t rebooted to test Windows yet.
I’ve been using Mozilla since about M14, and it’s been my main Windows browser since somewhere around 0.9. Generally I’m pretty happy with it; I just wish I could sort the $%(! bookmarks so they’d /stay/ sorted.
>You sound like someone who actually thought BeOS was fast! Hah, maybe 5 years ago. QNX is definitely much faster.
This is just wrong man, BeOS is still at least 2 times faster than QNX, at least on my PC (dual 800MHZ pIII, 512mb ram, radeon gfxcard)
-A
Although QNX is something that I (could) like!!!
I’m running Mozilla 1.1 on Windows 2000 on a 450 mhz PIII (or is it just a PII, I don’t remember for certain) with 128 MB RAM. I cannot see the problems that Eugenia describes, nor can I duplicate her screen captures. I’m wondering if it is indeed related to the deficiencies of the Celeron processor. And, as to why it wouldn’t also affect IE, perhaps there are some kind of optimizations built into IE to compensate. Or, perhaps more plausibly, it is a problem with WinXP that IE manages to bypass or work around due to better information on the workings of XP. (Surely MS wouldn’t do that would they?).
I’d be interested in knowing if the problem could be duplicated after a clean install of the OS on Eugenia’s dual celeron box. Perhaps some previous install or uninstall left components that are affecting performance. And no, that would NOT necessarily be expected to affect other apps such as MSIE.
It used to be that people with strong views were idealistic, now they are zealots. It seems more and more people are hiding under rocks, happy with putting up with what they have, with no morals at all. These are the same people who won’t give Ralf Nader the time of day because it exposes their contridictions and shame about injustice. These people don’t like to feel bad they like to feel good, no matter the cost.
… that Mozilla 1.1 (for Windoof) crashes when loading this page of comments? I mean viewing all comments on a single page, by now there are 148 comments… obviously too much for this version.
Besides, I have to say, that Mozilla´s UI does not feel sluggish (on a pIII 500) at all. I know what I am talking about, I am using BeOS for years now
What does feel sluggish is Mozilla for BeOS (again on this pIII 500), but not on a newer machine like an AthlonXP 1800+ … must be a porting issue.
I want to use Mozilla on my WinXP box decently, and this slowness of its menu and generally of its GUI shell just gives on my nerves.
I think you mean “gets on my nerves.” Close enough.
I agree completely. It seems Mozilla menus respond when they feel like getting around to it. for those of us on less than the latest P4, it is annoying. This is what caused some peole to suspect that the UI was written in Java. We know now that it isn’t, but it feels like old Swing.
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58149
Eugenia,
I remember you saying you run your desktops at 1600×1200… are you running the same resolution on all OSs that you are seeing the problem? Could this be the problem?
I am amazed that you see it on the PC, Linux and Mac. I have never seen any noticeable speed difference between IE and Mozilla on Windows 98 or 2K since version 1.0, and I have DEFINITELY never seen the problem you are having with slow menu redraws. Do you have this problem with the latest versions of Netscape as well?
Oops…. just saw your comments on your resolution, Eugenia. Skip that theory…
I have yet to look at Mozilla 1.1, but perhaps the issue is not with how fast the computer runs, memory, or a number of other variables.
The issue may be with priorities with the UI. Specifically, when a mouse-over occurs and ends, what happens in what order.
The situation Eugenia is talking about would occur when Mozilla notes that the mouse is over a new menu, it (apparently) immediately starts to draw the next menu and once that is complete, redraws the screen that would be the next layer down (i.e. the application window). (From Eugenia’s screen prints, it appears that the menu display can be interrupted at two points – after the menu form has been drawn and after the menu form has been populated with items.)
From my experience with IE, this browser apparently notes the end of a mouse-over (i.e. the mouse is no longer over the menu button or drawn menu) and redraws the screen (including the highlight of a menu button if you have merely moved the cursor over the next button in line). Once that is redrawn, then it starts drawing the next menu. I have found that if I drag the mouse fast enough over the menu buttons, IE will not try to draw all of the menues. (Perhaps there is a slight delay once the mouse-over has occured before the menu is drawn).
