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Lucid

Lucid

The Freeman
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Alright, I'm getting ****ing tired of having to wait 5+ minutes every morning for Firefox to boot up and I hate how it's such a huge memory whore in general.

Are there any alternatives that have the same great add-on(namely adblock) support as Firefox?
 
Google Chrome. However, if Firefox takes 5 mins to load up there's something seriously wrong with your system.
 
I'm in the same boat as Lucid. Firefox takes too long to load and feels sluggish. Also, a few changes they made going to 3.0 are bugging me. I've been thinking about trying Chrome again, but I want script/flash/ad block.
 
I don't think I'll ever stop using Opera.
 
Opera. It's got adblocking features built in, and is pretty zippy. Because it's got almost everything built in, it can be intimidating when you're faced with all the available options, but just pick and choose what you need at the moment. If you need something later, odds are that it's in there somewhere.
 
By adblock do you mean popup blocking or actually blanking out embedded flash ads on websites?

I've never had a popup using Chrome.

Blanking out in-page ads never seemed important to me.
 
Yeah, that's what I meant.
My erratic mouse movements and such would cause me to accidentally click the ads and all rage would break loose.
Plus, flash ads with sounds were common place at one point so I enjoyed the blocking for that especially.

But, I'll take Chrome into account... it seems much less bloated than most other browsers.
 
I get this strange problem with chrome, where sites will suddenly start loading extremely slow, like I was on a 56k modem after using the browser for awhile. It goes away completely when I restart chrome, but its annoying as hell. Also, a lot of images dont seem to show up in it. I dont know if we're just seeing a lot of broken image links recently, or if its actually chrome though, since im too lazy to get firefox and test that theory.
 
Sometimes I get broken images. But that seems to have gone away now.

What really sucked was when the gifs used to go slow. Glad that's fixed.
 
Giving Google Chromium another shot. I had tried it when it first came out, but some of the bugs put me off. The latest beta is good so far. I haven't tried many sites, but I've been reading through the 30+ page comic, and it sounds like they built this thing really well.

First thing you notice is that you love the tabs.

They also have UI themes now. (Beta only)

It's quick, clean, simple and well designed. Because they designed it so that each tab has it's own process, any web page code is heavily restricted within that tab alone. Close the tab and everything to do with it is gone. Chrome even has it's own task manager so you can monitor what each page CPU and Memory usage is like, and shut the page down if necessary.

I love how each tab has it's own URL bar. The 'Omnibar' rules.

I'm a minimalist, so I'm right at home here. No extra crap everywhere. No bar at the bottom or frame. Never wanted one.

I figure that if I want the browser to be what I want it to be, there is no one better than myself to ask for it, so I've sent 2 bug reports/feature requests.

Browse through a few pages of the comic. It's very well done and easy to understand how everything works.:
http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/small_00.html
 
I'm another Chrome advocate tbh, though I've heard the new Opera is good.
 
Alright, I guess I'll give Chrome a try for about a week and then try out Opera.
 
I've sent about 8 bug reports.

For example, it doesn't remember custom font sizes for web pages. Maybe that's not a bug, that's a feature. :-?

Anyone know of a way to block flash?
 
So far it seems like Chrome doesn't like shockwave or flash advertisements on pages.
 
Lucid said:
So far it seems like Chrome doesn't like shockwave or flash advertisements on pages.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it's really bad, but I'm not sure if FF would be any different, I've never used it without flashblock.

Do you have 3.5? it's much faster than 3.0
Click to expand...
I noticed no differences going to FF 3.5

I'm at 3.5.2 in Firefox. It's not slow or anything, I just really like what Chrome has started and wanted to give it a shot. Maybe Lucid has a bad install or too many crap plugins installed. I weeded mine out a while back and noticed an improvement at start up.

Unfortunately, without Flash block / plug-ins feature, they will never get any Firefox die-hards to convert.
 
I only have AVG safe search, downthemall, and adblock installed on Firefox.

It's most likely my computer really, going to be doing a total upgrade some time next year.
 
I don't know, my computer is barebones generical and it's not quick, but it's definitely not 5 min

Anyway, a secret trick perhaps, uninstall some plugins (not add-ons), like ones that don't sound useful to you. Microsoft blah blah wave view. I managed to disable about 5 that didn't sound useful to me, and never noticed they were gone. You can always put them back next start up if you find you need them. The menu makes it easy.

It seemed to help.

I do without phishing guards, since I keep my favorites booked anyway. Can't accidentally go to the wrong page that way. Those things use up bandwidth obviously. Slow you down memory-wise as well.
 
Yeah, I just did that now actually.
Takes about a minute to start up now, a little better I guess.
 
So I got curious/bored at work...my computer is 2.66GHz Quad-Core Xeon, 6gb DDR3 1066MHz, geforce GT120 512mb.

In Windows 7, I ran the peacekeeper browser test from futuremark and got these results:
windows7mep.jpg


and then on the same machine I ran the test in OSX 10.5.8, I substituted opera for chrome since chrome doesn't run on OSX., and got:
picture1nje.png


edit: the longer bar is better
 
Hmm, testing out Chrome right now. I've been having the same Firefox problem so I thought I'd try it out. Chrome is okay.
 
After about my 12th bug report in Chrome (it was a beta), I went ahead and switched back to FF 3.5.2

Seems faster anyway.
 
xcellerate said:
So I got curious/bored at work...my computer is 2.66GHz Quad-Core Xeon, 6gb DDR3 1066MHz, geforce GT120 512mb.

