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Is Firefox 1.0 Less Stable than Firefox PR1.0?
An anonymous reader wonders: "I had Firefox 1.0PR running smoothly on three different machines and it hardly ever crashed. After upgrading to 1.0, I seem to have at least one annoying crash a day. On one of the machines, using the 'self update' feature caused Firefox to crash in middle of the upgrade and left it in a completely unusable state. Eventually, I had to uninstall it and resort to using IE to download the full installer, again. Is it just me, or are other heavy Firefox users noticing this sort of behavior?"
Why don't you try posting on the Mozilla.org forums?
Seems fine here
I've too noticed more crashes - only one of which (out of maybe 9, 10 since release) was related to the auto update; don't rule that out as a primary factor just yet.
It's just you.
... it's just you.
No. It isn't any less stable for me.
HTH
Next article please.
I don't know about anyone else, but I haven't had ANY issues with 1.0, perhaps the author of the article is using unsupported plugins / extensions that haven't been upgraded yet?
No bugs found here. But I was sad to see the 'Cookies are delicious delicacies' line disappear from Prefs.
[ UNSIGNED NOT NULL ]
It appears to be more stable than 1.0PR to me.
I keep Firefox running on Windows for days without closing and it runs fine. I think Firefox definitely has a mature web browser. It's gotten better every release I've tried since 0.6
Isn't there some kind of firefox mailing list for this kind of stuff?
My PR Firefox version Firefox/0.9.3 has always had the annoying problem of causing the entire system to "lock up" if left running overnight. (Win XP SP2.)
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
I'm horrified that this is a front page post. What is wrong w/ you people?
Also, you are reporting the crash data back to the developers, right?
[o]_O
Haven't noticed any difference on OS X. That said I love that there is finally no little window off in the corner that can only be seen when using exposé. That said... I use Safari.
so it must be just you
not me!
Yes even the latest nightly build!
is it possible that firefox is targetted by malicious programs - so that firefox will behave less stable. And those programs were exactly tuned to work with firefox 1.0?
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
Welcome to Slashdot, now being used as an alternative for official software support sites and usenet newsgroups.
AT&ROFLMAO
Runs just as stable as 1.0PR.
WinXP SP1
Up until now, under windows xp sp2, firefox 1.0 final is running very smoothly, no crashes, im using it all the time.
Under linux also, there are no issues, exept maybe with the mplayer-embedded plugin, but that is the plugins fault actually, experiencing the same problem with epiphany, konqueror and opera. So no, from my point of view firefox is as good as it gets!
pass me those sparticles will ya?!
If the installations of Firefox you're referring to uses any extensions, it could perhaps be the extensions themselves; I've noticed some extensions start to mess up (albeit rarely) even if they're rated to work on newer version of Firefox.
Personally, I've noticed no instability aside from what one extension gives, and it's pretty obvious which extension I'm getting trouble from. I've just yet to bother uninstalling it.
Running under FreeBSD, I see tabs that go blank if I switch tabs while something is background loading. I also can't delete a toolbar bookmark -- it just keeps coming back. I had none of these issues with the pre-release.
I have only had good experiences when you do a clean install of 1.0... I kept running into stability issues when I tried to upgrade - maybe some extentions are the problem... -jh
I don't want to come off as rude (of course but) but, why is this considered newsworthy?
The only time Firefox 1.0 has crashed on me was today, right after I tabbed away from this page. It seems to be at least somewhat repeatable here. Anyone else getting the same thing?
I've used Mozilla for several years now, and quite frankly, since v1.5 or so, the quality is really bad: about one crash per day. On Debian stable, it really sucks. It's almost as bad as the good old M17 days...
No problems here: the odd crash when trying to view movies in browser; which probably has something to do with me using unofficial programs to view Quicktime/Realplayer movies. But other than that its fine. As the title suggests: could old extensions be causing the problem? When Firefox was released: details on Slashdot described how to get extensions working on the new version by manually editing some files. Could it be that these extensions: although with the fix did work in the new version, actually end up causing some stability issues?
Don't worry, you don't /really/ have to. Try ftp'ing to ftp.mozilla.org ...
Simple!
I havent noticed anything being wrong as of yet, and I use Firefox as my main browser, maybe now that you have unistalled it and reinstalled it, it will be okay...
Complaining is more fun than actually solving problems.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
By posting such a story on the /. frontpage, your FireFox 1.0 just got /.'ed!
I ran in on two different machines, it ran fine and didn't crash on me.
I'm running it on my Mac, and I definitely feel like I get the spinning beach ball of death a lot more than in previous versions. I thought it was just me...
Disclaimer: I work for a company, but I don't speak for them.
I had the opposite occur. With 1.0PR I was having rather regular crashes when I opened the browser, and an annoying one that occured everytime I attempted to open any sort of streaming media. (I resorted to IE to watch the SpaceShip One launch).
However, with the full 1.0 I haven't had a single crash yet, and I've been using it a lot since the first day it was available.
This is not a sig.
On FedoraCore 2, FF-0.9.x locked up when printing. There was nightly build for which it "just worked" but the SaveAs... dialog was crap. On FedoraCore 3, FF-1.0PR and 1.0 both lock up when printing.
All this has been under icewm, but I've ruled that out since printing did work once.
n/t
No problems whatsoever. The search function finally works and updates are a breeze. On my Windows and Mac machines. HOWEVER, my Linux box was not quite as rosey. I upgraded my source-built FireFox 1.0PR to FireFox 1.0 binary. I unmerged the 1.0PR and downloaded the binary from the FireFox website, installed it, and rebooted. At first, things were smooth sailing, but after an hour or two of usage, FireFox would become unusable and eventually crash. Same problem under SuSE. I uninstalled the binary and emerged FireFox 1.0 from source and everything was great.
"You and your third dimension."
I've noticed almost no difference in performance and crashing between PR release vs. 1.0 The only issues I've seen has been related to opening up PDF files through internet.
Not exactly the same problems but FireFox has been a major disappoint lately. It's getting slower to load, it freezes all instances when using "Download link as" or when pulling up a .pdf file. Clicking on the window while it's busy can lead to a crash. FireFox 1.0 is no longer lean and mean. It's becoming slow and unstable.
What makes the way people with alternative body images use firfox different from the way the rest of us use it? Or are you tring to say I'm fat because I have 5 firefox installs?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Make sure you uninstall any old versions before installing the new version. Its in the faq.. well hidden, but i've had no problems when uninstalling then re-installing. Make sure to back up, but your savings should be saved as they are not held in the same area as the executeables and whatnot. I have had problems just upgrading, but i've been problemless since i've done the above.
"We are eternal.. all this pain is an illusion." -Maynard James Kenan
I have had no crashes since upgrading to 1.0. 1.0PR was crashing a couple times a day. So the problem must be related to somthing you are doing.
I've got no issues with it.
Just as a note; we *did* discover that Firefox dislikes seriously over-clocked machines but then many apps will throw in the towel under such circumstances.
Usually, seriously OC'd machines get used for gaming etc rather than desktop work.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
I had firefox crash the other day while using a wizard to set up bug reporting. I found that particularly ironic, to have the bug reporting system crash... Makes reporting the bug somewhat difficult.
but it's also a resource hog, it's currently taking up ~112,988k of Memory, for just 1 window and 5 tabs. It was considerably less with PR1.0. I have definitely experienced several crashes.
If it has been some while between Firefox versions then you could be just experiencing what Windows does naturally, degrade with time.
Firefox has had - and still does have - terrible issues with input focus tracking. Yet the Mozilla browser component has consistently gotten it correct.
I've encountered these problems with Firefox on both Windows and on GNU/Linux. The problem is especially prevalent input fields in multiple tabs.
You'll end up where you can't move the cursor in an input field with the keyboard, or where while typing in an input field the focus sporadically jumps to the new "Find" bar and jumps to that letter or fragment in the document.
This is a long standing problem in Firefox, although it became worse in 0.9.x.
Yeah, well, *I* installed Firefox 1.0 and my harddrive failed!!
I've got a problem with my mouse...
Can we discuss that here too?
Can't believe this made it to slashdot...
I ran 1.0PR fine with samba under Gentoo. Yet with 1.0 it seems to crash often when accessing a Windows server, forcing me to use a crummy command-line samba client, ugh!
Slashdot 1|0 Productivity
Go to CNN. View a few stories. **CRASH**
This is:
Linux 2.6, GNOME, 32-bit ppc, libswf installed,
multiple windows open, Debian-unstable, the tab
preferences extension installed so I can go back
to the old pre-tab Mozilla ways...
This really, really, sucks. I was one of those
people that would keep a browser running for
several weeks at a time. I'd let it sit on one
virtual desktop with two dozen windows open.
fire fox has crashed on me a few times while movin thorogh a website at a fast pace ...
I have also experienced crashes with 1.0, both on a Windows 98SE box, as well as a Windows XP Pro SP2 box. Five or six incidents between the two machines.
when upgrading my SuSE 9.1 box with FF 1.0P i had a lot of crashes, even when visiting articles here on slashdot (on-site articles that is, not from another website)... I imidiately updated to the true 1.0 version when it came out and it has become more stable.
It does not compare with the 0.9 version btw... That one never crashed on my desktop.
Now i must admit that my hardware is pretty ancient. : amd450, 256M with an ancient soundcard/video adapter, but it always ran perfect...
