Ajaxian: Browsers other than Opera are falling victim to the successes of Ajax
38 CommentsPublished November 15th, 2007 2:02 PM EST By Daniel Goldman
Over at the respected Ajaxian blog, they wrote about the influx of powerful Ajax applications and the toll it’s taking on Web browsers.
Ajax applications such as the new Yahoo Mail and Gmail require lots of JavaScript processing and ongoing communication with the server on the backend. To make the issue even bigger, many of these applications, such as email, remain running in the browser for long periods of time.
The Ajaxian blog talks about how Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox, and even Safari are falling victim to the successes of Ajax, particularly in the area of memory usage and speed. Ajaxian points out how the Opera browser is seemingly unaffected by these issues.
Here’s the money quote from blog post:
“The only one who seems blissfully unaffected is the lone Opera nerd in my office. He just keeps chugging along with what seem like 200 open tabs.”
Speed and efficient memory usage are an important part of our everyday life here at Opera. The Opera browser needs to be small, fast, and efficient in order to run on devices and mobile phones with limited memory and processing power. (All Opera browsers use the same rendering engine)
It’s nice to see Opera being recognized in the blogosphere for its strength in speed and memory management. We take great pride in it.
Read: Ajax, Browsers, Running Out of Time (Ajaxian)
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using
Now that sounds good!
using
All that I can say is…. pwned.
using
Yes, Opera’s speed certainly is very nice. If I could have a browser with Opera’s speed and Firefox’s extension *ECOSYSTEM* (don’t we all hate that word!!) I would be in heaven.
using
Actually running safari 3.0.4 here no problems as the blog suggested. Memory usage is down also. P.s. Does use opera too but always has to switch back to safari for most of the sites I go to.
using
I haven’t messed around with it much myself, but apparently Safari 3 has really sped up JavaScript. They compared Safari 2 and Safari 3 (or, more precisely, WebKit 2 and WebKit 3) on several benchmarks and typically halved the execution time. Though one extreme benchmark showed a 17.6-fold increase in speed!
using
Opera rules, Opera rules!
using
But, and there’s a huge “but” here, since “Ajaxian” sites tend to be the most complicated, they do need to be tested with Opera, and the vast majority of these sites never mention Opera in the supported client list. So it’s either a no-go entirely, a “limited mode” ghetto, or dealing with glitches. Once in a while these types of sites will work as they do in IE/FF.
using
I only want to never switch to other browser only for view a ajax-site
using
if only google/yahoo/ms AJAX pages worked in Opera.. if they dont work or work in lite ode, then no wonder that they are fast..
and tbh, yahoo mail is SLOWEST in opera 9.24 (due to enormous browser.js fix there) and it plainly does not work in 9.50
so yeah, your car does 0 miles to the galon, but it wont start at the same time..
using
whatever, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Yahoo Mail works well with Opera 9.5
using
i you can accept constant crashes, then it works. it crashes horribly
using
Works fine here. Looks like certain people keep jumping to conclusions based on their own poorly configured systems
using
Again, Hallvord Operas JS guru seems to have fixed that.
From one of this blog posts:
[quote]This is great news. Removing patches is good. And I’ve never seen Y!Mail work better with Opera than Y!Mail 1.0 and 9.5 9594 with the new browser.js [/quote]
I have not tested this myself. But I would trust him blindly any day when it comes to JS.
- ØØ -
using
Yahoo Mail works without crashes for over a month now, even with the nasty bug of Firefox that Yahoo implemented, cause the Firefox people can’t solve it
using
“Opera than Y!Mail 1.0 and 9.5 9594 with the new browser.js”
note the number version, two latest builds crash constantly on composing new message for me. and senor meh/Nelson/Smee/idiot, so it goes, that firefox is less ‘badly-configured-rig’ prone, another advantage of firefox?
using
“Looks like certain people keep jumping to conclusions based on their own poorly configured systems ”
Well, that tends to be what people can use to assess the functionality of programs and websites. And to them it’s very much a reality if the browser keeps crashing.
using
Naylor, certain people here have a history of trolling about Opera in this blog. His comments should be taken with a grain of salt. Even when someone (like he blog post this one links to) praises Opera, he starts denying it and making up excuses to “prove” that Opera is really terrible anyway. Anyone who praises Opera must obviously be clinically insane, if one is to judge by this certain person’s comments.
using
Last week I installed Firefox 2.09 no problems. just now i started firefox to run some java tests, and its now finishing the install for version 2.07. what the hell?!
Yes, it now says version 2.07. i didnt know you could install an older version over a newer one.. sigh….
using
whatever (aka w2), with all due respect, why do you keep trolling here in the comments? Constructive criticsm is perfectly fine, but the manner in which you do it defeats the whole purpose and turns people away.
using
first – if you are so kind to mainain my list of nicknames, do the same for Nelson, famous my.opera troll, known with many names, but with one, very shallow personality
second – for you, ANY form of criticism is a trolling. it is in line with company profile, clearly demonstrated by Olli, opera emplyee, to deny/ignore anything that places opera in bad light.
truth is, that opera FAILS with google pages (due to both opera bugs and google bugs, lack of will to fix them), it FAILS on MS sites (almost all of these, starting with Live services, going trough soapbox video site and varous other sites. it fails with Silverlight plugin, and it FAILS badly with Yahoo mail services (and has issues with YUI js library).
