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[LordBucket]

I've been having browser difficulties lately too. Was using firefox half a decde then a year or two it suddenly starting consuming 100% cpu resources all the time. Eventually switched to chrome. That worked fine until something decided to overide my "don't automatically update, because auto-updates routinely destroy things" setting, and suddenly chrome started complaining about hangout services crashing and giving me gray boxes every time I open a new tab. So...I've been using IE for the past week or two. It's painfully slow, can't smoothly scroll via page up/down, arbitrarily sometimes refuses to let me copy links to the clipboard or open them in new tabs rather than replacing the current tab, and it's recently started asking me for permission to run flash in protected mode sometimes as many as a half a dozen times in a row immediately open visiting every single page.

I don't understand why web browsers are so difficult to get right. "Don't do stupid stuff" shouldn't be a lower design priority than "implement excessively complicated features that nobody wants and mostly serve to make malware easier to covertly install."

[Neonivek]

And oddly enough... IE is still my best internet explorer.

Firefox tends to go slow, and Chrom is a bit bulky (I really trip my explorers).

The only issue is a LOT of sites HATE IE and don't make themselves compatible. So that is why I use all three.

[Tiruin]

...I find it curious that the browser messes up at a certain instance with no detectable origin (or one that you didn't state?). That's not right...

Perhaps it was something you visited and [stuff stuff stuff secret download CPU affected...]? Pulling this from inference here as I've been using Comodo for years and its going fine.

Well, anyway, as good as when I got this laptop. 

[Canisaur]

Assuming you've already done the basic checks for malware, have you done any troubleshooting for Firefox itself?  I've been using Firefox for over a decade and have never had any not-easily-fixable trouble with it.  It sounds like you're using at least a few add-ons.  You can launch Firefox in 'safe mode', which disables all your add-ons.  If you don't have problems while using safe mode, then one of your add-ons probably updated and messed itself up (or failed to update, and is no longer as compatible with a recent update of Firefox).

If you DO still have problems, it may be your profile.  You can either simply clear all your web data ("Clear recent history", clear all), or launch the Profile manager (from a command prompt do 'firefox -p') and just make a new profile.  (The profile manager is a nice, sort of 'hidden feature' of Firefox.  My wife and I can now both use my laptop and not destroy each other's saved tabs).

I probably have over 100 tabs (oops, should probably clean that out) open over four tab groups in Firefox and have no lag issues.  I use Firefox across Ubuntu, Windows, and Android and it works great on all of them, and they're all using Sync so I can easily open a tab I had open on, say, my work laptop after I get home.

Chrome can save your preferences, bookmarks, passwords, etc. as a profile that you can access from any device with Chrome

Firefox can do this, too, if you bother to take five seconds to set up Sync.  And as a bonus, it lacks the shadiness of Google.  You can even set up your own server to hold the Sync information if you feel like figuring out how to build the software they use.  That's the beauty of open source software.

EDIT: Also, if you're not already, use the add-on Ghostery.  Everyone should be using this add-on.  It blocks all the stupid crap that sites use to track you (facebook buttons, G+ buttons, third party ad tracker cookies, etc.) and serve irritating ads and pop-ups to you, while not entirely blocking all advertising like adblock pro does (so sites that use non-invasive advertising can still make money off of it).

[LordBucket]

...I find it curious that the browser messes up at a certain instance with no detectable origin (or one that you didn't state?). That's not right...

No, I know what brought it on. I installed a flash swf decompiler, and immediately chrome broke. The "grey tabs" thing is apparently a known problem with the current version of chrome, and upon checking it turned out that the software I installed updated chrome without telling me.

...but hey, I just tried a fix I hadn't tried before, and it works for me again: install a custom theme, then click restore to the default theme.

Assuming you've already done the basic checks for malware, have you done any troubleshooting for Firefox itself?  I've been using Firefox for over a decade and have never had any not-easily-fixable trouble with it.

https://www.google.com/#q=firefox+using+100+cpu

It's been a problem with firefox for years. Lots of people have it, some don't. Some fixes work for some people, not others. In my case, it started after one particular update. Even after a fresh install, with no addons, even simply opening a single tab with google and nothing else, firefox would immediately jump to 100% cpu usage, and through regular browing with no more than half a dozen tabs open it would climb to using gigs of memory for no obvious reason. After far too long of trying fix after fix I eventually gave up. Firefox was good to me for years, but I lack sufficient sense of brand loyalty to endure misery just for the sake of being able to say I don't use IE. There are/were other options.