On Windows 2000 SP4 WIndows XP SP2 Slackware 10.0 Slax Must be you...
It must be a slack day for the slashdot editors.
Really tho, this sort of thing is better reported to Mozilla.org and then they can diagnose any supposed problem.
*Then* when we know what (any given) problem is, it can be posted to the front-page of Slashdot and *that* is news
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
If you need to mod me down now, but I am starting to get PO'd!
Just what in the F*CK is going on with Slashdot???
Is there any justification what so freakin' ever this is a frontpage story? As far as anyone can tell this is about as informative and useful as 85% of the Usenet.
The quality of frontpage postings has gone down dramatically. After weeks of every story just being a heavily editorialiazed piece of crap, we now have, "Hey, does anyone elses FF 1.0 crash?".
Editors, Taco, Cowboy Neal?!? Is anyone awake here? Have we totally lost our standards?
Cripes.
Short answer: no.
Long answer: yes, although the complete results were inconclusive.
"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." - Democritus
and clean your room before your father gets back or there will be trouble !
I was a happy Firefox/Firebird user till 1.0 was released. On WinXP SP2, there are zombie firefox processes even after I close firefox. The reason I switched to FireFox was in the hope that it would be less bloatware. But, I have seen FireFox process eatup more than 75MB of my memory. If it starts leaving zombie processes taking my valuable CPU, what is the advantage of FireFox over any adware/spyware/malware?
To add, Firefox is more hyped than any product M$ has ever launched.
I'll use IE right now(Never had any issues ever actually since sp2). I'll continue to evaluate every new release of FireFox to see if they have removed this major annoyance for me.
I haven't had a problem in regards to crashes. Only time I've had problems is when too much data is loaded from a page, causing the browser to crash or go to a /. comment page that has too many comments, slowing the browser to a crawl. And I also encountered both problems in the PR. Guess it's just the submitter.
One man's selflessness is another man's annoyance.
Whatever is happening, the problem is NOT Firefox. Your computer is unstable, there is a maliscious program attacking Firefox, its extensions. Anything but Firefox. Everyone knows that open source software is an order of magnitude better than anything Microsoft could ever make.
So yes, it is just the article's source.
Presuming he's running it under MS-Windows, why should anyone be surprised? Move along, folks, nothing new to see.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I left the lights on in my car the other day and then my car wouldn't start. Could these two events be related? Did anyone else ever have this happen?
word.
My wife and I have been using Firefox 1.0 heavily since release. I have not had a single crash that I can remember. Granted, I don't use the update feature due to past experience with it not doing anything, and I followed the instructions and completely uninstalled 1.0PR before installing 1.0 (wonder if they will ever fix this, shouldn't be too hard to auto-uninstall previous versions before installing the new version).
Firefox 1.0 is perfectly stable on my WinXP machine at work, other than a couple of extentions magically disappeared after the upgrade. My Linux box did an auto-update from 1.0PR and now does some strange things. Opening a link in a new tab opens the tab, but doesn't load the page, is the most anyoying. I'm thinking of re-installing when a new rpm is available. Even so, it's stable.
that looks like a spyware-ladden version of firefox, perhaps with some icons/logos exchanged. no thanks!
I don't think your weight has anything to do with it.
Firefox 1.0 on Panther is much more stable than previous versions.
Quicktime will randomly crash and take down the browser, but that's quicktime's fault.. it does the same thing in Safari, and has ever since Quicktime 6.4
I have the flash click-to-play extension (poor little Pismo already suffers on Panther, flash just makes it worse) and the web developer extension installed.
This is something that instead of being asked here should be asked at the Mozilla Firefox forums. There are lots of people who will be happy to help you.
If you believe you have found a bug, you should search if anyone has reported that bug, and if not report it here.
Sorry, but its almost offensive to see this at slashdot.
Complaints aside, it's clear from the post what the problem is. You seem to be running Firefox with the Windows Operating System. In order to fix the problem, simply uninstall Windows, and install Linux or BSD, or, better yet, throw your windows machine out the nearest window and purchase a computer capable of running MacOS X. Then install Firefox and you will find your problems disappear.
http://www.jumptheshark.com/about.htm
Is that you, Billy??? Spreading FUD again??
I definitely have noticed a speedup with Firefox 1.0, on both windows and linux. I had some crashes with 1.0PR (but they were rare) and now I haven't seen any since installing firefox 1.0. I think other people's experience is much the same as my own.
Wow. I can appreciate the importance of anonymous posting of news titles, but not for news stories like this. One person's hearsay, without even real documentation of the errors? Not only is this story useless, it looks like a great way to turn a lot of people off Firefox without just cause. I can appreciate the need for timely news regarding upgrades, but without any supporting information, this article looks vaguely sneaky and evil in a way I can't quantify. News sources have a responsibility to do a little research before putting something on the front page.
Is it just me
It is just you.
1.0 on the other hand runs stable as a rock for me. ( both installed it on my 2 linux computers)
while (!asleep()) sheep++
Must be a user error :)
No problems here. I use a copy of 1.0 for about half of the day every day. I used PR1.0, 1.0 RC1, and 1.0 RC2 about as much. 1.0 has yet to crash on me.
Couldn't resist
I get the occasional segfault, likely from bad HTML (yes, we've been over this before), and I'm having a few problems with extensions failing to install and with the preferences dialogs reseting options every time I bring it up.
(Disclaimer: this is my own build from CVS.)
I've been running Firefox since 0.6, on four different machines, two running 2000 two running XP.
Been running all sorts of builds up to 1.0 and I must say I am far more crashes and hangs with 1.0 final. So ironic.
Well Bill, you didn't tell us what OS you were running but I'd guess it was some Windows type thing. Might have something to do with those patches you don't release for 6 months.
AFAIK Firefox is the best browser for Windows bar none.
I don't ever use "Ahiee!!" except at w*rk.
"Bleat bleat yer can't have Mozzie or Firefox, they might be better than Ahiee!! but they ain't enterprise.. bleat bleat we don't need extra stuff to have to try an support.. "
(Contemplates polishing the shoes and dusting off the interview suit...)
I've had random crashes browsing MapQuest. It seems around one out of every ten times I refresh a map, Firefox goes boom. I actually suspect it may be some Javascript/Java/DHTML/etc. in an advertisement that's in their rotation.
-Z
It's prolly just windows :)
WFM
I am modding the story off topic!
[ I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance ] -- Isaac Asimov
When surfing intensively for more than 1 hour, my new laptop comes nearly to a halt with Firefox 1.0 (under Knoppix 3.6), eating up almost 50% of CPU.
Two things went wrong with 1.0, for me; the loss of the in-page find in the search bar and the showing of informational messages in the display window.
I went to the Firefox IRC channel to ask if there was a hidden configuration option to do something about these issues, got into a debate about the merits and weaknesses of the new search functionality, and got banned! was not impressed.
Talked to the admin who banned me, he said it was because I was going on too much; I said decency alone means you *say* something, you don't just ban someone outright. He said, and I quote, "when did decency and IRC ever have anything to do with each other?"
Not good to hear that from a channel admin.
--
Toby
I noticed this the day after the release however when I mentioned it to people I had all the Firefox zealots bash me saying it was my computer, etc.
I love Firefox but the community is pretty shitty. All I see is personal attacks and how it is _your_ system that has problems and not the all mighty Firefox. It is pissing me off and it will screw things up for Mozilla in the long run is the long term users are so rude to new users they will not switch. I have seen this bad attitude since i first tried Phoenix back in November/December 2002 just after it was released, in September 2002 IIRC, so it isn't something new.
I also think it is rather embarressing that there are still so many interface problems such as the download manager screwing up the % downloaded and it reporting "XX% of 2 files downloaded" when one of the downloads has alreaddy finished. I knew they are not show stopping bugs but it is exactly these kinds of bugs that put normal computer users off using Firefox. We [/.'ers] know what is wrong, just a simple bug, but a normal user would be like "what the hell?! I am not downloading 2 files, am I?" and then you will get some "computer expert" at work tell them, oh yeah that might be a security problem with Firefox and you are secretly downloading a trojan?!?!? After they read about a patch for Firefox being released.
Mozilla need to SORT IT OUT. If they want to actually make a difference. Mozilla failed and Firefox will fail as well unless they pull their thumb out and sort it.
...which I use instead of IE to download my copies of Firefox. It's just too much exposure to use IE to download copies of Firefox. Stick with Opera to download Firefox and you'll stay safest.
Which is -- no crashes here. :-P
:-/
Maybe you're a victim of some bug that's caused by something else in your system. It sounds strange otherwise, since under normal circumstances, I don't really think 1.0 shouldn't crash "often".
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
This should be deleted. This is really sorry.
Anyway, more to the point, perhaps his problem has more to do with his system than with Firefox itself. I have a system running Mandrake 10.0 and another running Suse 9.2. The exact same binary is perfect on Mandrake and somewhat flaky (random crashes) on Suse.
Even more curious is that the talkback agent crashes if I try to see the details of the crash.
I had Windows 2000 running smoothly on three different machines and it hardly ever crashed. After upgrading to Windows XP, I seem to have at least one annoying crash a day. Is it just me, or are other heavy Windows users noticing this sort of behavior?
