Why FF4 is so Slow

After Twittering that FireFox 4 was incredibly slow I was met with disbelief on Twitter and elsewhere that I mentioned it.  I was told how fast FF4 is, now.

I seriously do not like FireFox because it was so pathetically slow and because it ignores good user interface experience strategies.  I was actually baffled how anyone would think that the thing was any faster, as it was so slow that it nearly crashed my Asus EeePC netbook.

Well, I finally fired-up that little Windows 7 netbook again yesterday and discovered what the problem is.  FF4 is allowing multiple and simultaneous video streams to run all at once.  What?  C’MON MAN!  Who the hell designs anything with multiple active video streams on the same page?

To further complicate this issue, FireFox 4 is allowing these simultaneous video streams to run even though the page it is loading isn’t active.  Huh?  C’MON MAN!  That is uncalled for.

Why would anyone want to load multiple pages at the same time, you may ask?  Why not?  If you are loading a page from an African web host (which have notoriously slow connections), you may load another website in another tab while you are waiting for the African website to load over seemingly slow dial-up speeds.

This isn’t even close to being every case.  I am a webmaster, a hostmaster and a web designer.  As a part of my daily duties I like to insure that my sites, as well as my client’s sites, are loading as expected each day.  So my “Home” page button is a collection of all the sites I have to check.  I need to ensure that the various hosting solutions I am offering are performing well, that my websites are loading quickly and correctly, that my sites have not been hacked, that the system is working correctly for myself & my clientel.

As it happens, a variety of those websites each have video on them, and as a part of the marketing it loads and plays by default.  Anyone may pause the play.  And until FF4, only one of these sites were streaming video when the web page they reside on wasn’t active (in focus).

But FireFox 4 has changed all that.  And because FF4 is loading all these different video streams in the background, the browser slows to a crawl.  As I press buttons, maybe something will happen, eventually.  The user interface is nearly useless.  The multiple videos that are playing are completely broken-up as the system races to deliver all the data, including those out-of-focus video streams on tabs that aren’t even viewable.  And it runs every single video stream as if they all needed to be run at the same time.

C’MON MAN!

As designers we can do much better jobs of designing apps that work.  The user is robbed of any ability to navigate.  The video stream is corrupted, the user experience is destroyed through excessive stupidity in implementation.

C’MON MOZILLA!  Get your head out of its ass.

Outlook 2010

Well, my wife has had a little time to get used to how Outlook 2010 does things now.  So this is a brief update on our impression of it…

My wife likes it, but has some issues.  The same issues cause me to think that it is a worthless piece of crap.

1. Old contacts from Windows Vista Mail were never imported.  Not doing this automatically (or at least asking permission to) is just pure stupidity.  What was the sense in transferring everything over from Vista in the first place?  To have the old files, yes, but also to have the very same application data and configuration.  Outlook 2010 is pathetic because it craps on the whole idea of maintaining a so-called “seamless” upgrade path.  This is absolutely inexcusable and stands a testament to the absolute thoughtlessness and complete lack of vision of the entire Outlook development team.
2. Multiple accounts?:  Multiple Inboxes!  This in itself is completely void of intelligence.  The fact that Outlook has to have multiple inboxes for multiple email addresses and never incorporates them all into a streamlined universal inbox is beyond the realm of stupidity.  This is yet another stupid task that should have been done completely automatically.
3. Adding contacts is pretty awkward as well. You don’t get access to this function unless you have an email previewed.  THEN you can add its contact and have access to the contacts.  But not until you have an email cued-up somehow.    Really?  I mean, maybe the only reason I ran the damn program was to change Aunt Len’s address because she moved.  And the social contacts is just in the way.  My wife doesn’t participate in any social networking sites, so it is just in the way and confusing her.

Really Microsoft? With the release of Windows 7 I was finally ready to take you seriously, and more than just a necessary business toy that I was required to have and support.  But Outlook 2010 can’t incorporate the simple email functionality that we have come to expect from every other email program in the world?  C’MON, MAN!  C’MON YOU MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION!  Get with it.

I already started taking Microsoft seriously when I found that their hardware products were so damn good (XBOX, mice and keyboards).  But I have still been waiting a very long time for them to develop any usable software products.  With Windows 7 I thought that Microsoft had started producing software that actually worked, but they have completely dropped the ball with any other software packages they produce (Expression, Publisher and IE8/9 are direct examples of this ineptness). With Outlook 2010’s pathetic featureless release I don’t really expect Microsoft to ever get what users expect out of their computing experience.

DroidX Adventures – New Blog Posts

Over the past couple days I’ve been posting about my adventures with my DroidX, android apps, and the evil genius at Microsoft.

Getting the DroidX:

Finally, I have an Android!

…Got a comment from an Android development Guru, there!

Getting a Deal on a DroidX

…How we finessed a discount and why it wasn’t better than it was.

App Reviews:

What’s the Very Best Password Safe?

…This is a great app from Kuffs.

Need to Squirrel Away a Contact’s Info in your Droid Quickly and Easily?

…A review of the CamCard Business Card Reader, a great app that works well and is extremely convenient.

I also started a new blog about business application software:

Welcome to BApps, for Business Applications of All Kinds, on Any Platform

…Offers an intro and why I decided to write it.

And then we discover the evil genius in marketing behind Win 7 and the Office 2010 packages…

Windows 7 Mail Issues, Outlook and Office 2010 Purchase Woes

…which is more on my adventures in computing.  😉

All of those blogs are on Google’s Blogspot.  I only customized a few of the templates there, but I purposely kept them skinny.  Because in today’s age, even though we are viewing web pages on widescreen Hi-Def monitor resolutions of 720P scan lines, we rarely use all of that space when browsing the web and now more and more people are browsing the web on handheld devices there are just now getting to be 640 or 800 pixels wide (max).

Obviously, I have been influenced by my DroidX recently in my creative thinking and design.  Though I will sometimes push the envelope and experiment with Hi-Def widescreen web designs, unless we have at least another page for small device presentations, we really should be alert when we form singlular minded resolution designs.

Fortunately, This blog at WordPress.com is served up differently when accessed by a mobile device, so I don’t have to change this big ol’ honk’n template.  😉  But the Blogster blogs are served up using the exact same web page design template for mobile devices.  Plus, I honestly think that not all of the players have arrived in the hand held market yet because the small device phenomena is set to explode.  But, that’s just me.  Of course, when I said that “Everyone who wants one will have a computer.”, back when the hottest piece of business technology was an electric typewriter (1968 or 1970, about), my father and brother laughed at me then, too.  Then they ran around joking about it and teasing me.  Oh yeah, they don’t remember that, now.  LOL.

Oh, yeah…

For quite some time now I’ve been working on a new project and I can’t wait to show every one.  But it’s just not quite ready to be revealed just yet.  In a few days, maybe.  🙂

-Doug