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?"

Comments

/. is not tech support

[aws910]

Why don't you try posting on the Mozilla.org forums?

Re:/. is not tech support

[minus_273]

you know, part of the reason people post things like that here is becasue of the mature intelligent discussion that takes place on slashdot. If you ever went to a specalized or moderated newsgroup and posted a similar question you would never get help. Instead all you would get is angry 13 yearolds in their mother's basement or wrong answers. It is the fact that a specialized newsgroup full of knowledgable folks, developers and regualr users is no use that people post on slashdot for help.
I expect intelligent and thought provoking replies on this page....

Re:/. is not tech support

[Valdar729]

Perhaps because posting on the forums doesn't get the sort of response you would expect.

I've had problems with firefox since I started using it, but I keep using in hopes that with each release it will get better and have less bugs. I don't to use IE, I want something to use standards for my websites so they work.

Unfortunately, firefox is a long way off from approaching IE's stability and speed. There hasn't been a day that has gone by where I haven't experienced a firefox crash or error.

Re:/. is not tech support

[Fishstick]

> becasue of the mature intelligent discussion that takes place on slashdot.

ahahaha, haaa haaa ehhhaha *wipes tears out of eyes*

I expect intelligent and thought provoking replies on this page....

no, stop, seriously

*sigh*

you are kind of right, though -- slash does have its moments when people actually have had similar experiences and are willing to thoughtfully share their knowledge. sometimes

Re:/. is not tech support

[Madcapjack]

Why don't you try posting on the Mozilla.org forums?

I don't regularly read the Mozilla.org forums. Do you? The article on /. interested me because I was thinking about whether or not I should update Firefox to the new release.

Re:/. is not tech support

[verbs_of_life]

Some of you don't seem to get out to much - this is a "story" and a front page story because the question is - is Firefox casuing a sea change by moving users away from microsoft? Is this a sign people in general are willing to move away from microsoft? The issue here is does Firefox work better then ie? Does it even work at all? I too have found firefox (I'm not looking for anyone's help -as the source code is available I'd just as soon read it and answer my own questions) is a little quirky but not more so than ie. Further, it is many times faster and many times easier to use. So as to the central question, yes Firefox is real and better and I think there is little microsoft can do as people seem to be quite sick of microsoft and free software from them is not good enough. I would like nothing better for microsoft to crawl to some dark corner (another dark corner) and just give it up and go away - like the buggy whip.

Re:/. is not tech support

[shaitand]

This is so drastically in contrast to the experience of everyone I've encountered, both on the web and in person, that I've no choice to conclude that the parent either has a system problem or is a MS mole and/or sympathizer (of the variety who feels slashdot is biased, and are especially stupid, resulting in pro-ms anti-anything else statements here instead of chatting a forum which is relevant to their own interests).

Re:/. is not tech support

[ringer9cs]

maybe he has already tried that (and crashed...)

Re:/. is not tech support

[mekanizer]

You should expect some non-intelligent ones too such as this one... bla muhahaha mohohoha.. moooooooooooooooooooooo............... moooooOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Re:/. is not tech support

[duckpoopy]

One timothy just wasn't enough...

Re:/. is not tech support

[Demona]

Well, here's my anecdotal experience, in stark contrast to your own. I've been using Firefox since before it was called Firebird, before it was called Phoenix, since it was "mozilla/browser". I heartily with this were a troll, but today I ditched Firefox 1.0 after it set a new record by crashing after running for TWENTY-THREE MINUTES on my Slackware Linux machine. Ever since Firebird 0.5, approximatel (can't recall for sure what it was called around then), stability has been an increasing problem; since Firefox 0.9, it was crashing a minimum of once a day, sometimes twice -- yesterday, four times -- spiralling out of control on CPU and memory usage, requiring manual kill of the processes. This continued even after disabling Java and Javascript, and with or without the single plugin I had installed (bugmenot). By contrast, Thunderbird has been running on this machine for nearly four months -- almost as long as the machine's total uptime -- and is still going strong.

I took a quick tour to re-acquaint myself with the Firefox alternatives, but so far all they're doing is reminding me of all the reasons I stopped using them. Back to Lynx, at least on Linux; the Windows version of Firefox has been very good until just recently, and is starting to occasionally crash, but still hasn't shown anywhere near the degree of instability I've seen under Linux.

One person's experience, your mileage may vary. I've been called an MS apologist plenty of times, and it won't kill me if that trend continues. But I'm damn thankful that Firefox under Windows is still performing okay for me, because I'd rather slice off my nuts with a rusty tuna can lid than touch Internet Explorer again.

Re:/. is not tech support

[Carcass666]

Substitute "Internet Explorer" for "Firefox" and see if you would find one post on Slashdot defending the product or suggesting a post to the manufacturer's support site.

For the record, I am a happy Firefox 1.0 user who has experienced some additional stability with 1.0, and have submitted my crashes through the integrated bug reporting tool

Re:/. is not tech support

[jesser]

Don't label him as an enemy just because he claims to experience more crashes than you. It's entirely possible that he's telling the truth -- many crash bugs (not just system problems) affect some users more than others. Maybe his Firefox installation or Firefox profile somehow became corrupted. Maybe the sites he visits trigger crashes in Firefox more than the sites we visit. Maybe the extensions he uses are buggy (in which case he should blame the extension).

It's ok to tell him that his experience doesn't match yours, but at least give him a FAQ item that might help him work around or report the crashes rather than attacking him.

Re:/. is not tech support

[hugo_pt]

Because he probably thought a lot of ./ users use Firefox, so he asked our opinion. It doesn't take mozilla.org forums to get a public opinion, right?

Re:/. is not tech support

[mauriceh]

The Mozilla.org Firefox forums are not very effective.

I recently did a conversion on a few machines from Eudora to Thunderbird.

While there is a Eudora importer, it does not properly process HTML email fom Eudora, leaving it in a rather messed up state.

I posted on the forums, and after a day had no useful answers.

After more digging it seems that this problem has existed for a longtime in Thunderbird.

There are even several pre-processing scripts that people have written for this.

But, it took an hour of digging over old postings on those forums to find this out.

Not ONE PERSON replying to my post requesting help posted anything useful about it.

Don't get me wrong, I still think that Firefox and TBird are excellent apps, but the forums as a support mechanism is pretty weak.

Re:/. is not tech support

[thelocalguru]

I think we'll start seeing more of this sort of posting - with big players like Microsoft wanting to subvert the strides that the Open Source community has made.

Re:/. is not tech support

[R2.0]

From his Journal:
"A deacde ago, a fringe Maoist communist group in Nepal lost parliamentary elections coming in 3rd behind a Marxist communist party and a Socialist party. In 1996 it declared a Peoples war in order to establish a republic under its leader. From 1996 to 2001 this was a minor conflict that involved skirmishes between small ill-equipped groups and the police. Only about 1000 people were killed in those 5 years and that was considered a lot. Around that time, the they began to attack army barracks and loot them. The military is an apolitical institution and had been un affected by the conflict until now. In response the military began operations and within a week the communists were on the verge of defeat. AI and other so called human rights grousp stepped in and pressured the Socialists to stop the offensive an have cese fire. During the cese fire the maoists regrouped and got modern guns, landmines and bombs to replace their homemade guns and began a new offensive. This time better trained and equipped, the death toll surged to 6000 -mostly civillians- in just two years. There was a second attempt at a ceasefile last year (again under pressure from AI and other groups) and it ended up having the same result; adding fuel to the conflict. As of today the death toll approaches 10,000. None of this would have happened had a bunch of aging hippies not stepped in. In the end the people that are getting killed are not the aging hippes or anyone they knew, just ordinary people who happen to step on landmines or die in a crossfire."

Re:/. is not tech support

[ConceptJunkie]

Your experience sounds like mine. I _do_ have problems with Firefox on Windows, and it seems to have gotten a little worse in the last few releases.

The biggest problem I have is downloading files. Sometimes after I start a download, FF will stop responding for several seconds. This also usually happens when I try to open the download window while downloading. In fact, I stopped having the DL window come up automatically in case this was related to the problem. Anyhow, these problems still don't add up to the problems I'd had with IE on a daily basis for years.

Re:/. is not tech support

[Legion303]

Thanks. If I had mod points and if Slashdot would allow reasonable point limits, like 65535, I'd mod you up higher.

Re:/. is not tech support

[Akrat]

He, however, is the one that targeted Firefox itself as his problem... The fact is that if the release was unstable, we all would have heard an uproar about it within days, not 2 weeks later...

Re:/. is not tech support

[colmore]

Actually I've had some problems with Firefox 1.0

On Windows XP the downloader leaks memory like crazy, especially when downloading a series of large files. I didn't have this problem with previous releases.

Re:/. is not tech support

[Breakfast Pants]

"approximatel"--Is that some kind of reference to the Pentium floating point bug?

Re:/. is not tech support

[stephanruby]

Unfortunately, firefox is a long way off from approaching IE's stability and speed. There hasn't been a day that has gone by where I haven't experienced a firefox crash or error.

Are you sure it's FireFox? I've been using FireFox 0.9.3 and its previous versions on Win XP. I've never even had one crash and the speed is as fast as IE (as far as I can tell).

And even the guy who posted the story seems to not have had any problem with previous versions of FireFox.

Re:/. is not tech support

[stephanruby]

Maybe his Firefox installation or Firefox profile somehow became corrupted. Maybe the sites he visits trigger crashes in Firefox more than the sites we visit. Maybe the extensions he uses are buggy (in which case he should blame the extension).