Firefox has *never* crashed for me, and I'd classify myself as a power user. However, on my girlfriends computer (which is an _identical_ T30 laptop) it crashes all the time. While upgrading to 1.0 it hung up - just like you stated - and I had to uninstall and reinstall it from scratch. It still crashes, but I think we've isolated that the crashes only happen when we download files. This is really a pain, especially while I'm trying to convert people over to firefox. Anyway, the ieview plugin can come in handy if you can isolate the pages that cause the crash: http://ieview.mozdev.org/ It's a great plugin, especially for those pages that don't work so well under firefox just yet.
Is this really news? A single user's negative experience of Firefox hardly seems to me to be worth reading - more like a troll instead.This belongs on the Mozilla forums.
Next off, someone will post an article saying that they wish that their graphics card was faster for HL2. Purely subjective information, and not really worth repeating.
I'm running windows and linux builds and it's running flawlessly. Check your settings.
Perhaps in an age of blogging, there's a common tendency in thinking that every single thought that crosses one's mind is worthy of becoming an article. Unfortunately, this isn't the case.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Xp, Linux, Linspire, Mac all the systems in my house have had exceptional usage.. In fact the XP version on this laptop I'm writing from is just fine.. same session opened 5 days ago while travelling, suspended and resumed a few dozen times alread ram or disk does not make a diff.
/.???
Furthermore how the hell does this guy get a story like this posted on the front page of
If it's that easy I've got a story about a little boy that used his finger to plug a dike I'd like posted.
I have noticed the same. If I go to a page with a lot of Flash on it, or have several tabs open with some Flash ads the browser hangs and I'll have to force quit. I don't have the same problem on the PC and never had this problem with PR either, very frustrating.
Well, I don't know about Firefox 1.0 specifically, but I know that the Mozilla framework stuff that comes on Debian testing has been getting pretty bad as of late. I use Galeon for most of my browsing, and generally have to kill it once a day or so now. Back two weeks ago when I had a job, I ran Firefox 1.0PR on a RedHat 9 box and seemed to have similar trouble, but I don't think I got around to upgrading that to 1.0 to see if there was any improvement.
The problem seems to be that a page or two with mangled HTML will cause some sort of memory leak or similar thing to happen, and within a few moments, a well-functioning browser suddenly starts taking 30-60 seconds to render a simple page. A while back, I figured my browser was going nuts because of the Macromedia Flash plugin, but I disabled that and ended up still having problems.
My Debian packages show Mozilla 1.7.3-5 and Firefox 1.0-2.
Somehow your logic doesn't fit ZorinLynx. Barfy was making an excellent point that the homepage should be something more for High Quality articles and the lower quality trash articles should be kept on their appropriate Slashdot sections.
I thought the same way as Barfy when I first saw that article. I just shook my head and if Barfy wouldn't have posted something about it I would have. Now I'm just going to back up somebody who is just trying to make the system better.
He might be a bit blunt in trying to do it, but so you have to be sometimes to encourage change and get noticed.
FireFox only crashes on me when I've been using Java for awhile. It has always happened with all the Mozilla products. I upgraded to Java 1.5 thinking this Java issue would stop crashing my browser, but it keeps doing it.
You are on crack. I had many problems from 0.9-1.0pr on amd64. Also they improved the general user interface and general things I find annoying. But I still hate how they borked ctrl+u on the address bar, see the length bug post in bugzilla.mozilla.org.
This is an odd place to post your firefox bug theories, but in my opinion 1.0 is at least as stable as 1.0pr.
The only time my firefox seems to crash is if there's a bug in an Extension, or if I'm using a plugin such as adobe acrobat reader, sometime it will get a little unstable. From my experiences it always seems to be some external issue that causes firefox to crash (although I'm not saying firefox isn't responsible for the issues). Mine crashes maybe once every week or two (and trust me, I use it A LOT) - a lot less than IE.
The website you are looking for is mozillazine.org. Not slashdot!
I hit my laptop with a hammer and now it doesn't work. Any other heavy hammer users experiencing similar problems or is it just me?
I don't know about anybody else, but for me PR was very unstable, which made me wonder why it was so hard to get RC1 and RC2. The mozilla.org site didn't even update their frontpage link to download the RCs when they came out. I found RC1 much better than PR (I never tried RC2). I've not noticed that 1.0 is less stable than RC1 but it is definately better than RP.
YES! /. archives would be enhanced by story ratings.
Let posters rate the story.
For example, "a rectal thermometer makes a poor radio antenna" might hide a really good story that someone scanning the archives would otherwise be inclined fast forward past.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
Firefox crashed once, and it was while opening a popup window! Other (older) versions didn't crash.
The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
I didn't want to reply to myself, so I'll put this out here:
What about your family? If you loved them, then you wouldn't let anyone in your family use IE, you'd force them to use Firefox for their own good. (Or were you waiting for when you see them on Thanksgiving?)
What about your friends? Surely none of them are still using IE, right? Not after you demoed its awesomeness to them and helped them install it, right?
What about your coworkers? (If your company doesn't allow Firefox, then just install it to the "My Documents" folder and you're good to go.) You could ask them if they noticed anything suspicious during lunch or something.
That's 3 groups of people you could've contacted, yet you chose to waste everyone's time as your first course of action. Bravo. BTW, do we get any indication that this story is anything other than Microsoft planted FUD?
[o]_O
On OS X - rock solid, but keybindings aren't perfect yet - can't complain though.
honestly, i'd rather have the browser crash 100 times a day rather than have it be susceptible to vulns. in that respect, even if it does crash 100 times a day, its still better than iexplore. but to answer your question, on a mac, i've found it to crash occasionally on "non-trusted" sites (the smaller sites); while on the pc, i've found it to be ultra stable. and besides, for a free browser that saves you the antiquity and annoyance of iexplore, i think its a little bitchy of you to complain. even on the mac, where it crashes now and then, if you use it without the tabs (which, i know, undermines the best feature), it is just as stable as osx itself. suck it up. its still the best out there. mozilla moves more quickly than anybody (consider the vole) to optimize their product. megasoft cant even patch their patches, let alone make a secure product.
It was going fine until I clicked this link
- No, I am not your imagination
They're going to have to redefine themselves or else it will leave room for another site to take over the void being left by crappy ideals/articles.
My history is the exact opposite. I've had 1.0 PR crash multiple times on me (albeit not as often as IE has when I was still using IE). I have YET to have 1.0 Final crash on me, period. I've seen some weird bugs occur (such as bookmarks getting out of alignment spontaneously once or twice, having a live bookmark just stop working until I delete it and then recreate it again, etc.), but nothing serious enough that I actually had to resort to opening Firefox in "safe mode" just so I can get it to work again as I had to do at least a half dozen times with 1.0 PR.
:-P
So what kind of crack-smoking hardware are you using?
si vis pacem, para bellum..."if you wish peace, prepare for war"
I've 'updated' or 'upgraded' Firefox many times, and have always had issues doing that, such as seeming instability.
When I've uninstalled or removed Firefox first, then installed fresh, I've had VERY FEW issues. Great browser.
Methinks it's better to not post at all than post something boring like this. Besides, at 5 MB, you should have kept the previous version (and a couple of versions of Mozilla) around.
No, Firefox doesn't crash for me, and I use it all day long. My only complaint is that it takes longer to start than Mozilla. It's something I can't explain, but since it only happens once a day, I don't care too much.
I'm with everyone else, this is not a front page story. Seems more like a poll to me.
:P
Has Firefox 1.0 crashed for you? If so explain.
No it hasn't.
Yes it has.
Cowboyneal uses IE
if course i do not have windows installed on my computers and forbid any version of windows on any of my computers, and run only various distros of Linux, and use either Mozilla or Firefox, and i am using Firefox-1.0 right now as i type this and have not seen a single problem with it...
could be a windows problem...
we all know msft/windows has a problem with non-msft appz, like msft thinks they are the only one in the universe allowed to manufacture software...
I haven't had any problems except with Adode. Takes forever to close when it opens something up in a tab.
I've got no problems running Konqueror 3.3.1. Sometimes the mplayer plugin crashes, but the browser itself is extremely stable. Maybe I should dump FreeBSD and KDE and switch to Windows and Firefox to see what all this hoopla is about.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I've been running Firfox 1.0 since the release date on SuSE Linux 9.0 and have yet to encounter a problem.
I blame M$.
It ran fine for the first few days after install, then it crashed yesterday. Ever since then it takes a long time for anything to load, if at all. I uninstalled it and am now using IE again without problem. Mozilla needs to fix these problems.
I have heard that in version 1.0, the problem with the funny slashdot rendering has been solved. But right this moment, I am using version 1.0, and slashdot looks horrible! What is the solution to this?
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
What do you expect with tabbed browsing? Any heavy uses of IE will crash. So even though it crashes every few hours of use (been like that since the first betas), it's still my favorite browser since it's so much easier to use, and so much easier to get back to what I was doing before the crash.
I am going to be ignorant make a comment without reading any of the others. Sound fun? Right. I need to vent...
I was rather excited for firefox 1.0 to come out. I thought that maybe it would fix that annoying memory leak in Windows, and the few crashes I get with 0.9.3 in Linux. It has done neither for either.
On Linux, it crashed very frequently. VERY frequently. I reverted to 0.9.3 becauase it is at least a little more stable. And on Windows - the memory leak. Sheesh. I was also a little annoyed when they switched the downloads window hot key to CTRL+J, instead of CTRL+Y. Not because it's more inconvenient, but because I had gotten used to it. But I can live with that. It's the stability that is a big issue for me (and most people, I would gather).