So, basically in Mozilla mouse-over has precedence over mouse-over-end. And in IE mouse-over-end has precedence over mouse-over.
Just thoughts from someone who has not had the time to dig into the guts of the code for Mozilla.
On a Dell Optiplex GX110 running Win NT 4 pages load and render fast and the UI is responsive with no sign of sluggishness. 1.1 feels snappier than 1.1b. Are the UI complaints a Windows XP issue? Mozilla is a great browser…
I’m not a casual Mozilla user, I’m an every day, primary browser Mozilla user. Why? Because it is not any slower in standard operations than IE or any browser on both my OS X and Windows2000 box. When I read news sites, I like having the links loading in the background. I basically create new windows (tabs in the case of Mozilla) to cache up all the different pages and then read them. I had to switch from IE to Mozilla, because IE continuously gets bogged down doing multiple download operations. On the PC I get around this by creating new instances of IE, instead of spawning all windows off of the same instance. There is no workaround for OS X however.
I have never had the slow problems Eugenia is experiencing. I use the Low-Fi theme to minimize screen real estate usage, even when my screen resolution is 1400×1050. The only thing that Mozilla is really bad at as inanimated graphics. For some reason Mozilla eats up a disproportionate number of CPU cycles on these operations. Other than that, neither the GUI nor the renderer has a noticable difference from IE, and I get the benefit of tabbed browsing and much better multiple download connection support (see above).
I tried using PSP to duplicate these multi-menu screenshots on my lowly 900MHz Dell laptop, and couldn’t do it on either IE or Mozilla. I’m only running W2K and a non-graphics intensive Mozilla theme, so maybe that is why.
Mozilla one the browser war for me because it is faster than IE, and as stable as IE. I only use IE for one thing, accessing my Microsoft Outlook mail from a webpage. I only do this because the Outlook engine on the server won’t allow authentication by the Mozilla browser. Otherwise, I would only have IE installed on Windows because you can’t remove it, and I’d uninstall it from OS X.
Ok heres my hardware
750 Mhz Duron…
756 MB of ram….
Nvidia Geforce2 Card.
1024×768 Video
Mandrake Linux 8.2
KDE 3.0.1
Mozzilla 0.98
Modern Theme.
Basically I have been useing this browser as my only browser for about 4 months… I have had no speed or stability issues for in that time and I have had difficulty accessing 3 web sites (one of them was my own).
I also watched the CPU meter while playing with the menus… It did not go appreciably above half way… I can even use Mozzilla with no ISSUES while both the cpu and memory usage at ~100% (3D rendering going on in background). So I don’t think that processor spead is the issue here….
all these people are saying how slow it is im on win XP(no eye candy) 200mhz 80mb RAM and it works better/faster than IE 6 so…..
-Kevin
I have an old Celeron 466, with 256 MB of ram, running Windows 2000 SP3, and Mozilla 1.0 and 1.1 render menus fully, as fast as I can slide my mouse back and forth over the menu bar. Every menu fully renders as fast as I can see it.
I suspect that either Windows XP sucks worse than I thought, or Euginia needs to format and reinstall her Windows XP install, and maybe have a competent tech have a look at her BIOS settings.
In any case, before publishing an article on a major OS news website that has a large readership, maybe she should check with one or two others to see if the performance problems are real or just an artifact of her machine. This site gets a lot of views, and Euginia’s poor experiences with Mozilla do not seem to be the norm.
I’m running mozilla on a:
195Mhz SGI Octane, IRIX 6.5
200Mhz Compaq laptop, Linux 2.4
350Mhz PII desktop, Linux 2.4
and a 600Mhz PIII windows NT4 machine
and I cant get them to run that slow…
the only time i saw mozilla run like that was when i compiled it for my dual 50Mhz sparc 10…
In any case, before publishing an article on a major OS news website that has a large readership, maybe she should check with one or two others to see if the performance problems are real or just an artifact of her machine. This site gets a lot of views, and Euginia’s poor experiences with Mozilla do not seem to be the norm.