And may be his power supply is bad, may be he's still running windows 98, may be he doesn't have the suggested memory requirements, may be his system is full of spyware, etc.

The point is, we don't know. He hasn't given us any spec of his sytem. He hasn't even given us any version number of the Firefoxes he is complaining about. His post is so devoid of information, it is surprising to see he was modded up in the first place, and it's doubly surprising he hasn't switched back to IE (with his problems, I would have done that a long time ago).

Re:/. is not tech support

[hikerhat]

Actually, if an extention is causing the crash it is still the main app's fault. If you write an app that allows third party plugins it is important to architect the plugin system in a way that isolates the main app from the plugins. Like if a user land app causes your linux kernel to panic, it is the kernel's fault. Of course this is easier said than done, so in the real world the easiest short term fix is to fix the extention.

Re:/. is not tech support

[zbuffered]

I was thinking about whether or not I should update Firefox

And how has this article worked out for you? The first 3 +5, Informative posts don't exactly sum up the answer to the question, so all we're doing here is wasting our time.

Moving on.

Re:/. is not tech support

[Cato]

"IE's stability and speed" - can't remember the last time Firefox crashed, but IE used to crash all the time when I used it, and Firefox feels a lot faster... Maybe your system (if it's Windows) needs re-installing - for me, IE is more stable on a new laptop running WinXP than a 3 year old Win2000 laptop.

Re:/. is not tech support

[fingerfucker]

Maybe the extensions he uses are buggy (in which case he should blame the extension).

If Firefox crashes because of a problem with an extension, then Firefox has shitty design.

Re:/. is not tech support

[ThJ]

Writing computer software is like drug research. Just as no human reacts to a drug in exactly the same manner, no computer reacts to a piece of code in the same way. Even not Java is entirely transparent in this respect. I say something is fundamentally wrong about the way we build computers and OSes...

Re:/. is not tech support

[AnomalousTurd]

I can't see any justification in your statement that 'the forums as a support mechanism is pretty weak.'
One of the main points of forums is that it is a repository of responses. It doesn't mean a forum is bad because no-one online knows the answer. Do a search!

But then you did and you found an answer and a script to run to fix your problem all within two hours and you are complaining? Have you any idea how much commercial support with such a short fix time costs?

Re:/. is not tech support

[gandell]

IE's stability and speed isn't so hot. I'd agree that IE 6.0 is more stable than previous releases, however (4.0-5.0 were chunky pieces of dung). Back to Firefox. I think the stability of Firefox has a lot to do with the stability of your system. I use Windows XP SP2 on one partition, and Xandros Linux on the other. I have experienced crashes in Firefox, but they don't happen that often. But on a Win98se box that was never very stable to begin with, I've noticed crashes all the time...where as IE tends to be a bit more stable on that system. Is it possible that your test system is the problem, and not firefox? What are your specs?

Re:/. is not tech support

[potus98]

Hey, it's not some unfiltered random post. This story submission went through stringent /. editorial filtering and -Oh wait a minute...

Re:/. is not tech support

[EsbenMoseHansen]

So let me get this right: you posted to a forum about a fairly exoteric subject, the answer to which was already availble if you had searched, and you gave up within a day? Why, shame on you!

Re:/. is not tech support

[Madcapjack]

Vote 1: a vote for Kerry

Moderated: Insightful

.

Vote 2: a vote for Kerry

Moderated: Redundant

Re:/. is not tech support

[fingerfucker]

by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 21, @08:21AM

So all browser extensions should be loaded by the Operating System as seperate processes and communicate with the browser via. an asyncronous message system?

Exactly.

At a guess I'd say you know > that much about the subject.

Um... how did you determine that, dear anonymous nobody?

Re:/. is not tech support

[fingerfucker]

So all browser extensions should be loaded by the Operating System as seperate processes and communicate with the browser via. an asyncronous message system? Because that's the only way you could stop a browser extension crashing the browser.

Actually, that's not entirely true. You could probably have each extension running simply as a separate thread, the client application will keep a reference to it, then assign a dedicated queue object, launch one extra thread (call it 'controller') of its own to talk to the queue (pick up and deposit messages) and you'd have one central piece of code ('controller manager') which maintains a reference to the set of controllers and can determine based on status of the controller whether the plug-in is healthy.

Re:/. is not tech support

[Erik Hollensbe]

If it doesn't, it's inflexible. There's rarely a middle ground.

Re:/. is not tech support

[mi]

Are we rapping against the People's War for Liberation?

Re:/. is not tech support

[Zontar The Mindless]

given that firefox is based upon mozilla, which is based upon netscape, its hardly surprising that it's a p.o.s.

Netscape lost the 'browser wars' to IE for one reason, that that reason was merit.

Two very old, very tired arguments.

Statement #1 is untrue. The old Netscape codebase was scrapped. (Which is why there was neither a commercial nor Open Source release of Netscape 5.) Mozilla was a from-the-ground-up rewrite.

Statement #2 is at best debatable. Since Microsoft undercut Netscape through giving away its product, "bundling" it with the OS, and making deals to ensure that its product would be highly visible and accessible to Windows users while Netscape's wouldn't be, we'll never really know, will we?

Re:/. is not tech support

[ConceptJunkie]

You're absolutely right. Software development _is_ completely deterministic, things have gotten so far out of hand though that that's often not the case. I know I have spent an unreasonable amount of time over the years trying to figure out what Windows is doing rather than solving problems and writing code. That's why my strategy is to write my own code whenever possible rather than use some new bloated MS technology because it's often easier to write things from scratch (starting with a good class library of course) than to figure out some big Soviet-bureaucracy-style tool that was whipped out so the marketing guys could have another checkmark on their lists.

Plus, when you have the code, you can debug it, and more importantly, fix it.

yeah

[u-238]

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.

Yes.

[dragon_imp]

It's just you.

Re:Yes.

[isometrick]

Try signing up for an account at PizzaHut.com and go through the first step of ordering a pizza. Crashes FF 1.0 for me every time. Having to open up IE to just to use the site at all is painful.

Re:Yes.

[thammoud]

I just upgraded to 1.0 and registered for Pizza hut. No problems. Maybe you should just do a clean install.

Re:Yes.

[The One KEA]

Wrong.

Firefox uses profiles to store your information. Previous versions of Firefox may have added cruft to your profile that could break the 1.0 release build. The expectation is that you will READ the instructions and upgrade properly, so that you don't get any hassles.

Re:Yes.

[Lord Bitman]

oh yes, I always read instructions you need to hunt for and nobody should ever expect things which are garanteed to break your installation to be mentioned in the installation instructions which come with the thing you actually download.

You lose.

Stability Issues...?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Stability Issues...?

[pawnIII]

That could possibly be the situation. I know I uninstalled all the extensions which were not compatiable with 1.0. PR1 crashed a whole lot more than 1.0. Actually, I don't think its crashed yet.

Also, something you might want to do is to create a new agent. Just make sure you save your bookmarks.

Re:Stability Issues...?

[greypilgrim]

I've also never had any issues with firefox, it has never crashed on me, not once since 0.7 or 0.8, only issue I ever had was my Noia theme was not working with 1.0 when it came out, although it did work with 1.0pr.

Re:Stability Issues...?

[Schreckgestalt]

Same here, no issues... Except for the 'download flash player plugin' thingy that kept failing. But crashes? No.

I've done several upgrades of Phoenix, Firebird and now Firefox on different machines, and I have grown accustomed to letting the new version create a new profile and then copy the stuff you still want back into it. I normally delete "C:\Docs and Settings\MYNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox", then copy the old bookmarks.html into my profile again.

Did so with PR1 -> 1.0, and have had no issues on several machines.

Re:Stability Issues...?

[MMMDI]

Another problem that it could be (one that I had, anywho) is preferences for an extension that had been previously uninstalled.

Example: I installed an extension during the PR release. I found that I didn't really like it, so I uninstalled it and carried on without a problem. 1.0 is released, downloaded it, installed... FF now crashes every 30 minutes or so.

Skip over a large chunk of trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and I found some leftover files and preferences (prefs.js) from the aforementioned extension in my profile folder. Deleted those and everything was back to being peachy.

Re:Stability Issues...?

[Deathanatos]

PR1 crashed a whole lot more than 1.0.

Same here---I can remember crashing PR1.0, but only every now and then... but 1.0 hasn't crashed on me yet.

Re:Stability Issues...?

[KJKJava]

I haven't had any problems either. Other than a few minor things already submitted to Bugzilla (hopefully will be fixed in the next release) it works like a good browser should.

Re:Stability Issues...?

[Lynxara]

I don't use any plug-ins or extensions (besides Flash), and the only Firefox version that has ever crashed on my computer is Firefox 1.0. However, it's only crashed once, and otherwise performs noticeably superior to PR1.0 in other respects. The problem seems to be the automatic feedback agent, which is suspiciously similar to the one that would crash old Netscape browsers on a regular basis.

Re:Stability Issues...?

[mr_zorg]

Me neither. Solid as a rock.

Re:Stability Issues...?

[ozbird]

This Telstra web page crashes Firefox 1.0 (final) every time; I never encountered a crash with 1.0PR and earlier, though I may not have visited this page with those versions.

Re:Stability Issues...?

[Dave2 Wickham]

Am I misunderstanding something?

The point of the Netscape feedback util (ARGH MOTIF) is that it appears when you crash, rather than causing a crash, so you can submit feedback about the crash.