Especially when I open multiple tabs, and just plan on coming back to them later when I'm busy with something else. e.g. Slashdot. I usually scroll down the front page and ctrl+click all the links I want to view and then check those tabs out later. Then leave it to one bad page (and God only knows what page it was that did it) and it crashes and I have to start all over, which by that point, I've forgotten what I was looking at and just assumed that it wasn't very important.
Hell, we've probably found a cure for cancer, and I don't know because my browser crashed before I got to the article. This is not nearly as bad on 0.9.3 (Linux) as it is on 1.0. I was seriously disappointed by it. Not that I have any right to be. I didn't pay for it (though I did buy a t-shirt), and I didn't help design it. I was just really hoping for a killer app. So let me know, somebody, when there's a new _stable_ version of Firefox, and I'll upgrade. Ok, I'm done ranting. Go back to your normally scheduled Slashdotting.
I suggest you just do a complete wipe of all trace firefox program files, registry and especially extensions and themes and start fresh.
mattdev@server$ touch
cannot touch `/dev/genitals': Permission denied
Once again, we're blamimg the performance of an application based upon the experience of 1 user. Why is /. continuing to post these articles?
What's next? My Firefox keeps on crashing when the Internet goes down?
I'm running firefox 1.0, it crashes every single time I close it, PR1 exhibited the same behavior.
paul reinheimer
They actually said there would be problems upgrading from 1.0PR to 1.0... that's why I stayed at and upgraded from .92 without a single issue.
Remember, its a discussion board, not a news outlet.
... well?
/. articles you've complained about to yourself, "That's a retarded story, why'd it make the front page?!"
/. be more discriminating in our headline choices? Is it time to consciously re-evaluate what kind of stories /. posts?
Regardless of how you view Slashdot, maybe you ought to consider how Slashdot bills itself. Take a gander up to the top of this page real quick and let me know what it says below the Slashdot logo
Let me help: "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."
If you think this is just a troll, think back to how many
Should
I work at a company which has a proxy. It seems that Firefox forces me to enter a username and password for every single http request which requires Basic Authentication. So in order to do anything like that I fall back to MSIE. Firefox could use some more thorough testing and bug fixing. But with such a wider audience now I would expect patches to be firing off quickly to solve the problems. I think the largest focus for Firefox 1.0 was to produce a browser with an easy interface for the masses on top of the standard compliant Gecko rendering engine. I would say I prefer using it over MSIE, but on my iBook I still prefer Safari.
Brennan Stehling - http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/
I was running 0.9.3 for a long time, waiting for 1.0 to arrive. I updated from 0.9.3 to 1.0 (as it said I could). It ran fine for the first 4-5 days, then I clicked CHECK FOR UPDATES and it completely barfed without warning. Luckily I was able to get into Firefox safe-mode to backup my bookups. Uninstalled Firefox, reinstalled 1.0 No Luck. Then I had to completely remove Firefox AND the profile folders. Re-boot PC and then install 1.0 from scratch. Then had to re-get extensions and set it back up again the way I like it. I reckon they still have a way to go with the installers / updaters. But I still LOVE LOVE LOVE FireFox.
"Is it just me, or are other heavy Firefox users noticing this sort of behavior?"
Uh No, it's just you!!! Been running FireFox 1.0 and PR before it for some time now on Linux, Win32, and OSX. Have not had a single crash.
It's freaking WinBlows, backup your data, uninstall FireFox. Re-install it. If it re-occurs, then backup more data and re-install Windows.
I had a problem recently with Adobe Acrobat Reader where it ran the Windows installer every time I started the application. The only way to fix it was to uninstall the reader and the full Acrobat 6 then reboot, re-install both and update them. Suddenly, it's working fine now. This is also why I run OS X as my primary workstations and Linux for my servers. My Windows box collects dust at work and is only used when absolutely necessary.
What is up with the lame luser 'Ask Slashdot' posts lately?
I'm a gamer on occasion. And when I play an FPS, I don't like frame loss. I recently noticed I was losing frames on occasion. I brought up task manager to see what was doing it, and firefox is using significant CPU power even when it's doing absolutely nothing. (Thus, closing firefox caused a perfect framerate to occur again). Anyone else have this issue? Why does the web browser need CPU to idle?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
My coworker and I just upgraded to 1.0 and have bothed noticed that firefox will eventually eat up most/all system memory, forcing us to kill firefox and restart it. (we ran the beta/pre releases with no issues) The only common factor is that we both had to reinstall the web developer (version .8?) after upgrading to FF1.0....
Could this problem be related to specific extensions and not specifically to firefox itself?
On OS X I had frequent problems with 1.0PR1. 1.0 is significantly more reliable for me. It's been running on my machine non-stop since the day it came out.
I've even been playing with a lot of new features, so if I was going to tickle a big new bug, I think it would have been tickled by this point.
What I have noticed is that when displaying animated GIFs or Flash movies, my proc usage spikes. Maybe that's Macromedia's fault.
Troll bastard. You will burn.
Reinstall IE?
Firefox 1.0 PR crashed on my system at least twice a week. I had the chance to witness it crashing three times a day, nothing I had seen since Phoenix release. But now when I've upgraded to 1.0, I haven't had a single crash ever since. (...just waiting for this good luck to come to its sad end now that I've said it.)
For some reason many times the page is not rendered in a way I can read. the columns in slashdot often overlap, and are really weird. in IE all is fine
yes I do see the irony
It crashes at least once a session, if not twice. And it's done this since at least 0.7. Prior to that it crashed even more-frequently. I didn't notice any difference between PR and the final release of 1.0 to be honest -- they've just all been crashy even when nothing else is running on my system.
So no, you're not alone. However, the Firefox zealotry has gotten to the point where even suggesting that it's not the single most-stable thing in the universe is considered heresy. In actuality all they need to do is actually work for once on making the dumb thing more-stable instead of adding some dumb new feature nobody will use anyways, like the built-in RSS tracking.
If they can actually make Firefox stable, they might then have a legit claim as being the #1 browser, but right now the random crashes during normal usage and the hangs during updates. Both Opera and IE don't crash nearly as often as Firefox.
-- Primis.
Every time I have had a problem with Firefox, I have always been able to solve it by deleting the default profile and creating a new one. It always seem to be something that got corrupted over several version upgrades. I have put 1.0 on numerous machines and not had a moment's trouble.
I have a completely converse experience; I've had the early FFx (or whatever it was called back then) builds blow up on me quite often, but I've had no real trouble since 0.9 - where, on the other hand, my IE just needs a little prodding and it will go up in flames, taking shell-Explorer with it...
It's stable as hell.
1.0PR had a javascript pop-up crash bug that drove me crazy. 1.0 fixed that.
Some things to consider:
1. How did you install 1.0? Did you do an overwrite? If so, do a clean install.
2. What extensions are you using? Have you disabled the extension version check?
>On one of the machines, using the 'self update' feature caused Firefox to crash in middle of the upgrade
When was this? Do you have DNS/network/firewall issues which could be causing this?
Lastly, to get some real answers from the experts people should asking here.
I've been reading about firefox and the words Anyything But Microsoft pops into my head, so I tried Firefox 1.0. I like to open many tabs/windows while surfing. With firefox, if a page times out, its address disappears from the bar, so I can't even attempt to reload it. So off it went just as quick as it went on. I really tried to like it, honest.
-Copyright law #69:Whenever Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain,copyrights get extended by 25 years.
FireFox 1.0 works smoothly on my PCs since release date... :) Now with MAF extension I'm seriously considering to switch to FireFox FULL-TIME!
http://smeschini.altervista.org
Dear Slashdot,
I'm running Windows XP and have at least one annoying crash a day! My Intel P1 222Mhz with 32 MB RAM ran Windows 95 perfectly. Is it just me or does Windows XP seem a lot less stable than Windows 95?
I think I will have to revert back to Windows 95 if you cannot help me.
I am also submitting this important problem in a form of a story to CNN.
--jdk
Its probably a flash advert on that site with a script that is continuously running. I've noticed it on a few sites.
Download the flashblock extension - until you slick on the flash items you'll only see an icon.
It's crashed my iBook twice since I downloaded it about a week ago; annoying as hell considering Mac OS is supposed to be so much less crash-prone than Windows. It's working fine on my WinXP machine though.
Now, which OS is it easier to install and upgrade applications on? [/sarcasm]
For the first few days I had the system completely freezing reminding me of the bad old days of win 95/98. However for some reason I had a message to run chkdsk and it seems to have fixed itself
The best Firefox so far for me has been 0.9 (if it was even called firefox back then) but any firefox has been better than allowing access to or even using MSIE
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything" -- Josef Stalin
1.0PR was much more stable for me as well. Usually it's a complex page with a plugin (flash, pdf, etc.) that crashes me out, but it's much more often in 1.0 than the PR release for me.
"You never truly understand a thing until you can explain it to your grandmother" -Albert Einstein
Is a frog's butt watertight?
This is why it wasn't posted as "Software news", but as an "Ask slashdot" story.
On the other hand, I do feel annoyed about that extensive memory hog of Firefox. Hope they get that fixed soon.