You can discuss reasons of these failures, not all are opera fault directly, but most are at least indirectly caused by opera lack of develoepr tools, and very bad attitude towards webdev society. attitute visible in bad documentation, lack of tools, lack of detailed changelogs, lack of open and detailed quirks documentation, lack of roadmap etc. no ammount of geek-marketing-stunt-events will be enough to fix damage done before. webdevs simply start (or in many cases did that long ago) to ignore opera.
and you know what? opera thinks that Wii browser or opera mobile will force authors to make their pages opera-compatible. nope, webpage authors will force nintendo to look for another browser.. for a compatible browser. it is easier, that to count on milions of authors to fix their pages, to be compatible with engine, that is clearly not able to cope with Real World Wide Web, not some standards, that are utopian’ dream.
back to the discussion, list me ONE major page that fails in firefox, i can list you TEN major pages with issues in opera right now.
using
using
Just ban the “w” troll already. He has proven that he hasn’t a contructive bone in his body. He thinks criticism equals trolling apparently, but everyone else knows that constructive criticism is actually possible.
using
* Observation: w2 trolls/is not constructive
* Observation: w2 is asked to stop trolling/start being constructive
* w2’s conclusion: Opera does not accept constructive criticism
???
Nice logic!
using
I love Opera for its power to handle as many tabs as I wanted. I visited my favorite image gallery every two week and found many images to view. Using Opera, I just need to open each thumbnail into bigger view on a new tab. It might be 50 tabs or more.
Amazingly, there’s no memory leakage and my notebook (and Opera itself) still running well, without loosing its processor speed!
About Yahoo! Mail beta, I don’t use it. I prefer old style Yahoo! Mail :p
using
I’m not sure banning is the right thing to do here, as this is an open forum. I do, however, hope that that w* will seriously reconsider his trolling activities — they certainly aren’t constructive.
using
My opera dies under Netvibes, 100% CPU load.
I have 24 tabs and 100 rss.
With this compilation unfortunately the opera lies the stomach, and will be unusable
FF runs away cheerful :S
I hope for it something will be a solution, that let me be allowed to use an Opera for Netvibes browsing.
using
Lomi, Netvibes runs fine on my Opera 9.24. Perhaps try deleting the cache (Tools > Delete private data…)
using
I’m using Netvibes with no problems too. It works better in Opera than in Firefox for me. If you have that many feeds try to divide them into different tabs, and check the setting “Only load modules for current tab” under the “settings->general settings”. That helps a lot on my slow computer.
- ØØ -
using
Hi Deniel, I say thank you for the answer.
I deleted it the cache, you said it, but the Opera does not like it in this manner it I Netvibes my setting.
The Opera reacts rather slowly sometimes. (scrolling page, klick tabs, many unread post loading, and automat refresh rss)
There is not problem with the opera.
only Not liking the filling processes at me is the opera.
Send the mirroring Netvibes from my side.
You can watch him going on your Opera and test.
Sorry for my bad English knowledge
My Netvibes Test:
login: lomax@index.hu
password: TestElek
using
I can’t really say it is working that fast, but at least it isn’t faster in Firefox on my machine. I did change that one setting for you though. See if it is just as slow on your machine now as it was earlier.
PS: Also first time you log in there will of course be quite a bit of new feeds for you. This takes quite a bit of resources. Next time you log in the hit on your browser/cpu is not even close to what you feel the first time around.
- ØØ -
using
@w*/whatever: criticism is constructive when the one who expresses it is not so easily angered. Objective criticism can’t even stand any underlying self-anger ,I’d say, for this latter expresses itself before all, hiding the rest. May it be in the form of a written speech.
I’m sure Opera work depends on so much configs subjects. Where it works for one, it won’t for other one. But that’s not an Opera problem.
On a xp desktop I encounter (sometimes) unexpected behaviours, like frost screen, not responding, restarting. In cause: google screens sometimes.
But on this Vista notebook, I didn’t see the shadow of problem since I switched to alpha version, now beta with weekly builds.
Yahoo mail beta works fine. Netvibes too. No Google issue.
Well, with its highly customizable pretty look, with its amazing speed, with its reliability too, Opera 9.50b just fits all my needs.
I’d also like to say Markus Obermaier does a great job for Opera to be on a usbstick.
Take a look at its last zip package of 9.5beta version if you can, worthy!
using
Try using Google Reader with something like Athlon 1000, and you will notice that Opera is the slowest
using
Try point your opera to sourceforge.net, download something, and try to swicth mirror…
it turn out opera can handle simple mirror switch.
Some ajax image preview also may choke an Opera…
using
“I’d also like to say Markus Obermaier does a great job for Opera to be on a usbstick.”
i’ve tried few portable operas. user experience of them falls short to portable ff (http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable) all opera portable editions are too geeky to be viable for wider audience. you have to set this, that, and something else.. and it still uses your hard drive (or it used to, but i think it still does, yep it does “To safe livetime of the USB Device and to increase speed of Opera, the cache-directory is on the harddisk (at Windows temp)”) this is beause opera doesnt respect ‘memory cache only’ and uses HDD anyways
simple unzip-and-go experience isnt there
using
@w2
Once you’ve set your files, and it’s very easy, nothing impeeds to set your cache in your profiles folder on the stick. Your hard drive keeps clean of any temp or other files this way.
You can even also manage to have your cache on a Ram device, other than the stick.
In general, portable apps are made for a large public and almost not for slowing or complicating things.
using
2nd @w2
computer world, the open one almost, doesn’t obey the simple consumption law.
It’s not that simple as use it and forget. A very vey small amount of basic bases are required.
a big thanks to all devs.
using
Yeah. True!
using
What’s the best browser?