4 ms·

Right. That paragraph about the extensions makes me question the credibility of his claims. Disappointing. I haven't experienced the performance problems he des

Right. That paragraph about the extensions makes me question the credibility of his claims. Disappointing. I haven't experienced the performance problems he describes, and I use the Chrome dev channel for my main browser. I've noticed Firefox has been getting faster over the last couple years, but when I use it I still get the feeling that it gets in my way more than Chrome does. Edit: fix typo

smt88 12y ago
He's part of the rule that tech writers aren't technical people and often write about things they don't understand. As some famous person recently said, there's a huge amount of "intellectual dishonesty" in tech journalism.
- bmelton 12y ago
  To spin it more positively, he and his ilk more generally represent our users than more "in the know" tech-journalists. I think this is a rough article, but likely one that either many users will empathize with, so the overarching idea that browsers should be doing something to prevent bloat is probably a sound one.
  - smt88 12y ago
    I guess I see journalism the old-fashioned way: you're not an expert on everything, but you do research and distill the concepts for regular readers. This guy clearly didn't do research. Yes, Chrome uses a massive amount of memory, but that was originally a feature. Most people had way more memory than they needed at any given time, so Chrome heavily used memory to decrease processing time and therefore improve rendering speed. It also split into many processes to insulate each part of the browser from crashes and security holes. Now that the age of SoCs/tablets/etc is upon us, people don't have as much extra memory as they did when Chrome first arrived. That may have an impact on how usable Chrome is (don't know if it's smart about "dialing down" its memory usage). But this guy didn't mention any of that. Like a modern "journalist", he just wrote about his own anecdotal experiences without learning about the underlying concepts.
    - bmelton 12y ago
      I agree 100%, I think the article is worthless, as a journalistic piece. However, if you treat it as a blog post, and one that's likely to be parroted by other users of his same ability, it's a decent canary for popular opinion.
    - eropple 12y ago
      > Now that the age of SoCs/tablets/etc is upon us, people don't have as much extra memory as they did when Chrome first arrived. That may have an impact on how usable Chrome is (don't know if it's smart about "dialing down" its memory usage). To me, the worst part is that Chrome seems, even without significant extensions, to be a CPU hog. And that translates into worse battery life. I switched to Firefox strictly because of the better battery life; with Chrome and GMail open it was like my battery had a hole in it. (Now I get to deal with random hangs that lock input for a while because a tab has a sad in Firefox. I hate us.)
      - scholia 12y ago
        Chrome may be killing your battery to make it feel "peppier" https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/windows-timer-resolution-megawatts-wasted/ https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/windows-timer-r...
        eropple 12y ago
        I'm on a Mac. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if it was sacrificing my battery life on the altar of convenience.

smt88 12y ago

He's part of the rule that tech writers aren't technical people and often write about things they don't understand. As some famous person recently said, there's a huge amount of "intellectual dishonesty" in tech journalism.

bmelton 12y ago
To spin it more positively, he and his ilk more generally represent our users than more "in the know" tech-journalists. I think this is a rough article, but likely one that either many users will empathize with, so the overarching idea that browsers should be doing something to prevent bloat is probably a sound one.
- smt88 12y ago
  I guess I see journalism the old-fashioned way: you're not an expert on everything, but you do research and distill the concepts for regular readers. This guy clearly didn't do research. Yes, Chrome uses a massive amount of memory, but that was originally a feature. Most people had way more memory than they needed at any given time, so Chrome heavily used memory to decrease processing time and therefore improve rendering speed. It also split into many processes to insulate each part of the browser from crashes and security holes. Now that the age of SoCs/tablets/etc is upon us, people don't have as much extra memory as they did when Chrome first arrived. That may have an impact on how usable Chrome is (don't know if it's smart about "dialing down" its memory usage). But this guy didn't mention any of that. Like a modern "journalist", he just wrote about his own anecdotal experiences without learning about the underlying concepts.
  - bmelton 12y ago
    I agree 100%, I think the article is worthless, as a journalistic piece. However, if you treat it as a blog post, and one that's likely to be parroted by other users of his same ability, it's a decent canary for popular opinion.
  - eropple 12y ago
    > Now that the age of SoCs/tablets/etc is upon us, people don't have as much extra memory as they did when Chrome first arrived. That may have an impact on how usable Chrome is (don't know if it's smart about "dialing down" its memory usage). To me, the worst part is that Chrome seems, even without significant extensions, to be a CPU hog. And that translates into worse battery life. I switched to Firefox strictly because of the better battery life; with Chrome and GMail open it was like my battery had a hole in it. (Now I get to deal with random hangs that lock input for a while because a tab has a sad in Firefox. I hate us.)
    - scholia 12y ago
      Chrome may be killing your battery to make it feel "peppier" https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/windows-timer-resolution-megawatts-wasted/ https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/windows-timer-r...
      - eropple 12y ago
        I'm on a Mac. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if it was sacrificing my battery life on the altar of convenience.