One thing that may cause I problem (at least the only one I experienced) is if you do not delete your profile directory between version changes. Especially going from pre 1.0 to 1.0. Here is what I did: Go to your Firefox profile directory located at:
Now copy the following files to another directory:bookmarks.html
cookies.txt
formhistory.dat
history.dat
hostperm.1
key3.db
prefs.js
signons.txt Now go to the top of the Mozilla directory and remove it completely. Install Firefox 1.0 and start it for the first time and close Firefox. Go to the new profile directory and copy back the files you backed up.
The only problem with this method is that you need to reinstall extensions, though going to 1.0, older extensions didn't work anyway. Hopefully later versions of Firefox will have a better upgrade method.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
While I'm on a Mac, I've noticed than pages with Flash animations will eat up a significant amount of CPU time. Did the page you were viewing have an Flash content in it?
I have 1.0 and have had no problems at all. I you install over 1.0pr I suggest elimintation of the previous config. Save you bookmarks.html and backup/write down the necessary info. Do a fresh install.
it seems to be better in some aspects, but certain pages it crashes and crashes more often.. i order pizza a lot and it crashes all the time on pizzahuts website, same with papajohns.. maybe its their site but it doesn't crash at all with ie, or opera only mozilla & firefox
Firefox 1.0 works a treat on OSX 10.3.6. I'd be surprised if it wasn't also rock solid on Linux et al.
I was running PR1.0 and upgraded a few days ago (yeah, way to jump on the bandwagon, girl!) and it's crashed at least twice a day. I never had any issues before. I seriously wonder what they did to mess up a good thing.
Is anyone having issues with plugins performing illegal operations? This has been the big problem.
see sig. see sig run. run sig run.
A while back I was using netscape. It was good and all. Then I had to reformat my computer (good ole windows) and when I went to put netscape back on, something happened and it would not start no matter what I did. Even reisntalled an wiped the registry from it. So, I download firefox, and it works good for a week or so, then does the same thing. I end up re-wiping my box and starting fresh. Havent had any problems since then though. Anyone else get this kind of prob with netscape/firefox?
mine crashed once, but i had too many porno tabs open.
KARMA POLICE ARREST THIS MAN HE TALKS IN MATHS- radiohead
I've been running the 1.0 release version since it was released. No problems......only have 14 extensions and a few plugin's running. No lockups, no problems here....
If CNN isn't working for you, try the Fox News Web site. Not only will you not have to put up with the crashes, but you will get news that is fair and balanced, instead of propaganda that's been filtered through an army of liberal reporters and producers. Honestly, I've introduced at least 8 people to Fox News since the election and they're hooked. I think you would be too if you gave it a try. :)
Alright, everybody thats whining about how slashdot isnt a support group, consider this: Firefox, right now, is probably the most prominent open source project out there right now. And no, linux or Apache dont count. Your average joe couldnt give a crap about those. Firefox, however, is something every nitwit loves. So, Firefox's 1.0 release being unstable is BAD for anybody who gives a crap about the open source movement. Now, say a certain crash bug is reported on the most read geek news site on the planet. This has the effects of: 1) giving the bug 1000x the prominence it would have it were just reported on bugzilla which in turns leads to 2) the bug getting fixed ASAP which would lead to 3) your average joe not thinking that all open source sucks because firefox crashes Now, try to resist the urge to be a smartass and consider that maybe slashdot's moderators like to take advantage of slashdot's huge audience to accomplish something other than reporting news-worthy items ( hint: newspapers do this too)
The first version of Firefox I ever used was 0.9x (can't remember exactly which version). It never crashed. Ever. When 1.0PR came out, I upgraded, and it crashed around once per week (still better than IE's once per hour though). Besides IE, it was the most unstable browser I had ever used. Since I've upgraded to 1.0, Firefox hasn't crashed. Ever. Less stable than 1.0PR? Haha, no.
I've had no issues with any of them.
do you leave firefox in a page with flash animations? nowadays many of the animated figures in a web page are flash and not animated gifs anymore. a badly made flash can take up tons of CPU even when you leave it there. also, are you viewing web sites with automatic page refreshing? it will eat up the CPU everytime the page refreshes.
if that bothers you, you can always use the task manager to set the process's priority to either "below normal" or "low".
however, games are memory intensive. so as a browser, which uses memory caching to be fast. when real memory is used up, "thrashing" occurs (to swap some memory pages to the disk). even adjusting task priority won't help here, since thrashing is inherently slow. whenever a web page that you leave in the background refreshes itself, the OS has to swap out a few pages of game memory and swap in memory pages for the browser. as the game continues, it needs the memory back, and the OS has to juggle around memory pages again.
if you see a periodic frame loss, then self-refreshing web pages are definitely the culprit.
I once had a signature.
I know this isn't going to be modded up, but I did want to voice my support for the author of this story. My firefox *never* crashed until the Release Candidate, and now it happens every few days. I used every version starting from 0.3, and never saw a Talkback agent until a week ago. I posted to bugzilla, but didn't have much to say other than "Random crashes in 1.0"
would have used the console FTP program to download it rather than open IE.
With previous test versions, I've experienced crashes caused by an extension I had installed which was no longer compatible after the upgrade.
I expect intelligent and thought provoking replies on this page....
Wait wait, did I miss it? When did they start the snowball fight in hell?
Are we talking about the same thing? Slashdot? This is slashdot we're talking about. Good grief man, you must be going to some other site and ended up here by accident!
Never, ever, ever expect mature posts on slashdot. Be pleasantly surprised when you actually see a post by someone that knows WTF they are talking about.
Is it just me, or are other heavy Firefox users noticing this sort of behavior?
Looking around at the other comments, I think it's just you.
I have had zero crashes with 1.0. I think it seems much more stable than any release prior.
/. Ridiculous. One person has a flaky install and the editors make it seem like it is a widespread problem!?!?!?!
I am amazed that this was a front page post on
Greg Whalin
greg@whalin.com
Good old Debian, hey? :-)
I've been experiencing the exact same phenomenon. So have a few of my friends. I'm sure it's not happening to everybody, but yeah, for me, the PR seemed more stable. On my system the official release goes to 99% CPU utilization and has to be shut down a few times a day, typically.
It doesn't throw errors to report. I'm not savvy enough to know how to get debugging information out of it, and I don't have the time to spend on mozilla forums trying to get someone's attention and then working it out.
So I won't put in the time. I don't expect the firefox people to fix it for me, given that, of course. They've already given me plenty, and it's still a great browser.
But I have been having this problem, and if other people have, too, then I'm glad to see it being discussed. Beyond hoping the problem becomes well-characterized, I think it's worth having a discussion about this because it could have implications for how OSS is perceived by the mass culture. The Firefox campaign is the biggest, most successful open source push in recent memory. Let's not act like it's heresy to talk about it here instead of in a newsgroup somewhere.
I bet if some one tracks down this "anonymous reader's ip" it will be from redmond washington.
"it looks like a great way to turn a lot of people off MSIE without just cause"
... everything bad I hear about MSIE come from security bulletins of well-known reputation, and later acknowledged by Microsoft for a security patch release. I don't think your assessment is fair to accuse people of believing in hearsay and cutting more slack for Firefox.
Yeah?! I'm still nodding along...
I never recall seeing a story with negative MSIE coverage that comes from an individual user. MSIE bug stories that I read were all reported and acknowledged by security companies who have a phone number to call if you don't like what they're reporting.
It makes me wonder why people bashing firefox or defending IE aren't willing to stand up to their words with their reputation (or they simply have no reputation so to speak). Are they all related to the same FUD department funded by a certain company or what?
If it makes you feel happier
I once had a signature.
Yes, it does crash more. I have only installed Firefox 1.0 on a Fedora Core 3 machine. I thought it was just Fedora Core 3. I guess not. I haven't put it on another machine yet so I have no other info to go on.
FF1 is somewhat disappointing to me. It does not crash at all compared to PR1.0 for me but I do dislike the fewer themes and extentions that were offered in previous versions. Some may have been incorperated but some are not that could be potentially useful. As for crashing, mine has not cr4ashed since and I keep a ton of tabs open all the time...
_
Free 27" Sony WEGA TV
I have been a 'heavy' user... .8 and .9 but it's much better now
I have found firefox to be robust.
xpi handling was a bit rough back at
1.0PR didn't have many problems in my view, but 1.0 is definitely better
When I updated (clicked on the up arrow by the throbber) to 1.0 full/gold/whatever
I have had the same profile since the 1.0PR and I have been very happy with the xpi handling (ie, the fox handled all my extensions just fine)
It's crashed a couple times on me.
nothing's perfect
------ no thanks... I've quit
..been consistantly less stable with each successive version after firefox 0.9.3, and firefox 1 is the worst. Tabbed pages constantly display content from the wrong tabs (usually parent tabs displaying content from other tabs which have been opened in the background), it locks up a *lot* and takes several minutes to become happy enough to work again, and is generally feeling a lot bloatier than previously.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you
Flame away if you want, but I've come to have lower expectations from each new piece of software I come in contact with. There are always more things that can go wrong.
How's Amnesty International causing deaths?
By being hated by human rights violators everywhere... including the one who WON'T let them into the country the deaths are happening in. It's similar to how Greenpeace is destroying our envrionment by sinking illegal whaling ships before the whalers can get a their fill of endangered animals and the EFF is destroying scientific progress by opposing microchips in humans because of the possible draconian uses. ~lighting
If IY was a PC:
/bin/sh: command not found
[InuYasha]~$ sit
doesn't it seem strange like somebody is baiting the comment posters with this story...
post an FUD filled anonymous story about a popular open-source project....
is this the editors looking to boost their comments on a Saturday or is it an Opera or Microsoft Employee looking to shake the tree?