Eugenia is not the only person to experience this problem, as is evident by other posts on this board. I’m just having a hard time duplicating it in my end on two different operating systems running on not-so-great hardware.
I have been running the 1.1b version since it has been released, and just upgraded to the regualar release. The 1.1b version also had the menu drawing problem, but that was on Windows XP. I decided to go back to Win2k, never happened again. I’m wondering if you turn off “Use personalized menus” if that would affect it, seems like once I unchecked that, no menu drawing problems. I still think its an XP deal, and btw IE6 is built into the operating system, so of course its going to run faster, so you can’t compare speeds between those two.
Eugenia:Get a clue. Wake up. IE is the king. I wish Mozilla was the king. But it ain’t. Not as of August 27th 2002.
Even if Mozilla was the fastest, most standards compliant browser in the world on all platforms, IE would still be the king because it is the default browser on nearly 100% of consumer desktops (OS X and all Windows). The overwhelming majority of computer users stick with the defaults. As Microsoft has proven time and time again, it isn’t how good the product is, it is how you work it into the user’s experience.
When did IE take the lead from Netscape? Not when it surpassed Netscape in user experience, but when Microsoft started building it into Windows95. It did eventually surpass Netscape, but in my experience Mozilla is now on par in practically every usability criteria, and better in some cases. Without it being the default browser however it is still going to stay stuck in obscurity. Perhaps AOL using it as its engine will change things for the better for Mozilla.
i have a ti powerbook 800 running mac os 10.2, and a dual celron 366 running winxp pro. on my mac, i run mozilla exclusivly. when there is no web browser built into the os, it makes no sense to use IE. It has a nasty rendering bug where parts of some pages won’t show up until you roll your mouse over them. load time isn’t an issue for me, i usually load mozilla once and then just let it sit in the dock, clicking it and pressing apple+n to create a new window is quite fast. on windows, however, troy is right, nothing is faster than IE. while mozilla may render pages faster, being able to type a url into the location bar of ANY explorer window is an amazing feature.
I honestly can’t get my Mozilla menus to perform as bad as in Eugenias screenshot.
Only reason I can think of is WinXP, but it doesn’t seem logical.
My specs are:
PII 300, 160 MB ram, ATA33, TNT2 M64, Windows 2000 Pro and Debian Linux Sid. Except for CPU cache, alot less than Eugenias with other words.
oh, and for the record; mozilla 1.1 under os x 10.2 renders the menu’s as fast as any other app does. maybe it’s just a…. god forbid…. windows problem *gasp*
Just because someone is having a problem and some don’t doesn’t mean that there is no problem. Eugenia tells you about the problem and you start to debunk her with “There is no bug” like you were using the Jedi mind trick.
Instead couldn’t we just accept the fact that Mozilla still has a few bugs left and hope that it gets fixed soon, maybe even encourage the Mozilla developers by telling it that they have done a great job so far. Why not lend a helping hand yourself either to the user (Eugenia) or the developers (Mozilla) instead of spreading FUD.
Damn, I really miss the Be community way of trying to help…
I would say, being a power user, that even these small differences in speed make a difference. Right now I am running a XP 1600+ and just the split second time it takes to draw the widgets gets on your nerves when you browse the web all day. I could only imagine that this annoyance is multiplied running on a celeron 533. I use IE in windows, and will continue until mozilla for windows is more like galeon for linux.
single Pentium 2 450 mhz, 128 megs sdram, 56k modem, Windows 98 and I don’t have any real issues with the GUI. I don’t use quicklaunch either. Menus are just fine.
I use kde 3.03 on top of red hat null…i like the features of mozilla, but find 2 things annoying…
a) font rendering
b) start up speed
I for now use the Konquerer browser. At first I didn;t like it, but now I can’t go back. I started using it because the fonts in mozilla under linux are just garbage and hard to read…
Konquerer is truly a great browser but lacks in some areas…
If the start up speed of the application could be faster that would be good. But foremost the fonts.
