1) Frequent Crashes

Since installing this version of Firefox, the Mozilla Crash Reporter has become my best friend. Its been coming up almost daily to meet me. I know that i’ve installed Beta plugins like Ubiquity and this kind of behaviour is expected. So, this is not my main complaint. But still this kind of crash-on-a-daily-basis is too much for a browser like Firefox. I don’t know why i enter my email address there every time. Though i send a crash report every 24 hours, i do not get any kind of response. Firefox is free software and i know that shouldn’t be complaining about lack of support.

2) Memory Leak

My 2GB RAM Windows 7 system becomes god-damn slow with just Firefox, foobar2000 and Twhirl running. Guess who’s the culprit, it is the people’s (include me) favourite browser Firefox. And i’ve not been crash-testing it with 100 tabs open, 150 addons installed etc. I have about 10-20 tabs open at a time. I have 13 addons installed out of which 5 are disabled, to see if they are the culprit. Others are just very popular ones like Google toolbar, SU toolbar etc. which i’ve been using since Firefox 0.1 (not really).

So how much memory does my firefox use ? The answer is God only knows. It changes every time though i have the same tabs open. When i open Firefox with 10 tabs, the memory usage remains at ~120MB. If i just leave my system idle and go out, i’ll return after few hours to find that Firefox is using ~500MB. Two more hours and it would be ~800MB.

I’ve been resisting myself from writing such a post about Firefox. I did some search and research on the top to see if something specific is causing this or Firefox itself. When i did a google search on the topic i seem to get relevant results for a memory leak as high as 1GB (300MB, 400MB, 500MB, 600MB, 700MB, 800MB, 900MB). But most of them are complaint posts like this or unreplied forum topics. The point is that there is no specific solution. Most commonly suggested troubleshooting step is to check out the list of Problematic Extension. I went through the list in and out and concluded that the none of the memory-leaking extension is on my list.

There are other possible steps like trying to run Firefox in safe mode, reinstalling Firefox etc. But, as a customer i wouldn’t want to go through all this hassle to find out what’s wrong. I’m deeply in love with Firefox, so i’m still clinging onto it. But an average FF user will make the switch to the supposed-to-be-faster Chrome or the faster-in-reality Opera.

Last year when i made a post about a copyright breach, i received immediate response from a Mozilla Staff Member. I hope they’ll pay little attention to this post as well.

PS : If you’re a fan of Firefox, i might have hurt you. I am sorry. Don’t take me wrong. I’m a fan of FF too. In this condition, i wouldn’t be recommending FF to anyone. So, i really hope i find a solution to this.

The main culprit was the Flash plugin. It makes me shut down Chrome via Task Manager -> Processes, 3-5 times a day. My entire computer appeared to slow down because of Chrome. Also, when I have large number of tabs open and switch from one tab to another, the new tab that I switched to remains blank. And the content slowly appear from the top, like a powerpoint animation.

So, now I’m back and happy with Firefox. So, what I’d like to say to the readers ? If you’re an average Web user, using a browser for nothing more than browsing few pages, then you can very well replace Chrome for IE. But, if you are like me, leaving Flash videos loading on 5 tabs, Java applets on 2, Chatting in 1 tab and Browsing in 10 other tabs, then probably Chrome isn’t for you.

For those who’re thinking of switching back to FF from Chrome, I’d tell you that FF is a lot more than just a web browser. Check out Mozilla Labs. They’ve some ubercool experiments like Ubiquity, Weave, Prism which will really change they way you use a web browser. (Tip: If you’re a developer, check out Bespin project).

As an additional information, I’ll be participating in the Mozilla Design Challenge. Where in the world will I publish my ideas other than this blog of mine ? So, stay tuned.

I installed it right after its release and I used to use it now and then. And, when I begun to develop my homepage, I used Chrome to test the design in Webkit engine, as I do not have Safari.

But now, after using it for two months, I just realized that it has almost become my primary browser. Thanks to its application shortcuts, I never open Gmail or Google Reader in my browser window nowadays. I am a Firefox fan. But, its just sleeping in my computer as of now. Though Chrome doesn’t have Addons support like Firefox has, I’m still in love with it. I have a bunch of Addons installed on my Firefox. But I don’t use them frequent enough to miss them.

Also, there is upcoming GreaseMonkey support for Chrome and I’m looking forward to it. With the next releases of Chrome, will i abandon Firefox ? Maybe… Or Maybe not… Will have to wait…

What is your experience with Chrome ? Have you tried ? Have you already made the switch ?

I prefer Web Apps for various reasons. Like, they don’t occupy any space in your hard drive. They are much more simpler to use than desktop apps and you can access your data from all over the world.