Re:Stability Issues...?

[Dave2 Wickham]

Works for me...

Re:Stability Issues...?

[Lynxara]

Under Netscape, I experienced crashes that were accompanied by the feedback utility and crashes that weren't. And then sometimes the feedback utility would appear even when Netscape wasn't crashing, and harmlessly go away when told.

Re:Stability Issues...?

[ozbird]

Okay... Worked for me too. It appears that the page itself isn't the issue, it's the sequence of links followed. Try this instead:
1) Go to www.telstra.com.au
2) Click on Home Users (under "Home & Family".)
3) Click on "Manage Your Calls".
4) Crash...

Re:Stability Issues...?

[Dave2 Wickham]

That sequence also works for me; no crash (sorry I can't record this one, you'll have to trust me on it).

Re:Stability Issues...?

[ozbird]

It's probably a platform/environment issue.

Re:Stability Issues...?

[kjamez]

actually, i've experienced the same thing repeatedly. At least once, daily, on either machine. fedora core 2, XP 1900+ and a dual MP 1900+ windows xp box. no extra 'extensions' were installed on either setup. i keep having to bookmark pages i don't want to get borked out of and have to re-find when i restart mozilla.

i did see something about completely removing 1.0PR and then installing 1.0, so i will try that. perhaps a funky file didn't get updated?

Re:Stability Issues...?

[macsuibhne]

No crash for me, it just brings up the page -- Help->About FireFox = Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

This on XP Home SP1 (Installing SP2 causes this machine to crash while trying to boot.)

cookies?

[x3ro]

No bugs found here. But I was sad to see the 'Cookies are delicious delicacies' line disappear from Prefs.

Re:cookies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not despair! There is an extension to fix this serious problem. Soon your cookies will be delicious once more.

Re:cookies?

[jZnat]

That line has been gone for ages in Firefox. I think it's still in the Mozilla Suite, but now it seems that it's pointless to continue development on that. Instead, they should finish Thunderbird, then combine the 2 and start a new Mozilla Suite based on that.

You are the exception, not the rule.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:You are the exception, not the rule.

[tacensi]

I keep Firefox running on Windows for days without closing

You should be given a gold medal just for keeping windows running for days.

mod story -1 off-topic

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't there some kind of firefox mailing list for this kind of stuff?

Re:mod story -1 off-topic

[bigberk]

Isn't there some kind of firefox mailing list for this kind of stuff?

Yes, and there is even a web based support forum

Probs before PR

[TFGeditor]

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.)

Re:Probs before PR

[SlamMan]

if your entire machine is locking up, its not an issue with any single application.

Re:Probs before PR

[cduffy]

No, applications cannot lock up a system.

Applications can trigger a hardware, driver or OS problem that locks up the system -- but the app itself is not crashing your box.

Re:Probs before PR

[bigberk]

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.

Without exception, a regular (userland) application that leads to global locking up is the operating system's fault, not the application's. The goal of a modern multi-user, multi-process, virtual memory OS (BSD, Linux, WinNT) is to keep each process separate on the system. A single application should crash, or run slowly but it should never crash the entire operating system or use up all the operating system's resources. Such a situation indicates the failure of the OS to manage resources, and maintain control over separate processes.

Re:Probs before PR

[steveargonman]

There was a memory leak in those versions. That's definately been fixed in the latest RC's, as well as 1.0.

Re:Probs before PR

[Smidge204]

While I'm not going to disagree with you, I fail to see how this absolves the developer's responsibility to build the application such that it doesn't try to absorb all the system's resources in the first place.

I'm currently using FireFox PR1.0, it's been open for about 5 days straight, running on Win2KPro. It's using 104MB of RAM. Why I don't know... I only have 4 tabs open at the moment and no flash or java running, and no third party plugins... but it's using 104MB or memory right now. It probably would have locked up if I didn't have a gig of RAM in this machine...

Went up to 108MB when I hit preview, and it's not going down...
=Smidge=

Re:Probs before PR

[antsquish]

I'd suspect the memory cache probably accounts for, at the very least, part of this -- after a few days of browsing, surely this would gradually grow in size?

Re:Probs before PR

[bigberk]

Interpreting how much memory an application is using is somewhat difficult. Modern virtual memory operating systems page memory into both physical RAM and disk storage (swap, pagefile, whatever). Next, there are operating system features that try to preserve actual memory by not allocating real chunks of memory on an application's request, until that memory is really made use of. Finally, using some system GUI widgets etc can "increase" the amount of memory use as shown in Task Manager etc where really the memory use is within the OS, not the app.

What this comes down to is: the figure you generally see for memory use of an app is not physical RAM use. It might not even reflect the actual amount of physical+disk memory in use! Finally, memory usage might be overstated due to transient external allocations (e.g. win32 API dialog boxes) that deceivingly appear as memory used by an application.

What you have to look for is how that memory usage figure changes over time. In most cases, it grows until it hits a ceiling - even at that point, it is way overstated (a conservative measure, so to speak). What is bad is if it regularly grows by 50 MB per day, without limit. Then there is a leak :)

Re:Probs before PR

[Reducer2001]

I wonder about this. Right now my Firefox app is taking up 66MB of RAM on my WinXPSP2 machine. Only have two extensions going, the gmail notifier and flashblock.
Only one tab open.

Re:Probs before PR

[prockcore]

it's been open for about 5 days straight, running on Win2KPro. It's using 104MB of RAM.

Even worse, there's this System Idle process that's taking up 99% of my CPU time!

Sheesh. It's called memory caching. That's why TOP differentiates between RSIZE, VSIZE and RSHRD.

RSIZE is the amount of ram being actively used by a process. I doubt RSIZE is 104megs.

Re:Probs before PR

[DigitalTechnic]

Minimize then restore. You should see the right ammount now.

Re:Probs before PR

[cheekyboy]

I left firefox on http://www.i2hub.com/ overnight by accident, and in the morning it used more than 1.7g of ram.

Could be a javascript bug or dhtml bug, or just bad lameass (graduate honor students tsk tsk tsk) coders.

I did email them though.

Re:Probs before PR

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Apperantly there is a bug in XP SP2 that makes the operating system crash if an application tries to gobble up all memory that it can.

So yep I think you should report in to Microsoft so they ASAP can issue an SP3.

Re:Probs before PR

[gtkuhn]

I'm still running Firefox 0.9.2 simply cuz it has NEVER crashed on my WinXP SP1 system. I have also never tried SP2. Seen to many bugs first hand to go near it. I often leave a few Firefox instances open with several tabs each for days at a time. It has NEVER crashed. It won't load my school's page due to redirection limit exceeded, but it has NEVER crashed. If it aint broke, why fix it?

Re:Probs before PR

[HorsePunchKid]

Every version of Firefox since about 0.7 has acted this way for me. The memory usage increases slowly but steadily until it's eating up 200MB+ of RAM. Closing tabs or windows (I usually have 2 or 3 windows open with 2-6 tabs each) has no effect on the memory consumption. Restarting Firefox helps, though sometimes I have to go into the taskmgr and kill the process manually.

Anyway, I love Firefox, but thought I'd add another confirming instance of this problem.

Re:Probs before PR

[meanfriend]

I'm currently using FireFox PR1.0, it's been open for about 5 days straight, running on Win2KPro. It's using 104MB of RAM. Why I don't know...I only have 4 tabs open at the moment and no flash or java running, and no third party plugins...

I'm going to guess that over the five days, you have opened and closed a whole bunch of tabs (probably dozens). It's a known issue in Firefox that when you close tabs, it doesnt release the memory.

See the bugzilla: bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=131456

I've had FF running for a week straight and using upwards of 200MB and only one tab open :). The only remedy is to restart FF. This has been an issue for over two years now. Dont expect it change anytime soon though, if it was a simple fix, I supppose it would have been done by now.

Re:Probs before PR

[onlyjoking]

A single application should crash, or run slowly but it should never crash the entire operating system or use up all the operating system's resources.

'Seen Mozilla use 99.9% CPU on OS X many times with script-heavy web pages. While it didn't crash the OS it made it virtually unusable, other than for issuing 'kill -9' from the Terminal.

Re:Probs before PR

[dnoyeb]

You are presupposing a bug free OS.

Re:Probs before PR

[John_Booty]

Here's something that ought to help. Go to about:config in Firefox and look for a preference called "browser.cache.memory.capacity"

I believe it's not actually there by default. If not, create it. By default Firefox will attempt to dynamically adjust its RAM usage based on your total RAM capacity. This means it will eat up a lot of RAM eventually if it thinks you have RAM to spare.

A more sane behavior can be enforced by entering a value for that preference... this seemed to curb the "endless RAM appetite" problem for me. :D

4096 or 8192 should be a pretty sane value. (The values are in kilobytes) Google "browser.cache.memory.capacity" for more advice. Some people suggest huge values like 65536 or whatever, but I find that pretty insane unless you're trying to cache hundreds or thousands of pages in RAM... it's simply not necessary!

Re:Probs before PR

[tepples]

Even worse, there's this System Idle process that's taking up 99% of my CPU time!

You need Seventeen or Bust so that you can take time away from idle.

Re:Probs before PR

[jesser]

What are RSIZE, VSIZE and RSHRD? Which one does "Memory Usage" in WinXP correspond to?

Re:Probs before PR

[cduffy]

No, I'm not; I'm simply apportioning blame. If the application triggers as OS bug, that's the OS's problem, not the application's.

