The latest version of Firefox works great on WindowsXP.

I'm not as frustrated as you yet, but lately I feel that Firefox is becoming too heavy an application for its main purpose: surfing the internet with tabs (I guess some will find that an understatement).

I'd like to switch to a new browser but I love certain plugins (delicious, firebug, fireftp, forecastfox, etc) too much. What browser would you use instead?

2.0.0.11 on leopard here too ... haven't noticed any change in behavior. Maybe disable all the plugins and reenable them one by one to see if that's the cause?

I (OSX - tiger) haven't looked back since i switched to flock. it's a mozilla browser so you can use the same plugins you'd use in firefox.

It's only when I have over 15 tabs opened that Firefox gets slowed down. Also: when using many tabs I have problems when I play flash animations. They get stucked. For the rest, Firefox is still a great browser I think. But I don't want it to become some mash-up instead of a browser. That is where usability comes in.

Nowadays we all want to use things at once, we like them to be one click away. And really: those plugins are great but isn't it normal that when loading so many plugins and extensions on start-up a browser gets slowed down just like starting a bunch of programs on Windows logon?

If you're using a Mac and you're *not* a web developer, I don't think there are many reasons you can come up with to not use Safari at this time. Safari is a very solid and surprisingly speedy browser that supports some great plug-ins for del.icio.us bookmarking and searching (Inquisitor, anyone?) :) Firefox (in it's current version!) just feels clunky and unreliable if you have more than a few extensions installed, if you ask me...

I have also long believed that *if* you are a web developer (I am), you have no other option than using Firefox (on either platform) because of Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar. Well, since the introduction of Leopard, I switched to using Safari 3 as my main browser for web development (using the excellent Web Ispector that webkit provides, the Safari Stand plug-in and a whole series of powerful favelets/bookmarklets that mimic most of the functionality that the Web Developer Toolbar provides). Works great! The only reason to use Firefox from time to time, is when I want to debug JavaScript (using Firebug) and to check the rendering of my CSS.

If you only use the delicious plug-in you should try the delicious plug-in for Safari I wrote called DeliciousSafari.

I switched to Safari some time ago because of the same reason.
There are some neat Firefox plugins that I'm sometimes missing, but I still have Firefox installed, so I can still open it. But, I think I'm using Safari in at least 95% of the time.

i have no problems i can have up to 45 tabs opened with flock

i have no problems i can have up to 45 tabs opened with flock

FF crashes big time on Leopard. It sucks memory if you have 20+ windows open.

I combine it with camino. Updated today to FF3 beta and my delicious plugins where down.

Firefox sucks? Weel no duh, George. It sucked from day one and is becoming suckier day by day. It's a plaything for super-geeks (you know, the .edu guys with the lo-mein stuck to their beards as they hammer-away on their keyboards at 2AM while their neigbors make love). Why anyone in their right mind would want to use a browser that can't follow stylesheets correctly, makes its own rules for nested tables, is slow as a pair of octogenarians on their honeymoon night, and requires a third-party plug-in just to play MIDI music, sure beats the hell out of me. Now that Internet Explorer features tabbed-browsing, only a rabid Microsoft-hater would have any good reason to continue using the Firefox crippled crap. The Internet Explorer has been designed to work with the Microsoft Windows platforms and has full access to Microsoft's propritary API's. This is why it runs so much faster than spaghetti-coded Firefox. Unlike Firefox, Internet Explorer tries to "do the right thing." In other words, IE is quite tolerant of webpage coding errors that would drive Firefox into a state of mad confusion. And this is exactly how it should be.

THANK YOU, JOHN TYLER!
I've been reading posts in various forums that claim that I should test my code in firefox, then make it work in the "non-standards-compliant" IE.

HORSEDOOKIE!

Call me crazy, but when I assign CSS like "width:200px" to an object, I expect that object to display with a width of 200 pixels - it does in IE, it DOESN'T in firefox! I would also think that in a browser that people tout as the "end-all" for programmers, you should be able to run 2 scripts concurrently without the browser choking up - I'd hate to see what firefox would do with a REALLY complicated page!

After years of ignoring FF, I finally bit the bullet and have been working on getting my employer's website to work in FF. What an exercise in frustration! I've had to take perfectly concise and elegant code and hack it up like a slasher-movie bimbo. I hate this crap!

95% of my audience uses IE - basically every non-programmer who has bought a computer in the last eight or ten years uses IE - Why in the world would I program for this firefox P.O.S.???

I guess I'll continue to code for IE, and use CSS hacks and browser detection schemes to shoehorn decent pages into an indecent browser, and hope this abomination eventually fades into the sunset like NutScrape Navigator...

I am so sick of Firefox lately, what is the deal with it. Used to love it. Now every time they update it, it gets more complicated to use and more problems occur. Like Music sometimes won't play & even when I go the windows volume control & see the stupid added mozilla volume for what I am playing and make sure it is up and not muted, it STILL doesn't play. As soon as I click open in ext. app and IE opens the page, music plays fine, every time. What is the deal with that? Also I am sick of this No-Script thing with Firefox. Blocks every thing. Then there is no universal unblock for a page, even allowing all scripts as I am now, it still tends to block some things. & if there is any active x type install needed forget it, gives me the cross script xss errors or whatever. It is more hassle than it is worth anymore. Can't seem to get rid of the no script part either. Done plenty uninstalls & reinstalls, deleted the folder in the process, started from scratch, changes nothing. I am fed up with firefox lately. All the benefits it had are now obsolete with the screwed up updates. Any one else having trouble like this? Know how to get rid of the no script part? Help me out if so, thanx..

Simply use Google Chrome when it implements add-ons and extensions in the near future. It is also open-source and is currently the fastest browser among many other things.

Simply use Google Chrome, it will have add-ons and extensions in the future and aside from that it is the best browser. I guarantee it even though I still like Firefox

I use firefox on the mac, at this point only because of habit. It is extremely slow. In fact I call it slowfox or Fireslow now. I found that just plain old force quitting it is the best option after an hour or so of browsing. So much feature creep and so little code stewardship can lead to bloated, unusably slow, and nonperforming software like Fireslow.