Recently, I began to use Twitter a lot and so I was searching for a desktop client. But, most of the popular ones were Adobe Air apps and I didn’t wanna install Air. So, I decided to use a web app. Since, I needed simplicity, I went around looking for “twitter for iphone” and found this website. I simple opened it in Chrome and created an application shortcut. Now, it sits there on my desktop as a simple Twitter client. Similarly, I have created the shortcuts for Gmail, Google Reader and Remember the Milk, all with Gears support. Also, I have LiteSum for quick Wikipedia look up. With the upcoming Greasemonkey support for Chrome, this Application shortcut feature will become much more useful.

Similarly, I’m looking for more simple apps to add, preferably iPhone version of sites, because they have simpler interface. Do you know any ? Do you have any such Web Apps on your Desktop ?

Check out a screenshot of my desktop running these web apps. (Click to enlarge) :

1) GPhone is coming

TechCrunch pointed out to a news article on Rediff, that mentions that the Google Phone (GPhone) might be out in a fortnight. The article also states that Google is in talks with a couple of Indian mobile service providers, which is absolutely fantastic. And, for this reason, GPhone may hit India before iPhone does and will be more popular than iPhone among Indians. This is what makes Google different. They see India as a potential market, whereas the others don’t.

2) Orkut ReDesign

This one is more official than the GPhone article. The orkut blog announced today that there is a redesign under the works. They will be releasing it to groups of users in the coming weeks. This is awesome too. As everyone knows, Orkut is the most popular social network in India and Brazil and i’m a fan of it too. But, why ? It has a more of an Indian touch. I don’t know how else to explain.
This redesign is definitely going to be a successful one. So far, the comments about the design are positive.

UPDATE : Google Discovery has more pictures of the new design. Vinay claims thats the new design has been enabled for him. He has some screenshots on Flickr. Can’t wait to have it on my account.

So, might this be a consequence of the never-ending MS-Apple war ? Who is to be accused for this ? Lol.

Here is an example of my favorite video played in the player that i created to follow the color scheme of GotChance.

The network, titled Socialstream, is able to “draw content from a variety of sources. Socialstream would be based on a unified social network (USN), a single network that provides social data to other sites as a service. A service model allows many social networks to be linked together, letting them share both content and the nature of the relationships of the people who use them.”

Socialstream emphasizes improving social connections by making it more efficient to communicate with, share with, and view the social content of all the people in a user’s online social network. Socialstream provides a compelling user experience because it aggregates content across many different networks so a user has a single location to discover new content and communicate. The goal of Socialstream is to present social information in a way that ties it to the person who posted the information, and not the site from which it came.

Take a closer look at SocialStream :

Here’s the video review :

Here’s whats new :

• Looking pretty – The entire document list has been given a complete visual overhaul – new icons, more content, and better organizational controls. We know users spend a lot of time here and we aim to make it feel more like home.
• Getting organized – Almost from the day we launched people have been clamoring for folders. They’re here! Even cooler, our new folders continue to work like the tags they’ve replaced – your old tags are automatically converted to folders and documents can live in more than one folder at a time. Organizing your documents is as easy as dragging and dropping a document to a folder. We’ve also included special controls for seeing only those documents created by you or shared with a particular person.
• Search that thinks ahead – If you’ve ever tried Google Suggest, you know how cool it is when a search engine offer suggestions as you type. Google Docs & Spreadsheets now works the same way – we offer dynamically filtered results from your document list as you type, saving you time and getting you to your documents more quickly.

Kevin made the public announcement on his blog today. Its still in private beta. However, they have have a way to request invitations and i have requested one. Hope i get it soon.

Right now, there are four basic things you can send: messages, links, files, and events.

You might send an event out to a dozen of your friends letting them know you’re hosting a party this Friday. They could easily get the event details you entered, respond with questions or comments and then quickly rsvp.

Say you had a great photo you wanted to share with all of your friends. Just add the file and all of your friends will get it right away. They’ll be able to reply and tell you if it’s cool. You could even post songs you recorded in your home studio to share with your friends.

Guy Kawasaki’s Truemor was talked all over the web. But it turned out to be a failure. Now Pownce is being talked all over the web since Kevin is behind it. Hope this doesn’t end up with the same story as Truemor.

Rivals.com provides the best coverage of college and high school sports on the Web, maintaining more than 100 college-specific sites and posting hundreds of updates each day. It also satisfies high school fans by following games and news in more than 35 states.

Rivals.com is also known for being the place for college sports fans to chat and share information, stats, and photos. In fact, its message boards are among the most popular in sports, and an important part of the business.

As seen on TechCrunch :

Zenter is an web based presentation app that promises to really take advantage of being online. Users will have the regular functionality of PowerPoint, but with the ability to directly add content from the web (Google Images). Each public slide show will also be put into a public library, for other users to remix or just drop into their show.