------------------------------
Ray Raspberry
raspberry@b3l33t.org
Is this "anonymous reader" just spreading FUD?
I've had no crashes since upgrading, but I'm only playing on Linux and OS X.
DV$BCB
free ipod and free gmail!
I use Firefox almost excusively now on two machines; one thats about 5 years old on 98 and the is about a year and half running win2k. I notice almost no difference whatsoever between this version and last version. I have seen stability improve in terms of memory leaks. It doesn't show on new machines, but my older machine with limited resources was hampered by this. Especially with tabs opened for long periods of time. This latest version of FF has seemingly improved this. Overall I've had maybe 2 lockups or crashes in my span of timing using FF.
No less stable here on Windows XP SP2, Windows XP SP1, or Gentoo Linux ~x86. If anyone ever makes an update to the BeOS version, I'll report on it too.
My Systems
Try uninstalling Firefox 1.0PR, don't worry the profile will be left intact, then install Firefox 1.0, this works just fine, and Firefox 1.0 is completely stable.
I tried 1.0, and found it to be bulkier, slower, and more buggy than 0.9.3, so I reverted back to 0.9.3. Never tried the 1.0 PR, 0.9.3 works well for me.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
I had similar problems back with the last 0.9.whatever release. After I thought about it a bit, I ran Ad-aware and Spybot. BINGO! Three new spywares detected! (I may have gotten a tad over enthusiastic looking for new plug-ins.)
Seems that they expected IE, and bollixed Firefox trying to do their dirty deeds.
Lessons learned:
1) Only accept plugins from known safe sources. (https://update.mozilla.org/extension)
2) Firefox is a great browser, but it ain't idiot proof! (And Even I can be an idiot if I don't think first!) };-)
3) The number of people that'll yell at you when you ask an honest question, instead of offering help, is discouragingly high.
The U.S. really needs an English to Wisdom dictionary.
Firefox 1.0 is working great for me on OS X and Windows, but it's so flaky on Linux (never seems to finish loading) that I've pulled it off and returned to Moz 1.73.
Spam, spam, spam... Wonderful spam...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Firefox one has been stable for me on at least 3 different windows computers and my powerbook. In fact, I have all but switched to it on my Mac as it handles Javascript better. It must be the guy who wrote this post. Try taking out all of the plugins and adding them back one by one until it starts having problems. I myself havebeen running less plugins, especially since RSS is now included (and sage does not work anymore(.
Gorkman
I am thinking, maybe this user is from inside Microsoft and just wants everybody who thought of switching from IE to Firefox to think twice before doing so...
What do you guys (and gals) think about that ?
The final Firefox upgrade did cause some problems. One major problem was in its handling of extensions - it just disabled all of them. However, if that extension provided a function - added toolbar buttons for instance - Firefox became massively confused. When I first upgraded, PrefButtons caused this and Firefox went into a constant cycle of attempting to upgrade software and finding none to upgrade.
For anyone having problems, make a copy of your bookmarks and cookies, and delete the rest of your profile. You'll have much smoother sailing.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
I've been having the same problem with Firefox 1.0, especially with Java applets and especially when I have two windows open, each with multiple tabbed windows.
When the comments start making a whole lot more sense than the front page... there's something wrong!
Have been using Firefox 1.0 as my sole browser on 98SE and it runs beautifully. On my OS X 10.1.5 iBook via 802.11b, however, the Bookmark menu, of all things, consistently causes it to crash as soon as I click it.
I haven't had time to go check the Mozilla forums so far, only to post it on Slashdot! =D
I had this problem previously with a much earlier release of firefox. What I did to fix the problem was back up my bookmarks, go into the application settings hidden folder under the user name you are logged in as, and find the folder for firefox and delete it. Then open the browser again, and the browser will create a new temporary settings folder. Then just restore your bookmarks and you will have it working again without problems. Firefox 1.0 runs great for me.
This FAQ entry has a link to a program that will let you submit crash reports for hangs. I haven't tried it. The author of the program is Josh Soref (timeless), a Mozilla developer. I'm curious as to how well the program works, so please reply with Talkback IDs.
The shareholder is always right.
Hey I just posted a software bug at the Mozilla forums and got 414 replies! It's just like /.!
Er I'll get my coat
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
Firefox 1.0 initially acted like a giant steaming pile... I then blew away my profile from pre 1.0 (saving bookmarks), and started over, and it has been great ever since... Not necessarily what you want to have to do, but I'll accept it since it was technicall 'pre-release' until now.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
If you don't like the way PR works and you thought the previous version better; why not just roll back? Can't you locate the previous install file on one of those big servers in Redmond?
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
I have a Mac. That means that nothing compiled for
a PC will run, at least not without an emulator.
Besides, Macromedia might be spyware. I can't tell
if I don't have the source.
Try again, please.
Both the 1.0 and the 1.0PR crash on me, using them on Debian, Gentoo, and Windows XP.
I can't really say the newest release is worse than the older release, seems about the same to me. About 3 or 4 crashes in an 8 hour workday.
Posting on mozilla's forums is probably the best thing you can do however, I want to tell you from now that the problems that you are experiencing are most likelly not related to firefox at all. You either have a hardware problem, your drivers are not working right, or you have to thank M$ for your hell. Firefox does crash sometimes but except for one single time that I can remember the crashes were usially due to other software or some other problem not related to firefox (acrobat 6.0 most of the time). I have tested it extensively on windows xp sp1 and sp2 and gentoo linux.
I was curious about this story, so I pulled the talkback crash reports from talkback-public.mozilla.org, where submitted crash reports are processed and archived. The MTBF (mean time between failures) for 1.0 is estimated at about 17.324830, while the MTBF for PR is about 19.281392 hours (these are both the numbers for Win32, Linux is lower and Mac is significantly higher). YMMV of course.
It's hard to really extrapolate a trend from these numbers, but the data does generally appear to support the idea of 1.0 being slightly less stable than PR. Of course, there's always 1.1...
I don't know about stable but firefox has a nasty habit of going crazy and eating 100% of the cpu indefinitely. Its been there since at least 0.9 whic is the version I started with.
Sheesh.
For me, Firefox is MUCH more stable now. i was actually using firebird .7 during the PR time because it seemed like 1/2 the time I used PR it would just crash out to windows on me. Espically in dialog box situations (like slashdot and forums) and I was too lazy to uninstall and reinstall .9. But now that ive been using 1.0 I havent had a single crash or error - just like the good old fireX days!
Matt
You have 1 Moderator Point! Use it or lose it! Is that a threat? -vapid
uhh, try mozilla 1.7.3 - works fine.
ôó
I'd like to see some statistics about this, but I bet more than 50% of slashdot readers use Firefox, so It might not be that bad this thread for most readers.
YOU LIBERAL FREAK!
Well I don't know about everyone else but Firefox v1.0 gives me 10 times less problems than IE so I use it, and I'm a liker of some of MS stuff ...
... surfing porn becomes very annoying with this ... lol
The only BIG problem I encountered was when hitting back on the PR version that it did not alwasy go to where u were scrolled to on the previous page and took you to the top of the screen
My Web Site - www.ocean-liners.com
"I had to uninstall it and resort to using IE to download the full installer, again."
What, you don't know how to ftp from the prompt?
sig not found
I've had very little problesm with 1.0, which I use regularly at work doing web app development.. (heavy JS usage).. at home i'm still using Galeon 1.2.12 (yeah the OLD gnome 1 version). But I did n0otice at work that when some extensions were enabled the browser was less stable or slower. So I disable those extensions..
I agree 100% on this. I've switched back to IE because of the crashes. Just about every time I used Firefox it crashed. I removed it from my system and they need to get something a lot more stable than this. Say what you want about IE but there are lots of ways to make it relatively secure and at least it works!
Maybe this is just a poor attempt to generate some "bad" Firefox press.
I smell a rat. Or a troll. Or both.
[*] I don't get the NYT, and I won't accept their privacy policy (thphhht!) so I have no idea if it's already come out.
-- This
I'm having similar frustrations in the changeover. When I go to extensions and themes the windows are blank, but have fully functional update buttons on the bottom. Its pretty irritating, and a reinstall hasn't helped. Is anyone else experiencing this particular bug?
Yes, it crashes more often.
For tech support call (US) 1-888-SLASHDOT
I had .9x, 1.0PR and then 1.0 and I was crashing my entire system constantly. It was happening when I did the autoscroll function on a page. I reported this to the bug forum, and guess how many replies I got back from that report??? ZERO, nada, nothing, none, null, nill, zip.
d =10834742 and you know what happened, someone answered my question.
So I don't mind that someone raises the question up on Slashdot, perhaps this person will get some questions answered.
You know what? I posted this very same problem on Slashdot not a few days ago. http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=129904&ci
Mid-Eastern Pennsylvania Gaming Convention
Erm, No...It works just fine for me
Crashed once when I visted MSN's newsbot...
BUt otherwise, it's great...
This sig is in Spanish when you're not looking....
With 1.0PR I had 2 crashes on my Windows box and no crashes on my Linux box. With 1.0 I've had no crashes on my Windows box and 1 crash on my Linux box (which may have been a RAM issue).
