Internet Explorer Ripoff

[Mr Initial Man]

I just tried out a browser called Crazy Browser. It uses the IE rendering engine, but has tabbed browsing. Anyone else hear of this?

[bathurst_guy]

IE now has tabbed browsing

[ashish]

yes it does have tabbed browsing but its still it beta and a bit buggy... i am just browsing along and it hits me with a 'you are offile' message :(

[theuedimaster]

There are a few ie spinoffs that have tabbed browsing. this ain't the first.

[felgall]

I tried Crazy browser about 5 years ago. It is just an overlay that provides tabs on IE. On a scale of 1 to 10 where Firefox 1.5 and Opera 8.5 are 10 and IE6 is 1, crazy browser ranks at about 1.5.

[NogDog]

I tried Crazy browser about 5 years ago. It is just an overlay that provides tabs on IE. On a scale of 1 to 10 where Firefox 1.5 and Opera 8.5 are 10 and IE6 is 1, crazy browser ranks at about 1.5.
I can't give FF1.5 a 10, at least not until they fix the memory leaks.

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

I can't give FF1.5 a 10, at least not until they fix the memory leaks.
true, i'd give FF 1.5 a fair 7/10

[josie]

Agree about the memory leaks...looking forward to a fix. But it is still a big improvement over IE.

[JPnyc]

Everything mozilla builds, seemingly, is a memory pig. Their programs run slower and offer fewer features than most paid programs which use far less memory, do a LOT more, and do it faster.

[MstrBob]

Everything mozilla builds, seemingly, is a memory pig. Their programs run slower and offer fewer features than most paid programs which use far less memory, do a LOT more, and do it faster.

Well, part of it is that Mozilla uses a rendering engine to render the entire UI (cross-platform reasons). Part of it IS memory leaks - memory management is all over the place in their code. Although, Gecko is getting a hell of a lot better with 1.9. The Firefox 3 nightly build I ran had a much smaller imprint for me. Unfortunately, you won't see the new Gecko (and thus, the better memory management) in Firefox until 2007 (Firefox 2 uses the same engine as Firefox 1.5 - though with some patches).

[KDLA]

true, i'd give FF 1.5 a fair 7/10

Agreed.

KDLA

[felgall]

I wasn't trying to suggest that Firefox or Opera was perfect but if you only give them 7/10 then you have to reduce IEs score to -5/10 and Crazy Browser to -3/10.

[KDLA]

I wasn't trying to suggest that Firefox or Opera was perfect but if you only give them 7/10 then you have to reduce IEs score to -5/10 and Crazy Browser to -3/10.

Hey, negative numbers are real numbers, too!
I'd guess that your scores are pretty much right on, felgall!

[JPnyc]

I'm not even speaking only of their browsers, Bob, but of their email programs as well. BLunderbird used 17mb of memory MINIMIZED to the systray. The Bat! uses half that, has WAY more in the way of features (a ridiculous amount more) and does every operation in about 1/3rd the time. That's what I mean. I fully realize it's not really fair to compare a free program to a paid one, but that sort of thing doesn't matter to me. Performance is all I care about. I'll gladly shell out $35 for the right program.

I just scratch my head when everyone and their brother is extolling the virtues of mozilla programs, and frankly, I just don't see it. I tend to have the opposite opinion. Blunderbird crashed irretrievably on me twice (2 diff. systems and OS), and I lost mail each time. Say what you all like about Outlook, but that never happened to me with it.

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

I'm not even speaking only of their browsers, Bob, but of their email programs as well. BLunderbird used 17mb of memory MINIMIZED to the systray. The Bat! uses half that, has WAY more in the way of features (a ridiculous amount more) and does every operation in about 1/3rd the time. That's what I mean. I fully realize it's not really fair to compare a free program to a paid one, but that sort of thing doesn't matter to me. Performance is all I care about. I'll gladly shell out $35 for the right program.

I just scratch my head when everyone and their brother is extolling the virtues of mozilla programs, and frankly, I just don't see it. I tend to have the opposite opinion. Blunderbird crashed irretrievably on me twice (2 diff. systems and OS), and I lost mail each time. Say what you all like about Outlook, but that never happened to me with it.
outlook doesnt cost 35$ ;)

[JPnyc]

No, but the one I use does.

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

ah ok!