Can anyone tell me how to fix them?
“until mozilla for windows is more like galeon for linux.”
Better set your hopes into K-Meleon.
It’s still developed besides of what the website shows, you just have to visit the forums. I believe that it should get more support. Just see what some people could do with Galeon in Linux and there are a LOT more developers in Windows world, so if K-Meleon just would get more publicity… (I’m sure more people here know about Galeon or even Chimaera than K-Meleon).
I’m using a P2 400 with 256mb ram and Moz 1.1 under gentoo.
The menus are fast, and don’t exibit the problems Eugenia has noted. I’m not saying that she does not have that problem, but it’s worth finding out whether it’s a bug rather than assuming the way the browser gui works is slow.
Why? Because one is quickly fixable, and the other would involve a time consuming re-write of the gui to get any improvements.
Mozilla is still based on Gtk1 which has bad font handling. This will improve as soon as the Gtk2 version of Mozilla gets stable and released.
I’m currently runnning Linux, setup on a Celeron 800 w/128 meg
of ram, on an ancient ATI 4 meg Mach64 set to 800 x 600 x 24.
I’m not seeing any menu rendering trouble in Mozilla 1.1.
Eugenia, I use Netscape 6.2 on a pentium 120 Mhz machine with 256 MB RAM and I can’t see the problem you have. Netscape 6.2 is based on Mozilla 0.9.4.1 which is generally much slower than the current Mozilla builds. May I ask you what is your graphics card ? Some people have resolved many usability problems with Mozilla just by upgrading their video drivers. Your problem could also be caused by your profile if you use a profile created with an older version of Mozilla.
thnx for the info about the fonts…
Hello,
to see that you just have to launch two windows and move one while the second is loading a website (http://www.libe.fr) or to launch a link with the middle button and you’ll see weird redraw problems and you’ll have to wait 1 or 2 seconds for the screens to be usable…
so you’ll have to wait 1 or 2 seconds every click you make just to wait the interface be responding …. that’s not normal..
but to be honest, someone told me it has something to do with dns-loockup stuff….. whatever thoses words means.
thus I’m always trying news browser and I always go back to netscape 4.78,….
I agree with eugenia, a browser couldn’t be slow on a PIII 500, running linux redhat 6.2 and 256 meg.
You’re all running athlon XXX mhz but the old machine are not so old…
everything more than a pentieum 100 should be able to have a fast browser….a friend of mine under win98SE and a pentium 200 mmx, 192 meg, running ie5 has no problem to surf and the IU is just as fast as any windows apps… better than me with mozilla and gnome !
I have pain to admit my PIII 500 is an old machine, I can do anything with it : q3, divx, dvd, mp3 rip so why should I need a athlon 1,7 ghz just to have a cool browser experience, that’s the way it should be….
message to XML developper : forget it, it makes everything slow (I’m a working on xml parsing and it just as slow as it usefull)…
Djamé
To Byte Me:
You write that we should all be helpful and say thanks to the developers and not debunk Eugenia for exposing a flaw in Mozilla. I think if you read the comments written, just about the only one doing any debunking is Eugenia. She seems almost euphorious that she can find a flaw in Mozilla.
Of course there are bugs in Mozilla. I can’t think of a single software project that doesn’t. What I really disliked reading the comments to this story is how the editor continued to a) claim all other are out of their minds because we don’t see the same problem and b) ridicule the people who created the great product Mozilla is in spite of its flaws.
It’s unbecoming to laugh at people because you can find a flaw. Bear in mind, you pay nothing for it. You get it because some people were kind enough to create it for you.
Unrelenting, merciless reviewer or not, I found the way the flaw (which I can’t reproduce) was exposed and commented entirely distasteful.
If this is symptomatic of how developers are/were treated in the BeOS community, then thank God I never went down that road.
Hi, I am one of the guys who wrote an O’Reilly Mozilla book to be available in September. I have some questions and comments here for Eugenia.
1. What is your video card? It can make a difference with the drawing speed of Mozilla. What you are seeing is not a problem with XUL, as far as I can tell, so it must be something else video related. There is more to the GUI to Mozilla than just XUL. There are lower levels.