My lack of God, it's Trotsky!
that was easy.
Actually, the problem is you upgraded instead of uninstalled followed by re-installing. See, no where on the page or the installer does it inform you that doing such will in no way do anything close to resembling working. Way to blow it, mozilla
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Its pretty stable for me. Installed firefox or whatever the name was about 3 months ago on my wifes machine and was nothing but hangs and stalled pages
after a week Put 0.5 phoenix on for her and not a prob since.
She hated firebox. But really loves thunderbird.
Ive also had 3 people tell me that firefox was horrible how could i use it. I sent 2 of them phoenix 0.5 and they love it.
These are just my experiances with firefox maybe others fared better, or they just got stuckk with a crappy release.
I thought that's just the way it works. It crashes all the time here.
But mine just said, "I'm still using Windows XP. Is it just me? Or is anyone else having this problem?"
But seriously, I've got 512MB RAM and WinXP Pro, and it's really jittery -- most noticeably when playing music, as it skips to high hell when I open any new window of anything. Am I missing a driver or something that would make things run more smoothly? I made sure all graphics and audio drivers are up to date...
I'm amused to note that, were this post about MSIE's stability decreasing between a beta and final release, few on Slashdot would be saying "Go discuss this in a newsgroup."
For me, the stability was lost with 1.0PR. the pre-prerelease versions were rock solid, then they changed stuff like the popup bar and the find bar at the last minute. It got unstable as hell on all my Gentoo boxen starting with the first PR. It just loves to crash in the middle GMail compositions. I'm writing my emails in vi and pasting them into GMail these days. I'm hoping for a return to the rock solid Firefox that i came to know and love, but maybe I'll switch back to Galeon for a while.
I've found that the new version uses substantially more memory. My copy quickly hits 50mb and has grown to well over 100mb several times (that i've noticed) since I installed it.
"Ain't I a stinka..." - Bugs
Yes, I agree. I definitely think v1.0 is less stable than PR1.
It is not at all uncommon for it to crash on me, requiring me to restart Firefox.
Interestingly it just "disappears". It doesnt do a clean crash and do anyyhitn glike tell me or ask if I want to submit info about the crash. Firefox just vanishes.
slashdot is turning into a geeky dork whine fest
I have since changed over to Firefox (still haven't tried 1.0) but I've never had problems with it on my OS X machine.
Just food for thought.
...I had a problem when using the auto-updater. But with a few quick Google searches I was able to simply delete a few profile-related files (not my profile itself) which fixed the problem (and the files were recreated automagically by FF). Overall, 1.0 has been much more stable for me than 1.0PR. When I upgraded from 0.9 to 1.0PR, I suddenly started having crashes on an average of 2-3 times a day. Since going to 1.0, I don't think I've had a single crash.
If you have an older incompatible installation. That worked for at least most of my crashes (in Linux).
My problem now is that I can't get any Java version working with Firefox 1.0.
So that's why my reseating of I/O cards wasn't helpign much! Firefox was at fault!
THAT worked a treat. thank you thank you thank you .. must change sig now
First off, I'd like to say that I was the poster of this message. I chose to stay anonymous for a couple of reasons... one of which is that it's more entertaining reading flaming responses here than in my email. :)
One thing I must note, this message wasn't a plea for help (as most of you assumed). If you read the last line, the one containing the question, carefully, you'll see that I wanted to hear about others' experiences. Looking through the responses, I definitely did get some good feedback. My main concern (which this thread validated) is that Firefox is pitched as a easy to use, leaner, more secure browser when compared to IE. However, when you upgrade the browser, things inevitably get screwed up (weird things in profile, plugins, extensions, etc...). The easy solution would be to uninstall previous instances of Firefox before installing the upgrade, something that is never recommended as you go through the upgrade process.
I find this whole thing especially frustrating because I convinced many people (non-tech people) to start using Firefox while it was still in pre release. Now, some of those people have upgraded to the final release (or have tried too) and are cursing the thing out. Was I wrong to get ordinary users to start using a pre-release version of a great browser??? possibly, but the guys releasing this thing should realize that they're targetting the masses now. And the masses are fairly dumb and quick to reject new things. I'd hate to see this huge launch campaign backfire because ordinary users aren't "sophisticated enough".
And I post this to slashdot instead of Mozillazine for another reason. These sorts of usability issues plague open source.... developers not understanding ordinary users and ordinary users running back to their M$ crap. Proprietary software has one huge advantage over open source, it's marketed and sold by dumb ordinary users.
...especially that after the release of 1.0 it still fails to handle CSS3 opacity and XSLT correctly.
I've run 30 tabs for 30 different PeopleSoft instances from 0.8 to 1.0 on Windows without a single crash in the last 4 months. I haven't been able to go a day without IE having to be restarted due to cache problems with 2 or 3 windows open. I can't think of a much higher load than a bunch of PeopleSoft instances to test a browser's stability, but FF surely passes the test.
Anyone else use Firefox for PeopleSoft? Firefox handles PS really well.
"Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear?" - Bad Religion
oh come on. "prefers to stay anonymous". did you want them to leave their name and street address? get over it. FireFox has problems ok. deal with it.
I would recommend Firefox only if you have a need for 100% free software with source code and the whole shebang. But every time I tried to install and use a Mozilla based browser, I was left disappointed. Opera is definitely worth paying for.
Disclaimer: I am NOT in any way affiliated with the cool folks who make either of these browsers.
Yeah, Firefox is being weird for me too. Whenever I open a link from an IM or IRC, it opens in the same window I was using before for some reason.
Some people like to stand in the rain without an umbrella. That's what it means to live free.
-Roger Smith
You'll probably want to uninstall the 1.0pr release before you install 1.0. Matter of fact, it's not a bad idea to do that to anything you intend to upgrade. I know it's definately save me some headaches and $$$ on aspirin.
Great post! But is it a pun or a grammatical error?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Yeah, why isn't this a poll?
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
All you people get real. Firefox 1.0 on Windows XP SP2 is perfectly sta
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I am having the same problem. The system recognized that an update was available, and when I accepted the update, CRASH (under Win98SE). I also find it annoying that it says there are plug-ins available, but then you can't install them.
Back to the drawing board. I hope they get this stuff worked out.
I'll tell you one thing; there are many extensions that worked on the older versions of Firefox that haven't been updated forthis version. I can understand why people who make extensions don't feel like updating with every release, but what funamentally changes between versions that makes old extensions not work? I mean, the actual product is pretty similar... And I'd rather have awesome extensions like "Tab-browser preferences" than a find bar (although I do find the find bar really cool and useful).
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
Although web browsing may be considered a trivial affair nowadays, a web browser is a complex application (go ahead and read the source code for Firefox). Analizing problems with software takes a scientific approach. If you want to analize the sociological implications of an idiotic posting of an alleged and unspecified software bug then ./ is an ideal place to post it.
As far as the apparantly large memory footprint that the rendering application (ff) seems to display, I presume it is part of the caching/prefetching capabilities which makes loading pages instantanious. Ever hit the back-button and see how fast a page "re"loads in Firefox? Well if that page was not stored in memory, how fast do you think it would load?
Modern computers in the developed world ship with 1GB of ram or more, and the reason for this is so that modern applications can *use* this memory to increase performance. If you don't like this behavior, you may feel free to use your old 486 with, say, windows for workgroups on it, and dig up a copy of netscape 2.x and install it. Then again you can run Linux from the BIOS chip on your mainboard with a copy lynx web browser, or even CuRL or wget. Then you don't even need to worry about buying memory or a hard drive for your PC! Isn't that nice?
AFAS conspiracy by Micro$oft to build their operating system to break or disable software from other providers, it is a court-proven fact. Anybody ever tried to get netscape from the official nscp FTP site using IE in 1997? that URL was actually blocked in the IE code of the day.
If you've heard the expression "embrace and extend", that means, "overtake and break".
MacThemes.net, when I view the themes section, is the only website I've ever had consistently crash Firefox (Mac). It works fine in Safari.
I have no problems with 1.0.
Perhaps your PC has some bad memory. Try a memory test such as Memtest.
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more
So's your mom, but you don't hear us bitchin'
Not everyone is happy with Firefox... See this and this.
With all the rats and trolls around everything smells.
No problems here.
With attitudes like this from the OSS community, I think a lot of people would rather stick with a company that does actually provide "tech support"
Umm, no. If you take a stand against something, some people will learn, and others will hate you for it. Same as how some people hate Firefox users for complaining about IE.
"Evil Dictators" hate Amnesty because Amnesty make it harder for them. Plain and simple.
In PR1 I can DL stream a .mov with quicktime plugin by entering a URL http://www.archive.org/download/Mosh/GNN_Mosh_bb.m ov
In PR1 the window has the dropdown menus allowing me to save the file. EZ
Ff_1.0 kills the menus and reduces the user to cache trawling to find the file.
Of course, if the file is yours to distribute and you realy want to pay for bandwidth whenever someone wants to play the file its a feature and not a bug.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
"Orders of magnitide faster" is at least 100x faster, so Open Source would be hundreds of years ahead of Microsoft by now.
If it's really that advanced, then how come the applications are so primitive?