[MstrBob]

Well, you see my point is that Mozilla's projects all use Gecko, so they have the same underpinnings. Though I certainly agree with you that Thunderbird is far from being a competitor with Outlook. There are legitimate complaints as to its usability and stability. My concern is about all the wild memory tales that are told about Mozilla products, many of which are bunk, many others of which have been patched. But I still don't understand people's complaints as it is. I run (compared to other web developers) a lower end system. I've got a P3, 20Gb hard drive, and 192 MB RAM. So, you can imagine, I'm very concious about program performance and space consumption. But having firefox open has never been an issue for me. I boot up firefox and leaving it running for most all I'm using my computer. I use and abuse tabs to no end. But I never have it reach the outrageous numbers that other people claim. Indeed, I've never seen it go over 50MB of memory for me - and I'm one to visit some graphic-heavy sites, along with Newgrounds (A website filled with flash movies and games made by its own users).

From what I've read of other people's experiences, I'd say the single biggest memory hogg in Firefox are Extensions. They are a beautiful thing, but they leak memory like a M*****F***. The vast majority are poorly designed, but it would help if Gecko were better at catching these leaks. Who knows, Gecko 1.9 brings many new JS enhancements, Gecko 2.0 is set to support Javascript 2.0. My point, I guess, is that with Mozilla things are getting better. Can the same be said of IE?

[JPnyc]

You wanna see some intelligent memory management, try out Maxthon just for kicks. I have 27 tabs open right now and it's using 8mb of ram. It swaps out to vm, but it also allows you to control that. You can (if you have a ton of ram to spare) change a setting and it'll cease to do that.

[Jick]

I think Firefox has been catching a bad rap for the most part. One has to take into account where exactly Firefox is right now. It's still a relatively new program compared to some others, such as IE. Firefox is just now starting to experience wide-spread use. Because of that, a great deal more is being done with it, which in turn has users finding more problems. Not necessarily because the programmers are getting lazy, but because people are finding old problems that have been there and just weren't visible when Firefox was in it's infancy.

It would appear that Firefox is heading down the same road as IE in that respect. Back when IE was still new and people didn't really care about standards and all that, it was thought of as a great program. Now, years later, people have been finding more and more problems because they've been trying to do things that IE wasn't originally programmed for.

The only difference, of course, is that Firefox has a great group of programmers behind it so many of the problems that people are finding actually get dealt with. As long as Firefox stays on it's current course I can't imagine the current problems will be around for that long.

[JPnyc]

Well it's a question of good programming vs. not so good. Good memory management vs. not so good.The gecko engine does support the standards of the w3c light yrs beyond what IE's trident engine does, but gecko tends to break with every bump in the road. I get complaints of crashes and malfunctions of all sorts from FF users on our forums. Conversely, Opera's rendering engine also supports the standards very well but it's far more resilient. Far less prone to crashes and other malfunctions.

[felgall]

The big advantage that the Mozilla based products have is that just about everyone moving to them has come from Internet Explorer and Outlook Express.

Opera is just about as up to date with the standards as Firefox is, is about 1/10th the size and runs somewhat faster. If Opera had stopped charging last year instead of waiting until early this year then it would probably be where Firefox is now and Firefox would be a minor player.

Outlook costs a lot more than $35 (I don't think you can even buy it as a separate program - I think it is only available as part of the more expensive versions of Office).

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

well, im also running FF (1.5) most of the time, and sometimes the memory use get's quite high..right now i have 3 tabs opened and it's 37.3 MB but i saw it get to 120 a few times, which is almost half what PS CS2 takes for me when using

Now i opened 3 IE (6) windows with the same pages and it gets to 26 MB
Thunderbird uses about 20 to 22 MB for me

[MstrBob]

You want a fair comparison? I just opened up 4 websites in tabs. This forum, a heavy CSS designed website, an image gallery, and a flash website. Firefox used 39 Mb of Memory. IE 7 used 61 Mb. Opera used 41Mb. Not a precise test, but still.

[JPnyc]

The $35 price tag wasn't in reference to Outlook, but "The Bat!", which is what I use. However I did use outlook for a decent amount of yrs and never had a problem like I had with blunderbird in the 1st yr of use.

[JPnyc]

Well that isn't a fair comparison, Bob. You have to compare tabbed browser with tabbed browser. If you want to compare FF and IE's memory use, then you need to open each with just a single site (the same one).

