Firefox vs. IE Options

[Seeker]

[impala454]

lemme explain a little something about how windows works.

every windows application with a user interface has window handles. it's a pointer to memory that contains information about that window. when you start an application it starts up in its own process, meaning it has its own memory space. the entire application and overhead fires up and you have your inital window handles. window handles take up memory, obviously.

now when you fire up ie or firefox or any other application this is what happens. if I go to firefox -> file -> new window, the firefox application creates a new window handle using windows api calls (there's no special "firefox" window api). that new window handle's memory is contained within the same memory space allocated to firefox.exe, as will any window created by firefox. now the tab will be different, because it doesn't create a new window handle, hence there will be less overhead. it looks as though when you run firefox.exe manually again while it's open, firefox simply sees that it's already running and assumes you wanted to create a new window, and your existing firefox.exe process creates the new window handle. ie on the other hand just starts up a new process with its own memory. this is the only difference in the windows api calls of these two browsers.

is one better? that all depends on how you want to see it. the windows swap space on a typical computer is anywhere from 500MB-2GB nowadays, with new processes of either browser not taking up that much space, so the problem lies when something crashes. if you have a process crash, anything in that process's memory is gone, including all window handles. so in either browser, if you're opening new windows in the same process and one particular page barf your browser, all your browser windows are gone, whereas if they were in seperate processes they would not affect each other. in other words, it's more stable, but takes up more memory.

i'm not tryin to be an asshole here, just tryin to explain how the shit works for those that take all the propaganda at face value. I honestly don't really prefer one browser over the other. I've tried them all out and to me it just displays a damn webpage, whether it's IE, Firefox, Opera, whatever. I simply use IE mostly because it's already on the comp.

[impala454]

explorer.exe is forced to take on some of the load (read, memory usage) at certain points in IEs running.

Just try something simple for me, try uninstalling IE... just try it.

Or try killing explorer.exe and use IE for a while, explorer.exe will restart itself when needed by IE.

i'll say it again, end process on your explorer.exe and see what happens. i could still browse just fine, and my start button, taskbar, any open folders, etc were gone. i had to hard reset my comp because i couldnt get the thing back. IE doesnt need explorer.exe to run.

[impala454]

fool, everybody knows that IE is directly integrated into explorer. You're a goddamn idiot.


and once again, firefox's slightly larger memory footprint (which nobody with a decent amount of ram should care about) is due to prefetching, which can be disabled.



"you can post all the articles that you want but you're still wrong"............wow. just wow.

read the above post it's not worth replying the same shit to you too

[zetec]

read the above post it's not worth replying the same shit to you too

really? because you totally missed the point when you replied. You're talking about how windows handles tabbed browsing; we don't care about that point.

What we care about is your claim that IE isn't directly integrated into windows. Perhaps you're having problems reading? Should we buy you a big boy monitor so you don't have to squint?

[impala454]

really? because you totally missed the point when you replied. You're talking about how windows handles tabbed browsing; we don't care about that point.

What we care about is your claim that IE isn't directly integrated into windows. Perhaps you're having problems reading? Should we buy you a big boy monitor so you don't have to squint?

you didnt read the post i told you to read dipshit, here i'll quote myself so you can see what to read.

i'll say it again, end process on your explorer.exe and see what happens. i could still browse just fine, and my start button, taskbar, any open folders, etc were gone. i had to hard reset my comp because i couldnt get the thing back. IE doesnt need explorer.exe to run.

and btw i have dual 20" 1600x1200 LCDs

[Mommy]

case and point

[impala454]

uh... ok

[zetec]

you didnt read the post i told you to read dipshit, here i'll quote myself so you can see what to read.



and btw i have dual 20" 1600x1200 LCDs

okay, by the same token, delete IE and all related files from your system and see how well windows runs.

edit: and btw, if you haven't figured out that you can ctrl+alt+del and start a new explorer process, well, that certainly explains a few things.

This post has been edited by zetec: Apr 5 2006, 01:20 PM

[Mommy]

they're not dependent on each other. and wtf is "work harder" is that some MIS term when you dont know jack shit about what you're talkin about?

Well, I was going to be nice until you said that. This whole MIS vs CS thing is fucking retarded. There are idiots in both fields (as is proof by this thread).

[impala454]

okay, by the same token, delete IE and all related files from your system and see how well windows runs.

i didnt say windows doesnt have a dependence on ie, i said ie doesn't have a dependence on explorer.exe. there's a huge difference.

[jwttu]

just curious but what exactly is prefetching?

[zetec]

they're not dependent on each other. and wtf is "work harder" is that some MIS term when you dont know jack shit about what you're talkin about?

yeah you did

[impala454]

Well, I was going to be nice until you said that. This whole MIS vs CS thing is fucking retarded. There are idiots in both fields (as is proof by this thread).

and i suppose you and your awesome degree will tell us "idiots" how all this computer nonsense works?

[Mommy]

just curious but what exactly is prefetching?

yeah, and how to you turn that function off?