On my old Windows laptop it seems to be hold its own just as well as its predecessors. Hoewever, on my Linux desktop it completely hosed itself trying to auto-update. Back button didn't work, neither did drop-down location bar, chrome parse errors left right and center. I uninstalled it and reinstalled via a 1.0 debian package, and it worked pretty well for about a day before it started giving me a chrome parse error upon startup. This is where it stands today; I'm back on Epiphany. Sure do miss find-as-you-type for non-hyperlinked text, though..
Your not a whore if you GIVE it away...
you are right... firefox 1.0pre seems to be more stable than final 1.0
...and enjoy the ride.
I've been using Mozilla 'bout a year, Firefox since 0.9. Done FF 1.0 PR, now using 1.0 on XP SP1. So it ain't perfect. What is? Get over it, feedback on bugs and RTFM. I don't miss (sp)IE one byte.
Cheers Open Source, the way ahead IMDO.
I was using FF 0.9.3 for a few months till the 1.0PR came out.The 0.9.x had never crashed on me.I ran one desktop with 0.9.x and the other with 1.0PR.
The 0.9 was as smooth as ever with no functionality missing, but the the 1.0PR had at least one crash a day.I still have'nt upgraded the FF on my laptop and its still running 0.9.3 as stable as it gets.
Lord of the Binges.
2. The new 'Find' feature is more powerful but not well designed. The only way, once activated, to close its window is to get a cursor blinking in the entry bar and then hit, 'Escape'. That's really annoying. I preferred the pop-up requester, although even that could have used a bit more polish.
3. I'd like MUCH more control over images, both those stored in the image cache, (life-spans and visual sorting, etc.,), and over the permissions of those which want to load from a website. --One of the several reasons this matters to me is that I'm on a dial-up connection. (High-speed in my region is provided by crooks, and my internet requirements do call for it anyway.) I have not seen a browser yet which provided full image and cache control, and I'd like to see it added to Firefox.
Also. . . Slashdot STILL sometimes loads funny with Firefox 1.0 --What's up with that?
Keep in mind, I am not whining here. I love the open source movement, and Mozilla is one of the entities I respect the most. --But these things only improve when areas are pointed out which can use more work.
-FL
Don't want to lose your growing Firefox database when you upgrade?
On Windows machines you can use a utility to backup your profile called, MozBackup. Test it out a few times and then try upgrading.
Saves your backup to another file and can import that backup into another installation. Let's you take your passwords and all that with you.
Get your Unix fortune now!
it happens when a bad boy whines in slashdot for everyone to see him, and mom is not around.
santa doesnt want you little bill, youre not getting candy.
fill bug reports or help to fix them, projecting your frustration here is equivalent to FUD
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=1685 63
i have certainly had quite the opposite experience,
the ff PR used to crash like crazy on my machine especially while loading java applets. I havent set the auto update feature yet, maybe thats the difference that we see, as people have suggested posted that matter on the moz forums.
Talking about versions, 0.93 has been ma favourite till date, but the search and the live bookmarks features in PR were too groovy and i upgraded. Guess every rose has its thorns ;) .. lol
The Slashfix extension does not work as advertised. Still the same rendering error. Ctrl-mousewheel works though.
A few years ago, when Phoenix was first released, I was among the first to try it. Pleased by its relative stability, speed and overall lightweight character, I started using it as my primary browser. Later releases brought further improvements, like extensions. Fast forward to 2004:
Improvements:
- Auto-update
- Improved search
- Skin
- Download manager
Side-effects:
- Firefox is very unstable compared to Phoenix
- The development team has started linking Firefox against glibc 2.3
The improvements are of little to no benefit IMHO:
- Auto-update is too unreliable and impractical when you're not root. It's actually quicker to do it the old-fashioned way
- Being a slightly conservative bastard who can't appreciate eye candy if it isn't female, I've never used skins.
- The improved search is an exception. The colours are handy if you're visually scanning a large document and it eliminates the window blocking your view. It's actually a bit like vim's search.
- The download manager is not very practical. It gives clueless lusers a harder time infecting their PC's, but it's "hidden" into the browser and the actions surrounding a download take more time now than ever before.
The decay which has been accompanying all this development is quite severe:
- The stability issues cause two crashes on an average day for me. Some sites actually cause crashes whenever viewed. In most cases the sites contain buggy html and javacrypt, but that should not crash the browser. Notable examples include WebCT and requested popups.
- Although most modern distros use glibc 2.3, I'm not going to switch for a while.
I've tried setting up a chroot for it, but the latest version of gcc appears to be unable to compilethe latest glibc.
According to the gcc maintainers this is a bug in glibc.
According to the glibc maintainers this is a bug in gcc.
blah rant rave curse slap stab blam, etc
Even though there's a hack to get it working, I'm staying with glibc 2.2 until both groups have stopped trying to break eachother's code.
But there's always PLAN B. And after three hours of compiling firefox 1.0, it turns out that the degradation curve since 0.8 has not changed course.
Some common sense inhibitor snaps in my skull and I ditch firefox. Alternatives:
Konqueror toy
Dillo incomplete
Links rules my console, but it has some
inherent disabilities
etcetcetc.
But there's always the "dead" Mozilla. It turns out that Mozilla is not as dead as commonly thought.
Mozilla has become much lighter nowadays. The e-mail, news and chat is seperated from the browser package now and doesn't swallow memory anymore and it's noticeably faster than before.
It can also use extensions, block popups and evil javascript code, and some other features we've started to like about Firefox. Among the differences are a more intuitive download manager and unfortunately the old text search. But the most important differences are its much greater stability and the fact that it is backwards compatible with glibc 2.2 and possibly even older versions.
So, contrary to the mainstream momentum, I've switched back to Mozilla. Getting it working took a few mouseclicks instead of a full compile and minutes instead of hours. I live happily ever after.
If you're having nervous breakdowns with firefox, consider this move.
Steven.
i have noticed certain sites drop the gecko engine in its tracks.this one(http://www.all4you.dk/FreewareWorld/links.php) ,one of my favorite freeware sites i can only view in opera or ie as moz,kmeleon,and firefox all seem to drop like a rock if i try to use tabs or even new windows.oh well,no webbrowser or software for that matter is bug free.btw,i have tried about a dozen browsers and shells,and if you pay to get rid of the ads,opera is about three times as fast at rendering as the others.the only reason i still use moz is i gave opera to my sis as a gift and now when it starts i have to look at a half-naked pic of brad pitt from troy(hes all glisteny,she says)i'll never get the girls/pitt thing(i guess it's the hair)moral-don't give best browser to sis.
I have found that any time firefox crashed for me, it was some stupid java thing, or an extension that did it. Tends to happen when I had an older extension installed, and I had updated the browser to a new version that the extension did not support. Some extensions have bad versioning info, so they report that they work on a certain version, but really don't. I still have issues with sun jre, but not enough to switch back to IE.
This mac thingie is really a toy for guys with money flooding out of their pocket.
Who in the world would pay 15$ for a driver !!!!!
I never bought a that expensive.
I mean what a shame to have to buy software to be allowed to use a piece of hardware you previously buy.
If you compare that to the bsd-wireles-firmware story, you can expect to have to BUY your firmware for mac.
It means that apple can even provide decent driver for their own hardware even if they sell it two times the market price...
Do you have to pay a fee each time you click on a button on your mac or is it still free ?
Huh, i'm sure only bill gates can afford a mac
While this software is indeed a replacement driver for the touchpad, it's not required to use it. It's an alternate driver that lets it do things that it was not originally designed to do. If they were to instead sell me some replacement touchpad hardware that had two or three buttons and a scroll wheel, then I'd probably be a little miffed if they wanted me to dish out $15 to make it work, but this is not the case. There are plenty of PC notebooks out there that lack the ability to scroll with the touchpad or the ability to middle click, etc., so it's not like the problem is unique to a mac. You can find plenty of mouse gesture software for purchase for windows, and this is pretty much in the same vein of sidetrack, although it is implemented differently.
You do of course realize that due to the economics of mass production, there is a *lot* of computer hardware sold these days that is artifically limited or othewise crippled by software drivers or firmware, right? Everything from your motherboard chipset to the IDE controller, soundcard, NIC, videocard, CD/DVD burner, etc. is probably capable of delivering more features or performance than you are getting from it. With your argument, I don't know why people are paying anything for anything!
Also, it may crash if you happen to have two different flash plugins in the plugins folder (notably on 'nix if you have the OS one and the one that grabs the "official" flash from macromedia).
Similar issues may happen with invalid, mixed, or mislinked java plugins.
Thanks to the number pad, my keyboard has 3 nipples, just like its owner...
Actually, I gave up on the Mozilla FF forums soon after FF 1.0 came out because the attitude of many of the people supposedly helping out there, made it seem like a school playground, with 13 yr olds defending the father's choice of car. Open source software zealots just don't want to hear that their pet has problems... and it does.
Like the original poster, I have had FF crash almost daily since 1.0 came out, whereas 0.9 and even 0.8 where very stable (not bug free mind you - but stable)
I use firefox reasonably successfully under Slack (now on 10.0 with the PR1.0 Firefox). Apart from a bug with the find tool (which may have been addressed ... the changelogs mention something along those lines) it's been good for me. Faster than other browsers (Konq, Opera).
Have you tried a debugger to trace the problem, gdb is not that hard to use. Took about half an hour for me to use it with a sound app that was crashing all the time, turned out to have not got one of the depenencies up to date.
What sort of system (kernel / hardware / mem) do you have running?