2. How does Mozilla work in the other themes for you? It is possible there is some weird bug where your Pinball theme is not being cached, and this would be a bug in Mozilla that would need reported.
3. You should go to bugzilla.mozilla.org and post a bug with your screenshots, and total system specs, including video and memory. Also post all other comments you have to make. File this under Performance. This type of menu sluggishness indicated something serious that needs to be addressed! If you want it fixed, you should try to work with Mozilla developers to find the problem here.
4. Mozilla is a memory hog. However, I bet you have a lot of memory in your system. This should not be the problem.
Welcome to Mozilla! I have been battling Mozilla bugs for two and a half years, but things have been getting much better.
Consider that Mozilla was built totally from scratch, so it will probably be another year or so before it could be considered “bulletproof”. Just remember how bad early versions of Netscape and IE were. I would consider Mozilla a resounding success when it comes to bugs and speed, considering how new it is, and how much more complex it is than other browsers.
If this is symptomatic of how developers are/were treated in the BeOS community, then thank God I never went down that road.
What the heck does this have to do with BeOS?
> Eugenia, could you tell us what specific part of the UI you think is slow?
When I click to the menu of Mozilla, and then just mouse over the next menu item, I can see the previous opened menu being half drawn and the new menu item has already started drawing over the previous one, I can see its outline and about half a second to 1 second later it populates inside the outline the new menu and discards the previous one.
In other words, I can see the drawing process fully. It sucks and it feels hopelessly slow. It just isn’t smooth for Christ’s sake. Are you all blind over here?
Hi Eugenia,
I have a 600Mhz Thinkpad with 384 MB of Ram and Win2k. Mozilla 1.0 does not exhibit the slow menu drawing that you describe (and that is pictured in your screen shot). I am not sure why Dual 533 celerons and 256MB of ram would be that much slower than my laptop. Are you sure something isn’t screwed up with your system? Maybe you are due for a reformat.
-Jason Stiles
Seems like half of people here say Mozilla GUI is slow and the other half say it’s perfect. I know people who cannot tell the difference between 60HZ and 85HZ on a CRT monitor (they just don’t see the flickering even when I pointed it out).
It also depends on the speed of the system.
Case closed.
Rizo
As I experience the same problems as Eugenia, I took the freedom to answer your questions:
1. What is your video card?
I use a nVidia TNT2 chip using a more or less recent (last 2 months) Detonator driver.
2. How does Mozilla work in the other themes for you?
The performance is the same with both the Classic and the Modern theme.
4. Mozilla is a memory hog. However, I bet you have a lot of memory in your system. This should not be the problem.
576MB and far from swapping.
Does it have to do with SMP? Both Eugenia and I are running an Abit BP6 with two 533 Celerons. Note that the slowness symptom does not apply to net transfer or page rendering – Mozilla feels faster here than IE.
Dear Eugenia,
I use Duron 650, 128MB of RAM, and my experience with UI slowness is quite different – yes – it IS slower, and I would say that it lives on the edge of acceptance – but far from being unusable.
Before you start maddeing once again, while experience of most users is quite different, just try to think if your Celeron 533 (I wonder how does second CPU help) or so, is the right machine for WindowsXP. Try the same setup with Win98.
You will not find another BeOS and simply put – get used to the fact, that no matter how fast your hw is, there will always be OS “x” or App “y”, that will make you feel like using 386 😉
Cheers,
-pekr-
-pekr-
i must say that actually i’ve noticed that it is slightly noticable in windows XP on my machine but not in windows 98, similarly a number of other 2d apps perform far far worse in windows XP with my TNT2 than in win98 on the same machine, my girlfriends machine runs mozilla very quickly indeed and the menus even in modern are very quick to update, thats a p2450 with an ATI rage pro in windows 98 though.