(FYI, I'm the local system-level dude -- closest thing to an OS developer my company [whose product is a sealed-box OS-and-app solution] has on staff; this shapes my worldview wrt such issues).

Re:Probs before PR

[lauterm]

such that it doesn't try to absorb all the system's resources

Try explaining that to the people that designed Java.

Re:Probs before PR

[prockcore]

What are RSIZE, VSIZE and RSHRD? Which one does "Memory Usage" in WinXP correspond to?

VSIZE (also displayed as "virt" and "VSZ") is the virtual size of the process. File mappings, video mappings, disk cache, swapped-to-disk ram is all included in this. For example, under Linux, X11 has a very large vsize because all of your videoram is included in this VSIZE.

RSIZE (aka "res" and "RSS") is the amount of physical ram your process, and your process alone, is using. This is the best indicator of ram usage.

RSHRD (aka "SHR") is the amount of shared ram your process is using. This is the space taken up by any shared libraries your process uses. This isn't necessarily in physical ram either.

Let's look at an example:
My firefox has been running for 5 days, it has a VSIZE of 165megs, RSIZE of 61 megs, and RSHRD of 35 megs.

VSIZE is what WinXP would report, 165 megs of ram used, never mind that more than half of that ram is stuff like disk cache allocated by the OS.

firefox-bin is using 65 megs of physical ram (that's still quite a lot).

RSHRD is the memory taken up by GTK, and libX11.so, and all the other shared libraries that are used by firefox. Closing firefox won't free this ram because it's *shared*, other apps running use that same libX11.so, etc.

Hope this helps. I don't know how to display this detail under XP, but I'm sure there are 3rd party tools to do it if system profiler can't.

Re:Probs before PR

[khrtt]

Your worldview is worthy of admiration - being the local system-level dude, blaming problems on the OS is very self-concious of you:-). However, if an application triggers an OS bug, it's the user's problem in the first place.

You see, being an application developer, you can't simply blame the bugs off and hope that the users would want to use your crashing app. Being an OS developer, however, you can safely ignore many OS bugs, and hope that the app developers will find a workaround, and your OS will keep shipping.

The OS developers only really need to worry when an OS bug is so bad that there are no workarounds!

Re:Probs before PR

[khrtt]

Interpreting how much memory an application is using is somewhat difficult.

ps -l

, then look down the RSS column.

Re:Probs before PR

[rabidcow]

In Windows, Task Manager has a number of columns related to memory usage, notably "Mem Usage" and "VM Size." (Process Explode, "bin/winnt/PView.Exe" from Microsoft's Platform SDK, gives FAR more memory stats.)

"Mem Usage" is the only one on by default, thus most likely to be read by someone who doesn't know anything. (Unless they use something other than Task Manager, which would surprise me.) It corresponds to the application's Working Set, aka how much physical memory it is actively using. (not necessarily exclusively, some of that is shared with other apps)

"VM Size" is also called Page File elsewhere, the amount of virtual memory that the application has allocated, but swapped out to disk.

Right now, I have Firefox 1.0PR (Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10.1) running with 9 tabs and it's got 130MB Mem Usage and 198MB VM Size. It's been running for about 2 weeks. I can close several tabs and it won't go down by that much. (If you wait a bit, it drops by a about a few hundred k for each.)

Why, I don't know. I haven't been bothered enough to investigate. Still, I'm a bit impressed that it can manage to keep 130MB in its working set and still stay below 2% CPU on a 600MHz machine. Maybe it's locking stuff unnecessarily or something...

Re:Probs before PR

[cduffy]

Well, yes, people sometimes need to work around other people's bugs. :)

I don't neceessarily think this acknowledgement clashes with absolving applications from blame for crashes, hangs and other such Bad Stuff the OS isn't supposed to allow them to cause.

Re:Probs before PR

[rabidcow]

"VM Size" is also called Page File elsewhere, the amount of virtual memory that the application has allocated, but swapped out to disk.

Come to think of it, this may not quite be the case. It might be the total amount of pagefile space allocated to the application. This would include paged-out memory, as well as memory that was in RAM, but would need to go to the pagefile if it were swapped out. (ie, nothing that came directly from an executable or memory-mapped file)

Trying to find out exactly what all the memory usage numbers mean in Windows can be VERY confusing. AFAIK, there is no stat for physical memory used exclusively by a given task. And I'm pretty sure disk cache isn't counted as memory used by an application.

Re:Probs before PR

[papa248]

I can tell you exactly what is happening - I had (have) the exact same problem. It is due to the Flash extension (NOT Mozilla's fault - it is buggy garbage from Macromedia). FF would stay open even with all windows/tabs closed and still draw 100+MB and 99% CPU draw.

Delete the extension and problems go away!

Re:Probs before PR

[fzammett]

Flamebait, huh? Sure, someone says something even remotely negative about your previous open-source project and it's flamebait.

The TRUTH of the statement be damned. It doesn't cast something that isn't Microsoft in a bad light and you don't like it.

And that my friends is the reason the F/OSS movement will NEVER defeat Microsoft. Superior technology only gets you so far (and you appear to not even have that going for you at this point), the lousy attitude destroys whatever positive you do.

Re:Probs before PR

[Smidge204]

Aha! This actually worked very, very well!

I added an integer value "browser.cache.memory.capacity" with a value of 4096, then restarted the browser. Mem usage hasn't gotten up above 37MB since and performance has not been effected at all.

Thanks for the tip JB!
=Smidge=

Re:Probs before PR

[John_Booty]

Excellent! Great to know that it helped. I think that this ought to be a default setting, really. Perhaps future Firefox releases will include this. :D

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

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?

Re:zerg

[Tumbleweed]

What's wrong with this being a front page post? He'll reach more people, and thus get more responses, that way.

I don't know if 1.0 is less stable than 1.0PR, but it's definitely not 'stable,' for me, and that's across three machines, one of which is a newly built machine.

And yeah, I've got it set to report crash data back to the developers. Hope that works. Firefox is still leagues better than IE, of course, in both features as well as stability. And speed. And beauty. Oh nevermind, this could get embarassing.

Re:zerg

[reallocate]

Given the ballyhoo surrounding the release of 1.0, this is a legitimate issue for Slashdot. (Remember, its a discussion board, not a news outlet.)

A 1.0 release is supposed to be ready for primetime, not another in the seemingly endless testing releases common to open source.

Re:zerg

[thammoud]

Would have been juicier if the story read:

I had IE 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 IE 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 FireFox to download the full installer, again. Is it just me, or are other heavy IE users noticing this sort of behavior?"

Re:zerg

[artemis67]

Considering the size of the Slashdot audience and the fact that Slashdot is a "news" site (in theory) and not a "tech support" site... a larger question might be, Is it irresponsible for Slashdot to post a bug report of a single user as a story for a million people to see? How many people will just read the headline and not read the comments, and automatically think that Firefox is having widespread problems?

Are there really a bunch of people who have problems with Firefox? Without even looking at Mozilla's tech support forums, I can tell you, unequivocally, YES. When you distribute a program to millions of users, some people are going to run into problems, that's a given. But how do we know that this fella's problem is really with Firefox, and not with, say, a memory chip he installed last week? Or maybe he has some spyware installed that is screwing it up?

The REAL question that Slashdot ought to be concerned with is, Does the number of people having problems with Firefox 1.0 appear to be statistically significant? If it's not, then this whole story grossly exaggerates the problems and gives Firefox a lot of unnecessarily bad PR.

Me, I just recently reformatted my hard drive, installed Win XP and Firefox 1.0, and have not had any problems with it.

Re:zerg

[Lord Omlette]

How does one post get modded troll and the other modded insightful when they're essentially the same post?

Re:zerg

[jdkane]

Remember, its a discussion board, not a news outlet.

If /. is not a news outlet then why does the Google News Aggregator consider it as a source? Aha!
Maybe it's both.

Re:zerg

[ihatenoone]

Would have said the same thing if it was post describing problems with a IE release. Be unbiased please.

Re:zerg

[nuclear305]

"How many people will just read the headline and not read the comments, and automatically think that Firefox is having widespread problems?"

I think most of the audience will wait for Netcraft to confirm it at the very least.

I'd agree with the other numerous comments above that this is NOT the Mozilla support site/forum/mailing list where this kind of thing belongs.

Re:zerg

[artemis67]

What's your IP?

It's 127.0.0.1, but don't tell anyone!

Re:zerg

[fermion]

You had three choices

1. Hide in the shame of your ignorance by not posting
2. Aknowledge your ignorance and listen nicely while the adults talked, and in the process learned something
3. Let your ignorance get the best of you and post your temper trantrum on /.

Want to take a guess on your choice?

Re:zerg

[ZorbaTHut]

Ironically, I've had more trouble with the crash report app than with Firefox itself. I eventually gave up and just didn't report crashes. At some point it stops being worth my time.

Re:zerg

[snig64]

I had a problem that was a lot worse than that. Try installing the user-agent switcher, switching to IE6 user agent, and THEN firefox crashing. when you try to reopen firefox, the java plug-in tells you it isn't designed for internet explorer. you then have to uninstall java, open firefox, change the user-agent, and then reinstall java. Make sure you firefox doesn't crash with the user agent switched on. :)

Re:zerg

[Tony.Tang]

I like this post. For some reason, I couldn't help but think that someone might post:

Easy fix. Press Alt-F4 for ops. If it crashes, then restart and press Alt-F4 again.