In Windows 7, I ran the peacekeeper browser test from futuremark and got these results:
snip

and then on the same machine I ran the test in OSX 10.5.8, I substituted opera for chrome since chrome doesn't run on OSX., and got:
snip
Click to expand...

Then I think it's obvious Firefox is better for older PC's, because it's faster than Chrome(i tested version 1, dunno if there's a difference in new versions) for my Athlon 2800+ with 1gb.
 
Chrome seems far too buggy for me to use at the moment.
I'm going to try Opera next.
 
I might try opera.

I'm screwing around right now making a few greyscale gradient personas for Firefox.

User: Centaur Machine

No way to test them, so my first one came out pretty blah.

http://www.getpersonas.com/persona/47302
(orange text)

second one came out better
http://www.getpersonas.com/persona/47308
maroon text

If you have personas installed, you can preview them by hovering.

third one isn't showing up for some reason, gonna do it again. Also, under my user name, only 1 is showing up.

I wouldn't suggest using mine, there are some really great ones. However, mine are really light, about 16kb total, if you're into that.

I like how you can add the ones you like to your favorites. This guy has made some fantastic FF skins:
http://www.getpersonas.com/gallery/Designer/3rdkray

The one I'm currently using. http://www.getpersonas.com/persona/44274

It's tripping me the **** out, I love it.
 
Yeah, I've been using that for a while too. Added some of my own entries as well.
 
VirusType2 said:
I'm screwing around right now making a few greyscale gradient personas for Firefox.

User: Centaur Machine

No way to test them, so my first one came out pretty blah.

http://www.getpersonas.com/persona/47302
(orange text)

second one came out better
http://www.getpersonas.com/persona/47308
maroon text
Click to expand...


First one looks ok, second one is suffering from a bit of banding. A bit of a trick I tend to use with gradients is to create them using a 16 bit image rather than an 8 bit (taking advantage of the much larger transition space) do the necessary jiggery pockery and then save off an 8 bit version, this tends to reduce banding.
 
Are you talking about the little lines? Banding would be a good word for it, so I think we are talking about the same thing. I'm surprised you can see that. I could only notice it when I had the image zoomed in a little.

What kind of monitor do you have? (do want)

I figured that was due to jpg compression. I'll have to see if I can create it as a 16 bit image. (I used Paint.NET)

I kinda just did a half assed effort, just for the experience. Just wanted to try making one.
 
I can see it plain as day. It doesn't just look like banding, it looks like distortion almost. It's not like clean banding, it's like weird. Like I can see a part where going left to right it gets lighter, then darker, then lighter again. Something got ****ed up.
 
VirusType2 said:
Are you talking about the little lines? Banding would be a good word for it, so I think we are talking about the same thing. I'm surprised you can see that. I could only notice it when I had the image zoomed in a little.

What kind of monitor do you have? (do want)

I figured that was due to jpg compression. I'll have to see if I can create it as a 16 bit image. (I used Paint.NET)
Click to expand...

Yes I'm on about the visible transitions between the shades. I have a 1000:1 contrast Samsung monitor, which I find is great for Photoshop work.

I've attached a couple of shots of an abstract wallpaper I made, both are saves from an original 16 bit Photoshop file. One is a direct JPEG save, the other was saved as a 16 bit PNG, which was then opened again in photoshop, and saved as an 8bit .JPEG. If you look at both of them full screen you can clearly see that the first image has quite a lot of banding in the underlying gradient esp around the red/green transition, where as in the second by and large the transitions are much finer.

8Bit .JPEG:-



16 bit PNG then saved as 8bit Jpeg:-



Just a handy little tip, hope it comes in useful.

Kad
 
thanks for the tip.

I can clearly see the banding in both images, but the first one is really bad.

But I can't see the bands at all in the skins I made, except when I had them zoomed. I saved the 2000x200 images as 87% quality jpeg, down to 11kb

I could order a new 24" LCD, :D but I think I'll get my first pair of glasses instead with my extra money. :dork: Vision getting bad.

My monitor is about 10 years old and I used the hell out of it. It's an old samsung CRT. The fading is dramatic and unmistakable compared to my other monitor. I've got some brand new monitors lying around, but they are only 17" and nothing special. I've been meaning to swap it out regardless, the brightness of this one is pretty bad now. Probably half the reason for my eye strain.
 
Alright, I've come to the conclusion that I have some form of adware/spyware on here.
My internet as a whole has been very slow as of late and I've noticed that when I google things and click a result, I get taken to a completely different website that usually has to do with buying shit.

I've scanned with both AVG and Spybot and they haven't picked up anything!

What the ****.
Are there any other programs that I could use that are maybe more indepth in their searching?(preferably free of course)
 
Malwarebytes and Superantispyware for antispyware, or Avira, Kaspersky Online Scanner and NOD32 free 30 day trial for AV, are all good options. If you don't find anything with those, you don't have anything (very very almost very certainly very).

Scan in safe mode as much as possible. Kaspersky's online scan will not remove anything but it will identify all threatening files and it's thorough.

BTW if you're trying several of these siggestions, uninstall each one as you're done with it. No point overburdening your comp with conflicting security software too.
 
My father, who runs a computer repair shop, will run Spybot Search and Destroy then Malwarebytes to pick up what SB missed...works pretty well!
 
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