("Clear recent history", clear all),

Unrelated, this actually is one of the things I dislike about chrome. If you tell it to clear cookies it also wipes all your flash saves. There is no good reason for this.

[Anvilfolk]

I had similar problems that I think were fixed by destroying my firefox profile entirely (not sure if it goes away even if you uninstall). There might be a way to keep your bookmarks at least, but I think that bloated/problematic profiles can be part of the problem.

[SeriousConcentrate]

@LordBucket: That's the exact problem I've been having. It starts to eat massive amounts of resources, which causes it to lag horribly and generally have poor performance.

@Canisaur: I don't use that many add-ons. The three I mentioned in OP and Chatzilla for the rare times I feel like using IRC and that's basically it. I don't believe any of them are causing problems. I'm also inclined to blame the browser and not the computer when it's messing up on two separate computers that generally don't visit the same sites and are running different operating systems (mine is Windows 7 unfortunately, my brother's is XP). I also run scans and defrag once a week or so and Firefox has been acting up for quite a bit longer than that now.

Thanks for the discussion, guys. I'm keeping an eye on it as I try to decide what to switch to. Comodo is looking pretty good though, since it's basically the same thing but hopefully without the issues bugging my current browser.

[Hugehead]

If Google's keeping you from using Chrome I'd suggest Chromium, it's the open source Google-less sister browser to Chrome.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I use IE.

Also, Anvilfolk, did you at any point speed up your avatar's hammering rate? Seems like those two are getting a lot more done these days.

[SeriousConcentrate]

This question's for Tir, or anyone else who uses IceDragon since I'm trying that out today. Is there any way to move the tabs bar down? Right now it's right next to the IceDragon button in the upper left, when I'd prefer it to be beneath the bookmarked items toolbar. I've tried customizing it and I've got it looking mostly how I want it but how to do that still eludes me.

[~Neri]

I recommend Safari or PaleMoon, Palemoon is better for flash related stuff and web based gaming.

 Safari is rather neat in general and in my opinion is faster then chrome, I am currently using Safari, this is what is open:

I currently have 11 tabs open in this window, and 7 other windows, with tab counts numbering between 4-21 in them. I am having no speed problem whatsoever.

[Tiruin]

This question's for Tir, or anyone else who uses IceDragon since I'm trying that out today. Is there any way to move the tabs bar down? Right now it's right next to the IceDragon button in the upper left, when I'd prefer it to be beneath the bookmarked items toolbar. I've tried customizing it and I've got it looking mostly how I want it but how to do that still eludes me.

I...erm, never bothered with the position of the tabs. :x Sorry for that!
^{No, I've no idea and me making a basic check doesn't help either.}

>_>
<_<
I've 185 tabs open and no speed problem with Comodo at all.
^{...And 70% of them are B12 tabs. 5% are dictionary/etymology tabs and 3% are webcomics.}

[mastahcheese]

Although you do run into the problem of thinking you're done in one tab, and leaving it before you are.

I've had to bump a couple of my games for you before when you do that, so you may want to consider some better organization, Tiru.

[SeriousConcentrate]

I left this open for this sort of comment and discussion. Glad you got something out of the thread, Naxza. ^^^

[Frumple]

... don't normally wander into LA, but... I guess Opera users should represent, or somethin'. So 'sup. Can't say much about plug-ins* or features** -- I don't really use any of the ones mentioned, but it's the best browser I've personally used for dealing with oodles of tabs, and tends to run just fine with a buncha' junk open. Providing you're careful about, say, leaving a dozen flash-riddled pages twigging out in the background, anyway -- disabling plug-ins or javascript is roughly two button presses away, though, and can be done on the fly very easily.

It's got bells and whistles I'm fairly sure I disable or don't use, and I usually end up changing some hotkeys and whatnot around after updating, but I've been fairly content with it whereas the big three of FF, IE, and Chrome all annoy me in one way or another. Anyway, Opera user, fairly content with it, but not a very hard user in terms of customizing junk and whatnot. I'd say give it a try at some point, if only to see the neat ctrl+tab menu whatsit, or the surprisingly nice mouse gestures.

*I do know there is plug-in functionality and whatnot, I just don't know how robust or developed the selection is.
** Compared to other stuff. It's got one feature I haven't seen elsewhere that's basically the entire reason I use it besides it not freaking out over have a couple hundred tabs open. Which is basically a pop-up list of all open tabs you can click amongst and scroll around in and whatnot.