Re:zerg

[ScrewMaster]

Me, I just recently reformatted my hard drive, installed Win XP and Firefox 1.0, and have not had any problems with it.

Me too. But that was just this morning. I had been running 1.0 since its release on my previous XP installation (which was about six months old and had had dozens of different apps installed and removed) and also had zero problems. Zip. Nada. So my experience so far has been very positive.

Re:zerg

[amokk]

If this were an IE bug you would probably be one of those asshats that would be complaining that it wasn't getting enough coverage. Firefox isn't perfect. The Mac version that I'm currently typing this on is experiencing a lot of problems. The biggest one so far is that it is at least twice as slow as the other versions of Firefox. Additionally, for some reason flash movies run extremely slow inside this version while they run at normal speed on the others. Irresponsible? Give me a break.

Re:zerg

[sugus]

The REAL question that Slashdot ought to be concerned with is, Does the number of people having problems with Firefox 1.0 appear to be statistically significant?

That's exactly what the story is asking. But instead of answering it - all I see are people flaming this poor guy. Tell me where does he ever ask for "tech support"?

Re:zerg

[Punboy]

I've heard that story every week for how many years? -counts on fingers... runs out of fingers- Can't count them on my fingers, and mSQL isn't responding cause IE locked up again. :-D

Re:zerg

[reallocate]

Slashdot isn't a news outlet. The Slashdot staff doesn't collect or report news, or otherwise engage in journalism. They choose items to post from suggestions sent in by readers. Presumably, they choose items they believe will prompt the most traffic.

Re:zerg

[reallocate]

I don't comnsider Slashdot a news site. It is simply a BBS dressed up in web clothing. The /. staff doesn't engage in collecting or writing news, or any other kind of reporting. (We see ampole evidence every day that they don't even bother with simple editing.) They simply choose from story suggestions those items they believe will attract the most traffic.

So, as far as I'm concerned, questions about Slashdot's responsibilities are off target.

If /. did engage in journalism, then, yes, they should have conducted an investigation of 1.0 reliability and attempted. But, they are not journalists, so they did not. (Frankly, I doubt they even verified the authenticity of the original submission.)

Re:zerg

[reallocate]

Because Google's developers don't know real reporting from leeches? Because they want to attract traffic?

Are your judgement about what is or is not news determined by what a few developers put in a URL list?

Re:zerg

[jdkane]

Because Google's developers don't know real reporting from leeches?

That statement cannot be backed up by the fact you personally consider Slashdot to not be a news service at all. It seems a sweeping statement about Google developers. Where did you get the inside scoop from?

Are your judgement about what is or is not news determined by what a few developers put in a URL list?

You tell me. But first prove that Google just has a few developers that put URLs into the list. Are you sure only a few Google developers make this decision -- or might other Google departments be involved in that facet of the news service? By itself I cannot consider your personal bias a good argument if you do not back it up with more than assumptions.

I would pose a few questions to you: What do you think it takes to be qualified as a news service, and *really* why does Slashdot not meet that? (apart from assumptions that a few developers at Google are just throwing stuff in). Even if a few Google developers threw in Slashdot, does that mean it is not a news source? (apart from your wish that it not be?)

Re:zerg

[reallocate]

Someone at Google decides what sources to spider for their news page. The inclusion of a site in that list of URLs simply means that someone at Google put it there, not that the site is a bona fide news producer.

Slashdot has no reporters, produces no original content, does little apparent editing of reader submissions, and does little apparent factchecking of reader submissions. It needs to do all that, at a minimum, before it becomes a legitimate news site. (By the same token, I don't consider Google News as a news site. There's no journalism or news production there, just pointing to someone else's work.)

Re:zerg

[jdkane]

Your original post qualified Slashdot as not being a news outlet: (Remember, its a discussion board, not a news outlet.)
In you latest post you started a new conversation by saying Slashdot is not a "news producer": not that the site is a bona fide news producer.

I do not want to change this conversation in the middle of the thread -- that would be more appropriate under a new thread -- however I will comment that I disagree that Slashdot produces no original content -- it's just rarely. Take a look at some of the exclusive /. interviews with popular tech people and companies. (Also, I seem to remember in the past a Slashdot employee sending in daily reports from a conference he was attending -- but after a quick search I've been unable to bring up those old posts yet).

However back on topic I have to disagree with your original assertation that Slashdot is not a news outlet. Slashdot is a news outlet "for nerds". It's also a discussion board about that news.

Re:zerg

[reallocate]

From my perspective, "news outlet" is the same as "news producer". News doesn't happen by itself. Someone has to create, produce, and publish it. How and where they publish it is their "outlet".

Slashdot is essentially a human-powered news aggregator that allows readers to post comments. Without the ability to point to news produced and reported elsewhere, Slashdot would not exist. Nor would any other news aggregators. There's no news production here. The only outlets to news on /. are links to work published elsewhere.

Havn't Noticed

[The Lost Supertone]

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.

No - it's you

[Linker3000]

Welcome to Slashdot, now being used as an alternative for official software support sites and usenet newsgroups.

Re:No - it's you

[Ender_Stonebender]

You'll get answers quicker this way. Probably better quality ones, and you won't have someone whose name is Samir and lives in Bangalore claiming his name is "Fred" and speaks with a thick Indian accent trying to solve the problem based on some lame-assed script. (Apologies to any Indian people who find this offensive.)

Re:No - it's you

[stevo3232]

And coming soon! Slashdot, the alternative for IRC, and AIM! All the latest chat headlines...like:

"i is teh 0wn t3h w1nd0z b0x0rz"

"you suck"

"i hate M$"

"i love SCO"

and many more....sheesh.

Re:No - it's you

[DaNasty]

They have those?

Re:No - it's you

[PSandusky]

Clearly you haven't had to put in a tech support call recently.

Re:No - it's you

[mbadolato]

Clearly you haven't had to put in a tech support call recently.

Yeah, their accents are hardly detectable anymore... :)

Re:No - it's you

[EvilNutSack]

Sorry, we've just been outsourced.

None here ...

[jasonsfa98]

Runs just as stable as 1.0PR.

WinXP SP1

Running smoothly

[th3d0ct0r]

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!

A couple more bugs...

[bender647]

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.

Firefox Upgrade from 0.10 to 1.0

[jonharrell]

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

Why?

[dalamarian]

I don't want to come off as rude (of course but) but, why is this considered newsworthy?

Re:Why?

[pdboddy]

Maybe they're trying to /. Mozilla's site?

Re:Why?

[fatphil]

For the same reason as Firefox 1.0 now becoming available is newsworthy.

i.e. barely at all. However, if it carries pro-FF raving, it should also carry anti-FF ranting.

And by heck does /. carry pro-FF raving. Almost daily a few weeks back.

FP.

Crashed Today

[paul248]

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?

Old extensions causing a problem?

[CCelebornn]

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?

Firefox

[americamatrix]

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...

Re:targetted by spyware/adware/viruses ?

[dragon_imp]

You're not referring to Windows Update, are you?

Basic Human Nature

[nwbvt]

Complaining is more fun than actually solving problems.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[MC Negro]

Seeking valid tech support from Slashdot is like going to an Adam Sandler film for some deep, subtle wit.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Anonymous Coward]

Complaining is more fun than actually solving problems.

So THAT explains why Slashdot is such a popular place!
*runs*

Re:Basic Human Nature

[dealsites]

I just made the jump to Firefox a couple weeks ago. Is it only me or does the text on Slashdot bleed over into the left side on the front page?

--
Get live updates on the best prices on gear for Christmas. Black Friday information rolling in too.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[dmaxwell]

It is a well known bug. The fix is in the current gecko devel tree. The quick workaround is to hit ctrl- followed by ctrl+. The shrinks then expands the text on the screen. It also causes the text to reflow correctly.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Feztaa]

I much prefer to hold down CTRL and then scroll the mouse wheel up, then down. Does the exact same thing, just easier than taking my hand off the mouse ;)

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Ctrl-Z]

But only if you have a mouse (with a scroll wheel). That doesn't work with my touchpad or my keyboard nipple.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Herschel Cohen]

It does on Mozilla 1.7.3 that I use for /., but when I bring it up on FireFox 1.0 PR it is excellent.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Class Act Dynamo]

I think all computers should have at least two nipples, if not more.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[NumbThumb]

It'S funny! Laugh!

Re:Basic Human Nature

[jZnat]

You mean the hannukah song isn't deep, subtle wit? MY LIFE IS OVER! ;_;

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Lehk228]

SlashFix

This extension forces a re-flow of the page after it loads.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[rainman_bc]

Works just fine with my toshiba touchpad... All I have to do is run my finger down the right side and it simulates a scroll wheel.

Of course it's only a windows feature...

Re:Basic Human Nature

[cbiltcliffe]

The quick workaround is to hit ctrl- followed by ctrl+.

Or, you could install the slashfix extension:

http://www.hardgrok.org/blog/item/slashfix-firefox -extension.html

Isn't open source great?!

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Mad_Rain]

Seeking valid tech support from Slashdot is like going to an Adam Sandler film for some deep, subtle wit.

-------- "lol i had sex w/ ur mom" - George W. Bush

...said the man with the "yer mom" joke for a sig.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[tacensi]

All I have to do is run my finger down the right side and it simulates a scroll wheel.

You mean stimulate the nipple?

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Anonymous Writer]

I think all computers should have at least two nipples

There are two keyboard nipples. That's what the little bumps on the "F" and "J" keys are. They are there so you can position your fingers on the keyboard for typing without looking. I think the grandparent poster was referring to a trackpoint mistakenly as a keyboard nipple.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[jjsoh]

"It is a well known bug."