[MstrBob]

Well that isn't a fair comparison, Bob. You have to compare tabbed browser with tabbed browser. If you want to compare FF and IE's memory use, then you need to open each with just a single site (the same one).

o.O? I did. I opened up 4 tabs in Firefox, IE, and Opera. How is that not fair? I used the same 4 pages in all three browsers. It included Presentational Markup (this forum), Heavy CSS parsing, Image Handling, and Flash. I didn't open up multiple instances of any of the browsers, I used tabs in each. I think it's a fair comparison.

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

o.O? I did. I opened up 4 tabs in Firefox, IE, and Opera. How is that not fair? I used the same 4 pages in all three browsers. It included Presentational Markup (this forum), Heavy CSS parsing, Image Handling, and Flash. I didn't open up multiple instances of any of the browsers, I used tabs in each. I think it's a fair comparison.
totally fair ;)

[JPnyc]

Because IE isn't a tabbed browser, unless you're referring to the beta 7. I tend to ignore betas.

[MstrBob]

Because IE isn't a tabbed browser, unless you're referring to the beta 7. I tend to ignore betas.

Yes, I use IE 7 Beta 2 - which is feature complete. Microsoft has said they won't be touching the rendering engine now, only working on security bugs. So I don't imagine memory usage will change much, if at all. After all, what is a final release but a blessed Beta? Okay, so let's try this without any tabs, one page:

IE 6: 6MB
IE 7: 7.5MB
Opera: 30MB
Firefox: 10MB

This seems to give a sketch of how tabbing works in these browsers. In IE 7, memory seems to grow exponentially. Opera gives a footprint, but more Tabs gives small overhead. Firefox seems to more or less double with each tab. If you are a tab abuser, Opera would seem to be your best bet. Mid-level use of tabs: Firefox. One page people: IE.

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

i don't know why, right now i only have this page opened and FF takes 57MB!

[JPnyc]

Well I think that might be because (caution:pure speculation coming) IE7 is actually a shell not unlike Avant or Maxthon or any of the other shell browsers, which actually just calls another instance of the MS webBrowser controls. So with each new tab there's more instances of the DLLs which is why you see so many handles with a shell browser, as compared to the mozilla ones.

The reason I assume this is because shells like Maxthon do still work with IE7 installed, which would mean that they haven't changed the names or call methods of the webBrowser objects, just updated them. If they'd changed names or call methods it would've broken all the shells out there.

[MstrBob]

Well I think that might be because (caution:pure speculation coming) IE7 is actually a shell not unlike Avant or Maxthon or any of the other shell browsers, which actually just calls another instance of the MS webBrowser controls. So with each new tab there's more instances of the DLLs which is why you see so many handles with a shell browser, as compared to the mozilla ones.

The reason I assume this is because shells like Maxthon do still work with IE7 installed, which would mean that they haven't changed the names or call methods of the webBrowser objects, just updated them. If they'd changed names or call methods it would've broken all the shells out there.

What of the ActiveX controls are there to change? IE 7 didn't bring any new DOM changes or additions. Even if Microsoft does fix their DOM support, they will most likely only ADD methods, which shouldn't affect current 3rd party applications. IE 7 is NOT a shell. It is just as much Internet Explorer as 6 or 5 or 5.5. Trident (the rendering engine) was updated, the main app itself. Most likely, they just did a horrid job of implementing Tabs not surprising given their rushed development schedule. Really, there isn't a reason to have to change the ActiveX API, unless they want to add additional functionality, which they haven't done.

[JPnyc]

Well i haven't used it but I've read the CSS2 support is much improved in 7. So there must've been changes to the engine no?

[MstrBob]

Well i haven't used it but I've read the CSS2 support is much improved in 7. So there must've been changes to the engine no?

Changes to the rendering engine, yes. Changes to the ActiveX API? No. Generally, when using the IE engine in a 3rd Party App (As I've been trying to do the past week) it off and renders on its own. The most involved you get is when you are using it to render XML and doing DOM work. The rendering updates that MS did haven't changed the API (Unless they've added some new stuff; they might have).

[JPnyc]

Well I'm looking forward to the final release. I should be able to use the GUI shell I'm used to (maxthon) and have the updated rendering engine.