Frank Cox wrote:DMcCunney wrote:Define "well enough".
They get the browser working well and then update it until it starts running slow crashing.
Firefox attempts to be standards compliant. Current emerging web standards include HTML5 and CSS3. Do you recommend FF stop in its tracks and not try to support them?
No but how hard would it be to have a version for older browsers? The difference in speed in FireDog and FireFox on dialup is huge!
How hard?
Very, which is why they don't.
I was startled when they re-engineered GMail to be fully supported in IE 6. That's probably the
least standards complaint browser in common use, and web developers tear their hair trying to support it and say fervent prayers every night that it will die horribly,
soon. The only reason I can see them undertaking the effort is simply that there
are an awful lot of IE 6 installations still out there, despite Microsoft's best efforts to replace it. (For example, large parts of Korea still use IE 6, because businesses that deployed it wrote Active-X controls specific to it, and prefer to stand pat rather than undertake the effort and expense of rewriting their software. So Koreans who want to do things like online banking are stuck with IE6.)
I can only imagine what was required to do it, and shudder thinking about it.
I understand you can't have all the bells and whistles with the older browsers but there are places in America that may never get broadband. I can live without the bells.
You'll have to live without more than that.
What you are asking for is one or both of two things:
1) For Google re-engineer it's code base to have two separate branches in things like Docs and Sites: one branch using newer technologies like HTML5, CCS3, and newer versions of JavaScript to implement the things they are trying to add, and a second branch sticking to code usable by older browsers that will attempt to do the same things. The latter may not be
possible, and would be a nightmare to keep in sync and feature compatible with the newer code if it
was possible. Honestly, why should they even try?
I believe their thought is that the number of people they are aiming who will be unable to use the newer features because of low connection speeds or inadequate hardware will be a small enough fraction of the market that the effort can't be justified. I'm afraid they're right.
Don't use Google Docs or Sites. GMail is still supported, and you have alternatives to Docs and Sites.
2) For Mozilla to re-engineer Gecko to back port current technologies to older versions of their browser.
Once again, I doubt this is possible. I don't believe you could run FF2 on top of a current version of Gecko, and if you
could, I don't think it would help. The stuff that makes it bigger and slower is in Gecko, and you would see the same issues.
The fundamental issue you are dealing with is that emerging technologies are outgrowing older hardware. My Puppy box has a <1ghz processor, 256MB of RAM, and a slow HD. I normally use a static build of SeaMonkey 1.1.19 when I browse from it for performance reasons. FF 3.6 runs, but it's slow to invoke and sluggish when up. There's a fair amount of stuff I just don't try to do from the Puppy box (like watch YouTube video) because it simply doesn't have the power for the task. I'm constrained by hardware. But I knew that going in, and don't gripe about it. I don't expect everything else to slow to a crawl because the box I run Puppy on can't keep up.
I can run windows or Ubuntu on my 3 gb processor with 2 gigs of ram and still have the same problem, I live in the sticks and Satellite is a joke , to get a decent speed it is 200.00 a month and you still can't use it for voip.
The fact that you are on dialup isn't Firefox's fault. Your constraint is a slow connection to the internet, and that will bite regardless of what browser you use. FF2 may perform better than FF3, but you'll still see issues.
I don't see issues on my desktop with a 1.8ghz CPU and 4GB RAM, but I have a fast broadband connection, so the stuff that bites you won't affect me.
You might want to look at a current version of Opera. Opera 10.51 features a Turbo mode, where access is via their proxy server. Data is compressed on their end before being sent to you, to increase throughput and improve performance on low speed connections. I don't think 10.51 is out for Linux yet, but it ought to be along shortly.
Do you have stock in Mozilla? :}
Mozilla has stock?
I like Mozilla, and prefer Mozilla products because I like the architecture. The ability to customize and extend the product has become an integral part of how I work.
That said, I do use other things as merited. Opera loads faster and renders faster here under Puppy than Firefox or SeaMonkey. Google Chrome is progressing too, and the 5.0 Dev branch adds a fledgling extension capability that allows me to do a few things I'm accustomed to under Mozilla. But as mentioned, some things I just don't try to do. Puppy is good but not magic, and I'm constrained by hardware on the Puppy box.
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Dennis