In Slash code or Gecko?

This is a serious question since I've read that Slashdot.org does not conform to W3C recommendations and other standards. (I seem to get a '403 Forbidden' error when I try to validate, so I have no idea if this is true.)

Re:Basic Human Nature

[mAineAc]

Of course it's only a windows feature...
I have a synaptics touchpad on a slackware laptop and this feature works flawlessly.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[connect4]

Synaptics touchpad driver for X should does it as well

Re:Basic Human Nature

[jp10558]

Well, the validation works fine from Opera. I get 227 errors on that page, and something about it not being valid HTML 3.2.

Some of the errors are:

Line 8, column 14: there is no attribute "TYPE"

Line 38, column 11: there is no attribute "TOPMARGIN"

Line 38, column 26: there is no attribute "LEFTMARGIN"

Line 39, column 13: there is no attribute "MARGINWIDTH"

Line 39, column 30: there is no attribute "MARGINHEIGHT"

Line 43, column 8: there is no attribute "BGCOLOR"

It goes on...

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Anonymous Coward]

If open source was great, the real fix would have shipped rather than some javascript hack.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[slaker]

I'd say that yours is an apt comparison, but "Punch Drunk Love" was one of the deepest movies to come out of Hollywood in the last couple years.

And of course it was completely lost on Adam Sandler fans, but that's beside the point.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[GoRK]

Actually it's a synaptics touchpad hardware/driver feature. The touchpad normally emulates a PS2 mouse; however, there is a 'raw' mode that you can put the hardware into that basically returns the position of the user's finger on the pad. This allows you to do a lot of different things in software such as simulate a scroll wheel when the user tracks up and down the right edge, horizontally scroll when the user tracks on the bottom edge, perform browsing back/forward actions on the top edge, simulate extra mouse buttons with corner taps, etc.

A really really good implementation of a raw-mode synaptics driver is available for MacOS as SideTrack. It used to be free while it was in beta. Now it is $15 and a heck of a good deal. It fixes the powerbooks' problem of lacking a right mousebutton and scroll wheel while giving all sorts of extra enhancements that really make that one button mouse a lot more usable.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Pandora's Vox]

is the touchpad on your toshiba made by synaptics? because if it is, then the linux driver is actually better than the windows driver. sure is on my ASUS, anyway.

-Leigh

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Fuzzle]

Or a an OSX feature, available quite easily to all trackpad users.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[secretsquirel]

No, but I'm pretty sure opera-man was though.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[realdpk]

Heh, methinks they're a tad embarassed of it:

403 :)

Re:Basic Human Nature

[mefus]

obviously a connoisseur, but not a snob.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[nihilogos]

If open source was that great, you wouldn't need to install individual extentions for each site that doesn't render correctly

I suppose you mean extensions. May I suggest an open source spellchecker? Perhaps aspell?

Re:Basic Human Nature

[puddpunk]

"Of course it's only a windows feature..."

No it isn't, it's a synaptic touchpad feature. I've used my Synaptic touchpad with the touchpad scrolling, palm detection and multifinger detection (one finger - left click, two - middle, three - right) under Debian Sarge, Ubuntu, SUSE 9.1 and Gentoo.

Seems like Cluelessness is a only a Windows user feature.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[jseale]

Hitting F5 (which of course reloads the page) fixes the text problem on my particular machine. Not sure if it'll work for everybody but it's much easier than the two-button salutes you mentioned.

I haven't had any lock-ups, crashes or other major problems with the official release of 1.0 yet.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Synistar]

"Regardless of the what the W3C says, those are real attributes that are recoginzed by every browser and used on millions of sites. Not the cause of Firefox's problems with slashdot."

But they are not valid HTML 3.2 attributes. Why slasdot is using a 3.2 DTD instead of a 4.01 DTD is beyond me. But even forcing the validator to use an HTML 4 DTD still produces a ton of errors. Slashdot's HTML just sucks, is invalid, and they know it. Hopefully it will finally be fixed soon.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Feztaa]

Actually, yes. ;)

Re:Basic Human Nature

[stoborrobots]

is the touchpad a Synaptics or an ALPS Glidepoint? if so, there's an X driver for it...

Re:Basic Human Nature

[ssj_195]

If you start Firefox and have that "Default profile in use blah blah" (I thought they were getting rid of this...?) then go into your Firefox profile and remove the parent.lock file [I'm not at a Windows box right now, but I think it's in Documents and Settings//Application Data(?)/Mozilla/Firefox/]. Firefox should then be able to start, with your default profile, without a hitch.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[ThJ]

"Nipple"? I prefer to call it a "clitoris".

Re:Basic Human Nature

[s4m7]

...said the man with the "yer mom" joke for a sig.

Actually, the last refuge for the "your mama" joke is in fark or /. (which obviously grandparent is new to or he wouldn't have spelled it out.) and chrysler press releases. These are still acceptable because there's no chance that someone will think you are actually talking about their mom, since they are such generalized media, but especially for /., the cliche has magnetic value that makes such a versitile example fo the cliche more welcome than other, less flexible ones, such as "in soviet russia" "step 3 profit!" and "I for one welcome our".

The fact that Bush is referenced in the aforementioned "your mama" doesn't do anything for the value of it, because it's just as effective on CmdrTaco, Cowboyneal, and all the other innumerable old-schoolers, Clinton, Gore, and Jabba the Hut. If we lump Fark.com in, Ackbar applies. /modularity ensues.

Honestly I think this is a good slashdot FP topic because a) there's a lot of firefox users here. b) some are very evangelical about either the browser or the license, or the quality of firefox, and OSS in general, especially in relation to the time/completeness of bug fixes.

I was actually wondering when this was going to come up as the rollback from 1.0 to .98 in Ubuntu as caused quite a stir on the lists, and other than rather dead weight thread about the overly sexy graphics on gdm and the desktop, this was probably the most common topic last month. 1.0 has some serious issues, and having geeky sites like this bring them up puts a fire under the ass of the firefox dev team to prove the mantra once again, that OSS packages are more well maintained then their proprietary counterparts.

funny or insightful? you decide/

Re:Basic Human Nature

[sootman]

I wouldn't use this as a banner of the greatness of open source. I have FF 1.0 and that extension and it is making no difference that I can see. I still have to ctrl+/- on about 1/3-1/2 of slashpages.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[RedCard]

I'd say that yours is an apt comparison, but "Punch Drunk Love" was one of the deepest movies to come out of Hollywood in the last couple years. And of course it was completely lost on Adam Sandler fans, but that's beside the point.

Completely OT, but I have to agree with you 100%. Sandler did a great job in that movie. I could practically feel the tension and stress radiating from his character.
Excellent movie.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Donny Smith]

Thanks.
It's (replace USERNAME with your user name):
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.fz4\parent.l ock

Truly annoying.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Spunk]

Yep, it doesn't work for me either.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[cammoblammo]

Umm, how is this off topic? The poster was making a perfectly on topic reply to the parent. If you didn't like his joke, mark it as 'overrated.' Otherwise, leave it alone.

Mods and meta-mods, it's time to put down your thang...

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Ctrl-Z]

Since I know that technically, nipples on the keyboard refer to the bumps on the F and J (D and K for Mac users), I accept "clitoris" as the appropriate term for that bump.

I've never understood why the bumps on the F and J are referred to as nipples. They're so much smaller.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[cbiltcliffe]

Well, I don't know what'd different about your setup than mine, but I've never seen the /. glitch since I installed it, on three different versions of Firefox.
(1.0 Windows, 0.9.3 Linux, and 1.0 Linux)

Re:Basic Human Nature

[mini me]

Works just fine with my toshiba touchpad... All I have to do is run my finger down the right side and it simulates a scroll wheel.

Of course it's only a windows feature...

My touchpad does that too. But it's only an X feature. It doesn't work in Windows.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Fnkmaster]

Slashfix has been downloaded by over 5000 people in the last week. I've received dozens of messages of thanks and 3 or 4 people have complained that it didn't work. I've already explained several times that this is pretty much impossible - the fix consists of about 10 lines of Javascript. This isn't some magical complex app, it's either gonna work or not, and for 99.9% of people it works, so I must assume the problem isn't in the code.

Most likely FF is hanging on pageloads or something - are you actually waiting for the page to finish loading? Are you loading tabs in the background? Because my site already documents the limitations to the fix (it runs only when the pageload event is triggered, namely when a page finishes loading, and tabs loaded in the background never trigger a pageload). I am of course perfectly open to suggestions or enhancements. If the limitations annoy you, feel free to work around them, it's perfectly possible, just takes some effort and toiling with the Firefox extension API stuff. Maybe you should get off your butt and help instead of whining?

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Yer Mom]

Or "cd %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\whatever", which might save a bit of typing.

Not that I have to do this on a regular basis with the flaky Netware shares here, or anything.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Fnkmaster]

The devs didn't want to ship the rendering engine with the patch, which has been around for months, because it supposedly causes some other regression that hasn't been fixed yet - the fix is checked in on the Mozilla 1.8 branch, and you can download the 1.8 alpha release and this problem will never occur. As annoying as it is, I understand where the developers were coming from (not sure I agree with them however, given how high profile /. is with the early adopter market).

