dare to rant

EDIT: This post was featured on uncov.com!

I’m getting really tired of seeing a new article submitted to digg every freaking day by some douchebag who feels obligated to share his newest discoveries about Firefox to the world. In almost all cases, all that happens is some idiot realizes you can modify browser settings by typing “about:config” in the address bar, and gets overwhelmed by a sudden h@x0r rush.

What they don’t realize is that anyone who is technically capable enough to edit those settings probably already knows it exists, and has settled on the fact that the minute potential increases in speed are simply not worth the effort. Unfortunately, these script-kiddie-wannabes will not stop until every last setting has been toyed with and then documented in what they will ambitiously refer to as an “optimization guide”. In reality, these could be more accurately described as manuals for people who wish to reduce their productivity as a human being to that of a freaking lawn ornament.

Actually, I take that back. Lawn ornaments are, for the most part, harmless. They will not set your lawn to flames, or unlock all your doors while you sleep. Misguided assclowns of the internet, however, provide no such protection:

“You can take the last step even further by telling Firefox to ignore user interface events altogether until the current page has been downloaded. Firefox could remain unresponsive for quite some time.”

Yes — that’s right. He is advising you to “optimize” your browser by configuring it to stop responding to anything you do. I speak for myself here, but I think the ability to move my mouse whenever I damn well want is a feature that I’ve kind of gotten used to.

Here’s the deal: we don’t have dialup modems anymore. The bandwidth most people get is sufficient. The browsers don’t really have a say in how long it takes to load a page anymore (unless, of course, you’re Firefox).

Since we’re on the topic, what the hell is up with Firefox’s memory consumption anyway? Every iteration of this browser since it was a little Firebird has added all kinds of neat features but they never seem to improve on the endless prostitution of memory that this browser has become famous for. I have seen articles, presentations, and other forms of propaganda trying to allure me with all the new features Firefox 3 has. Some of the new features are useful and intuitive, but it still eats almost as much memory and CPU as Photoshop (which seems to have placed an infinite loop in its startup). The Mozilla foundation needs to wake up and recognize the gargantuan elephant in the room. New features be damned.