Why is firefox so 'snappier' in windows than in mac

[daneoni]

I just installed windwos on my MBP as much as i'd been avoiding it i finally caved. I installed firefox and immediately noticed that it was way faster than the mac version. pages load instantly like....boom. As steve eloquently puts it.

I also noticed that two-finger scrolling on the trackpad requires a little more force to activate and to my dismay, tap functions dont work. Also brightness control needs work, the next lower setting after full brightness is too low and full brightness is well....too bright. Asides from these. everything seems fine.

Just wanted to rant that out.

 

[72930]

The issues you talk about involving tapping should be fixed by the finalized boot camp in leopard, and hopefully in the next beta (if there is one).

Firefox is faster when opened alone. This is because windows is good at giving loads of power to one app, while OSX works best during multitasking. Try opening some more apps at the same time, then OSX will be much faster.

 

[Sesshi]

Odd. I find Firefox bootup just as slow on both platforms. On RAM-limited systems Windows will be faster launching Firefox.

 

[72930]

Odd. I find Firefox bootup just as slow on both platforms. On RAM-limited systems Windows will be faster launching Firefox.

The intel optimized BonEcho has much better boot up times.

 

[Sesshi]

The intel optimized BonEcho has much better boot up times.

Reely? I'll have to see if I haven't updated or something. Wouldn't the intel optimisation be evident in the UB Firefox?

 

[neonblue2]

I was under the impression that because the Gecko engine was designed on Windows and Linux for Windows and Linux that it had problems with full compatibility on Macs

 

[flopticalcube]

I have noticed this too. Safari is far snappier on the Mac than FF.

 

[erikamsterdam]

Well, why not use Camino then, specially coded for Mac by those wonderful Firefox people. Very snappy.

 

[bousozoku]

The issues you talk about involving tapping should be fixed by the finalized boot camp in leopard, and hopefully in the next beta (if there is one).

Firefox is faster when opened alone. This is because windows is good at giving loads of power to one app, while OSX works best during multitasking. Try opening some more apps at the same time, then OSX will be much faster.

Add to that the probability that the Mozilla team is probably using a commercial compiler on Windows instead of gcc. Supposedly, all browsers are slower on Mac OS X.

I would like to see how Windows works when the foreground priority is set to zero. I'd say that a lot of people would be complaining about the lack of responsiveness.

 

[ddekker]

I find on my powerbook using either FF or safari web browsing to be painfull compared to IE or FF on my PC'S, I know I know, I need a new mac the old powerbooks gotta go but buying two macbook pro's sure hurts the wallet...

DD

 

[daneoni]

Guess i should look into specialised builds. I've tried camino, shiira & Opera. They just don't work that well for my needs.

 

[knopix]

Guess i should look into specialised builds. I've tried camino, shiira & Opera. They just don't work that well for my needs.

That's true, apart from Opera, both Camino and Shiira have some CSS-parsing problems.
Opera is great, but it doesn't have all the plugins that are available for Firefox.

Like you said I would look for specialized builds, but if you're willing to go through the trouble then you could simply compile it yourself.