Basically, this is a demonstration of a strong development process at work in the FF/Mozilla team - however, it is also a demonstration of the Cathedral-like nature of Mozilla development - if it was up to the users, it's pretty clear this would have been checked in (lots of people seemed to want this bug to go Aviary-1.0-blocking).

In any case, it is a demonstration of the value of a strong extension model for Mozilla, and the value of modularity in software, not of Open Source per se. Actually digging into the core rendering code for Gecko and fixing the bug that was blocking the real fix's checkin is definitely beyond my abilities without spending months worth of rampup time.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[John Harrison]

oddly enough, there is an IBM research project involving putting two trackpoints on a single keyboard as evidenced below:
IBM pdf
Slashdot commentary on dual trackpoint keyboard

Re:Basic Human Nature

[tsvk]

But real geeks don't use the mouse when they browse the web. :) You can perform all normal browsing functions using the keyboard only. Use Ctrl+T for opening a new tab, Ctrl+L for focusing the Location bar to type a new web address, PgUp/PgDown for scrolling up and down, Alt+Left and Alt+Right for navigating back and forward, etc. Reading through and learning the Mozilla keyboard shortcuts was really an eye-opener for me.

Re:Basic Human Nature

[rainman_bc]

Actually it's an ALPS...

Friggin' Fedora never recognized it during the install...

I might have to make the switch back :)

One less thing for me to bitch about :)

Re:Basic Human Nature

[bhtooefr]

No, that's because of robots.txt. It only lets Google's ad bot through, and nothing else (such as the W3C validator).

Re:Basic Human Nature

[Perky_Goth]

so THAT is why i find my new laptop acting weird!!! lol.
neat, though. i don't think i'll get used to it...

Feels Less Stable on Mac

[mwyner]

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...

Let's just say I'm looking for patches now...

[Daniel Ellard]

It just randomly goes away and leaves core file in my home directory every so often. Since I started keeping track, I've noticed that I often get a core file after intentionally exiting. If there's a pattern, I haven't glimpsed it.

Re:Let's just say I'm looking for patches now...

[Daniel Ellard]

Should have mentioned that I'm running FreeBSD 4.10, so I had to build it myself instead of downloading a blessed build. (It's a bit of a nuisance that it seems to depend on a specific version of a dozen things, but so do lots of other things...)

Really?

[zx75]

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.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ditto, 1.0pr had a very annoying habit of crashing when I was using multiple tabs or when I opened a pdf in a new tab.

Nein

[MC Negro]

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.

Only crashing noticed was PDF plug-in related

[Eilorux]

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.

FireFox not what it used to be

[BinBoy]

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.

Re:FireFox not what it used to be

[MsGeek]

You might want to go back to Mozilla then. Oddly enough, I have observed Mozilla being less prone to this kind of behavior than FireFox.

other heavy Firefox users

[Timesprout]

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?

Uninstall first!

[hazed]

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.

Re:Uninstall first!

[4titude]

Definitely, I had all sorts of problems because I was installing nightly builds without uninstalling the old versions first. When I uninstalled firefox and did a clean reinstall, everything worked perfectly and has continued to do so ever since. I don't recall a single crash.

Re:Uninstall first!

[Tufriast]

This is a fact, you must uninstall the old code, and then install the new code. Never install old code on top of new code if you want a bug free solution.

Its a matter of fact, that on Bugzilla they have addressed more than their fair share of crash problems by "please do a fresh uninstall, and reinstall". So, yeah, FF might run crappier if it has a bunch of old code laying around inside of it. However, this goes the same for Mickeyshaft's Windows OS. If you upgrade from a previous edition, you're 100% more likely to see more crashes. Old crap out, new goodness in - its the premise for any healthy design.

Re:Uninstall first!

[fzammett]

What a load of crap. NO good piece of software FORCES you to have to do a clean install. That's bad design on their part.

The older code should always be overwritten with the new, or the old code just sits there and does nothing. DLLs get replaces with newer or the same versions. There shouldn't ever be a problem if the developers know what they are doing.

Re:Uninstall first!

[DarkEdgeX]

What a load of crap. NO good piece of software FORCES you to have to do a clean install. That's bad design on their part.

I agree, and for the record I've never had a problem installing over old installations (been using FireFox exclusively since 0.9.1), so I don't know what the grand-parent poster is on about but it's hardly insightful/informative.

Bugzilla Wizard

[architimmy]

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.

yes, I'm aware they're unconnected...

[jx100]

Yeah, well, *I* installed Firefox 1.0 and my harddrive failed!!

Yes

[UncleScrooge]

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!

Re:Yes

[cpugeniusmv]

you don't like the command line...and you're using gentoo?

emerge --upgrade logic

Re:Yes

[UncleScrooge]

I like the command line, but the samba client is crud.

CNN will crash it

[r00t]

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.

Re:CNN will crash it

[bersl2]

Try compiling an unoptimized version. I've found that some errors don't happen then.

Re:CNN will crash it

[Aeiri]

My cases of crashing haven't been since 1.0, but 0.9.1.

I'm using Linux 2.6.x, and Firefox 0.9 ran perfectly, PERFECTLY, but as soon as 0.9.1 came out, it started going very very slow and crashing a LOT.

I just opened Firefox 1.0 now, typed "slashdot.org", and clicked "Read More" on this very topic and it crashed...

I think Firefox DOES have more crashes than before, because on my computer instead of crashing every 10 minutes, it's now crashing every 5.

If these crashes aren't fixed soon, I might give up on Firefox altogether. It is definitely a superior browser in thought, features, and security, however, if you can't run the thing that doesn't matter.

Re:CNN will crash it

[prockcore]

Linux 2.6, GNOME, 32-bit ppc, libswf installed,

I have an idea on why your browser is crashing.

You're trying to open flashMX movies in a flash3 library that was abandoned over 5 years ago.

Try removing libswf and I bet CNN won't crash at all.

Re:CNN will crash it

[JW Troll]

I've been to CNN a million times. No crashes.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

It would appear only to affect your linux system.

Re:CNN will crash it

[flithm]

Another thing to be aware of is that there's a known incompatibility between all browsers, and flash with Xorg and the COMPOSITE extension.

I know that's a mouthful, but that's actually quite a common set-up these days.

I understand that the latest official flash plugin is not affected by this.

But having said all of that, this is likely an incompatibility between the flash ads on those sites, and your system, not the browser itself.

Re:CNN will crash it

[IndigoSkies]

That's mot in my experience with it on XP, so maybe it's a bug in the Linux edition. I'm on CNN all the time (well, slightly less than /.)

Re:CNN will crash it

[Antique Geekmeister]

Notice the key phrase there: "Debian unstable". It's simply impossible to properly regression test or compatibility test Debian unstable, because it's nearly impossible to identify the versions of all all the core components in it on any given day.

Unfortunately, the only way to get software into Debian stable is to be a version so old that it's actually deprecated.

Re:CNN will crash it

[brewpoo]

I will admit that I have had a few problems with Firefox on my Thinkpad. But all and all it is a fast, stable browser with great features. I am in the process of moving my main desktop PC at home to Linux and Firefox runs great. My biggest problem is finding a replacement for RealPlayer 10 (the Jukebox features), right now I am looking at Madman.

Re:CNN will crash it

[byolinux]

what is there for playing Flash in Free Software?

swf-play under Debian seems to be the best of what there is right now.

Re:CNN will crash it

[IoN_PuLse]

Then that's libswf's fault, not FF's.

Re:CNN will crash it

[floop]

How about Macromedia Flash player. Runs on linux under mozilla or firefox fine.

Re:CNN will crash it

[byolinux]

It's not free software, as far as I can see.

Re:CNN will crash it

[AstroDrabb]

Try removing libswf and starting Firefox from a command prompt in safe mode by passing -safe-mode on the command line (firefox -safe-mode). If the problems go away then that should tell you that it is either libswf or your extension(s).

Re:CNN will crash it

[AstroDrabb]

P.S. For those that don't know about -safe-mode, it start Firefox with _all_ extensions disabled.

Re:CNN will crash it

[AstroDrabb]

Probably because he is using libswf which is very old and not developed anymore to the best of my knowledge.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

I am running Firefox 1.0 under Linux with no problems bringing up CNN, though I use the _real_ Flash player from Macromedia which runs just fine under Linux with Firefox/Mozilla.

Re:CNN will crash it

[JeremyALogan]

its free-as-in-beer... if you don't like it there are libraries out there... write your own

Re:CNN will crash it

[chromatic]

It's x86 only. That won't do him much good.

Re:CNN will crash it

[whereiswaldo]

Crashes I've seen in the PR weren't consistent. I've switched to Firefox 1.0 to try it out. Haven't used it long enough to witness any crashes yet.

Mozilla almost never ever crashed. I, too, would leave the browser open forever and only close it once in a blue moon, usually to free the memory usage that was creeping up. I'm hoping Firefox will be less memory intensive than Mozilla over the long haul.

Re:CNN will crash it

[FooBarWidget]

Yeah, because it's a sin to -gasp- actually care about free as in freedom, right? Everybody who cares more about freedom than about price is immoral, right?

Re:CNN will crash it

[ragingmime]

I'm using Windows XP SP2 and I'm not having any problems either - it must be a problem with the Linux version.

I do have problems with some Flash ads, though: my CPU usage will go to around 80%, and I'll have to close a browser window to make it stop. That can't be right - I'm running an 800mHz machine with plenty of free RAM.

