I started using Firefox before it was Firefox. I think it was Firebird. The main reason I started using it was the tabbed browsing. Then they introduced the ability to restore tabs on startup. So now I use tabs as short-term bookmarks. In a given work-session I might open up 30 to 40 tabs. Unfortunately, since Firefox 2, Firefox will evntually gobble up all my unclaimed RAM (usually about 2G) and an entire CPU core. The more tabs I leave open, the faster this happens. It results in a huge slow down in Firefox (5 seconds to open a new tab, 1 second delays in entering text before it avtually appears) and an eventual application crash. When it crashes it doesn’t save the tabs properly and I lose the most recent ones (about the most recent 10 or so).

Additionally, why do I have to have Google as my start page? No, I don’t want to use my current tab. No, I don’t wan to use all of my current tabs. No, I don’t want to use a bookmark. I want to use a blank page, because the whole reason that I open a tab without an address is so that I can type one in! It’s a stupid application. I hate it. I hate it marginally less than Safari (actually, I like Safari, but it is too basic for web development and provides no method for extending the capability with extensions).