The screen shots that Eugenia posted are the same thing i expericance to. I agree that the GUI feels damn slow, I have XPpro on this computer and everything is very snappy except mozilla. I would hope such problems wouldn’t happen on many of the people’s here insane fast machines. I have seen the same problem on both my PII400 384 meg and Celeron 500 192 meg running XP , the problem was around in pre-1.0 builds when i ran win98. There is no excuse for this. I would think mozilla that sucks more memory than any other thing on this computer (30-50 meg, even on idle) would be able to do something quickly.
Also the 1.1 beta build as some mentioned was bad, I had a problem with spontanious mozilla closing completely. I switched back to 1.0 and problem went away. I really wish something would happen to change or explan why mozilla will bring a computer to a hault for a period of time then be just fine and everything gets going again. Or why it dies when it starts to run a java app. If these are specific to me or are general problems i would like to know.
i do know what speed means, i used to use BeOS a lot, but i never tried BeZilla, and i also never ran any really chunky apps on Be, Mozilla’s performance is perfectly good on some boxes, the only slight gripe is the load time, but then if you’re running windows 95 and start IE 5.5 it takes longer to start than moz on the same box.
Just downloaded 1.1 to an older IBM 300PL on NT 4. It’s a Pentium 2 – 200Mhz with mediocre video.
I’m not experiencing any speed issues at all.
It appears that the only people who find Mozilla acceptable or “speedy as IE” or some other sad little image they throw over their own eyes are the ones that overzealously believe Mozilla is the greatest, fastest, etc. That said, time for some real information: FACT: I tested it on an Athlon XP2000+ with 1.5G of RAM, Ti4660 video card; and there is no way it should be this horribly slow. I see the same things Eugenia posted screenshots of/explained. FACT: I tested the same version on a 450mhz system with 512M of ram and a 500mhz system with 512M of ram and got the same results exactly. FACT: Mozilla is not as fast as Internet Explorer on Windows, and finally FACT: It’s just not there yet, so don’t jump on your high horse about how damn amazing Mozilla is; the renderinng engine is very impressive, but I am sorry to say, as a full browser (UI rendering included); Mozilla 1.1 can’t cut it and since the 1.0 release, all it has been is the Mozilla group(and users, sometimes) trying to claim some superiority over IE that does NOT exist.
-Thanks, I think I’ll stick with Internet Explorer for this year.
I agree, and I also agree that most of these people haven’t used BeOS and don’t know how a Gui is supposed to feel.
I still develop for BeOS, and I still love it, and I can vouch for others when I say BeOS devs don’t get thrashed by their users.
Anyhow, I agree that the Mozilla UI needs some work, but as long as they stick with this XUL crap (yes, I called it crap) it’s going to remain sluggish compared to a native UI. They dug this hole a long time ago. There’s simply too much overhead for me to believe that it will ever run as smoothly or as quick as a native GUI.
I have a 1ghz PIII and still I can’t stand the lack of response. I don’t get the drawing errors, but it’s just… slow.
Agreed.
I bought my new system expecting that it would be a big step up from a 450mhz system (read previous post for specs of new system) and you know what? I felt no different in general with Mozilla. (I could go on a rant about other things, too; but I don’t think that I need to declare a fatwa on XFree86 in this thread).
I don’t have anywhere near that kind of problem on my machine. Athlon XP 1900+ 512meg of ram, GF4 4200. On this machine Mozilla’s GUI seems to be every bit as fast (if not faster) than IE’s.
You belong with the “few, the proud”, then, anikan. You must be one of those folks who have really low standards.
Internet Explorer ANNHIILATES Mozilla on the system aforementioned by myself. Total oblideration speed-wise.
Mozilla is nowhere near production quality as a whole, though as I said, the rendering engine is swift.
just because you tested it doesn’t mean it’s the case, and don’t go around plastering the word FACT on your unfounded comments please. i’ve tested it and have had varying results on all windows platforms i’ve tested, win2k on a pentium4 is one of the best contenders but there’s so little in it as far as i can tell. yes XUL is not the best GUI framework in the world, but it is fast enough and especially on modern machines.
FACT: Another zealot just can’t stand to hear a project exposed to the truth publically. Sad.