Firefox 1.0 isn't perfectly rock-solid, but I find it to be pretty reliable. The Flash & CNN crashing on Linux problems are weird, though: I wonder if Firefox 1.0 was a little bit rushed with all the hubbub surrounding its release. But it's still a very good piece of software: I'm using it right now, and I've had no more crashes than I have with IE.

Re:CNN will crash it

[JeremyALogan]

let's review what I wrote for a second, shall we?

its free-as-in-beer... if you don't like it there are libraries out there... write your own

I did, in fact, say that it was free as-in-beer. By doing so I also accepted that it was not free as-in-speach or, as you put it, free as-in-freedom (dictionary.com -> "being free of restraints"). I will give you that much. BUT, and here in lies the key, I further followed up by recomending the poster that he write his own if he was unsatisfied with the curent state of affairs. In a sense, your attitude is more detrimental to the open-source (and/or free software) movement than mine. Your comment (insofar as how it relates to my own) basically says that you just expect it to be free, that you shouldn't have to input the effort. This is a bad thing. It borders on freeloadership (I'm pretty sure that isn't a word, but you catch my meaning). You shouldn't just expect a company to release their hard work (and money) GPL style. It would, in this case, present quite a number of problems (imagine forks... Flash.org v7.06.21beta... the less experienced of the world wouldn't know up from down). You should, however, be happy that they are supporting our platform. There are FAR too many companies that do not.

Now, in closing, I will admit that my comment was probably not well constructed to acurately present my meaning. I, in no way, intended that to come off as abrasive, argumentative, demeaning towards open-source or any such. I was just pointing out one of the truly great things about open source... if you don't like it, change it.

Re:CNN will crash it

[FooBarWidget]

And you say all that, while all the "BSD is freeer than GPL! GPL is communism! GPL is evil and viral!"-posts and "open source software (x) sucks, linux will never succeed on the desktop, give me better software for free or die, and if you don't listen to me then you are an elitist zealot"-posts get modded up to +5 Insightful.

Re:CNN will crash it

[JeremyALogan]

guess I should be sorry YOU didn't have mod points today :)

it's a wonder that I don't have anything good to say until the story's already progressed off the main page and I'm horribly buried below hundreds of other posts... ah well, such is life

yeah yeah I know... Offtopic

Re:CNN will crash it

[LWATCDR]

"Everybody who cares more about freedom than about price is immoral, right?"
Nope but those that complain without sitting down and writing code are lazy.
I do wish that people would at least give companies that give the same support to Linux as the do to closed OSs like Windows.

You're not alone!

[codermarc]

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.

Re:Good here

[rking]

Mine seemed to be working but now it's showing an article about a single anonymous user's broswer problems on the front page of Slashdot. That can't be right. Hopefully Mozilla will have a patch available soon.

Been running smoothly for me...

[psych-major]

On Windows 2000 SP4 WIndows XP SP2 Slackware 10.0 Slax Must be you...

Technically referred to as.......

[reality-bytes]

.......scraping the barrel.

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

Cheesey Creezey!!

[barfy]

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.

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[ZorinLynx]

You seem soooo uninterested in this story, yet you not only opened it to read it, but posted a flame about it!

Somehow I question your motives, Mister.

Jeez people, if a story doesn't interest you, DON'T READ IT. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure that out.

-Z

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[Anonymous Coward]

lost? not at all. they're right where they've always been, buried in hot grits under the statue of natalie portman.

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[sabNetwork]

>Is there any justification what so freakin' ever this is a frontpage story?

You're right.

We should move this to page two.

--

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Is anyone awake here?

Supposing they're not, is there any interest in the community to possibly fork Slashcode and start a new Slash-based website with the same intent but better editors?

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[Jugalator]

I agree, this is a strange article.

To actually answer him, you can basically just say "I agree", "Doesn't seem so here" or "I don't use Firefox". I think the point with the article is to discuss Firefox 1.0 stability, but I can't see much fun in that. It's extremely system dependant too so someone having it crash numerous times a day may just be spyware infected and have it conflict, a bad driver, or whatever.

I, like some others, suggest this:
www.mozillazine.org.

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[Jugalator]

Jeez people, if a story doesn't interest you, DON'T READ IT. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure that out.

Read his post carefully -- he has more to say than that this article doesn't interest him.

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[Brandybuck]

Have we totally lost our standards?

Sorry, but Slashdot never had any standards. I've been around Slashdot as long as you in another identity, and I simply do not recall the standards you are alluding to.

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[mrpuffypants]

I believe that your post implies that we ever had standards around here.

Please reevaluate your post and adjust accordingly.

kthx.

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[digitallife]

I must agree. I have had many different identities and have been around since very close to the beginning (damn master passwords - always make me lose passwords!). As far back as I can remember people have been complaining about this very issue. Actually /. has stayed relatively the same over the years IMHO, other than a few joke evolutions :)

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[DAldredge]

In the very beginning /. was a much nicer, more intellegent place.

Now I am off to SMASH OPENSOURCE CD!

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[KingPrad]

I've been wondering the same. Why hasn't anyone created a slashdot replacement? Surely somebody has the bandwidth available?

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[mrbuttboy]

for the same reason most PC are running windows - because it is what everyone else is doing.

If you start a new /. you aren't going to have everything that slashdot DOES - years of history, 100,000 user, ect. There are other sites,they just dont (yet) have what it takes to replace /. or more accurately,/. doesnt suck badly enough yet for people to go elsewhere in any large number.

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[Evil Pete]

Ditto, been around on Slashdot for ages (my current id is also NOT my original), and have to agree there were never any standards on slashdot. That is what made it what it is, both the good and the bad. If standards were imposed it would be better in a non-important sense and worse in an important way.

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Supposing they're not, is there any interest in the community to possibly fork Slashcode and start a new Slash-based website with the same intent but better editors?

Like kuro5hin?

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Surely somebody has the bandwidth available?

Oh my. What can one say to this!

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[bergeron76]

I had this same thought, but in my vision, the MODERATORS would vote on what stories are relevant enough to be posted (and/or front page news).

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[Zerbey]

barfy (256323) (emphasis mine). Clearly, you've not been around long enough. Slashdot has never had any standards.

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[Cryptnotic]

Kuro5hin was all crazy leftist communist anti-American anti-Western anti-capitalist articles last time I checked.

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[Cryptnotic]

Yep. How weird is it for a mod_perl program to do a database query for a string consisting of some perl code that the mod_perl program then exec's to render part of the page. Oh wait, it's weirder than that, because the perl code in the database will refer to variables in the main program. Oh, and the perl code in the database also might do database queries.

It was this way last time I checked. It's probably gotten weirder since then.

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Damn. Your right!

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[bergwitz]

As pointed out by others, Firefox stability is a valid story for Slashdot. One guy having trouble with Firefox isn't, but if there's a huge group of people having troubles it's a story. Maybe the editors deceided to post the story after the n'th request. You wouldn't know.

I for one are having many weird problems with Firefox (like this one ). Still, it's my favorite browser.

As for posting to the mozilla forums, I usually don't get any help there. There are too few people to help out there and too many stupid questions. (Like people who deceide that it is important to inform forum members that Firefox s**ks, because they can't use it on a site with far from standards-compliant html).

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[eraserewind]

Fork all you want, having good editors won't get you anything. The value of slashdot is in the comment writers (who reads TFAs after all?). The big problem any fork will have is getting the kind of critical mass necessary to create an interesting discussion. e.g. there's a site http://modfoo.com/ that has basically the same stories as slashdot, but uses an edit queue like kuro5hin. However 5 comments on a story is a good response after a few months of its operation.

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[crashnbur]

Well, sure. But one great thing about Slashdot is its reputation for millions of hits per day, which doesn't necessarily speak for quality, but the quality is high enough that we all come back.

Besides, if we ditched in truly great numbers, a Slashdot user number would no longer be an internet status symbol, except among the decreasingly few loyalists who would inevitably become the butts of many jokes.

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[zbuffered]

I agreed with you, but then I remembered that /. editors only post stories that are submitted by the users. So if Cliff (or whoever) got a thousand crappy story submissions and this is the best he could come up with, I guess it's not 100% his fault. It is his fault for putting this up, but we readers like new articles, more more more, so there is a bit of pressure to have x articles per day, and this is a typically slow news weekend.

So really, it's our fault for not submitting a better story, that this was the best that Cliff could come up with.

On the other hand, the story submission basically does boil down to "Hey, does anyone elses FF 1.0 crash?", without even the most cursory look anywhere else. Really inexcuseable.

I guess this article struck the "damn noobs don't know how to RTFM" chord in a lot of us.

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[Rie Beam]

Eh, it'd probably just get Slashdotted...

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[daniil]

Is there any justification what so freakin' ever this is a frontpage story?

Well, as you can see from the number of comments, it draws readers. Never mind that most of the comments are either saying "no, i don't have any problems" or "why is this news?" You could say pretty much the same about the rest of the front page stories as well: While their quality has arguably dropped, the number of readers is, according to Taco, on the rise.

Yeah, Slashdot has probably lost their old standards (if there ever were any, that is -- people have always been complaining about the dropping quality of stories ). But that's because its readership (ie the people submitting the stories) has changed. Slashdot has become mainstream, and so have the stories that get posted. So, suck it up, man!

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[Sentry21]

Supposing they're not, is there any interest in the community to possibly fork Slashcode and start a new Slash-based website with the same intent but better editors?

Why not use code that produces decent HTML, instead of something that is almost, but not quite, completely unlike HTML 3.2?

I don't think a fork to replace slashdot is necessarily the best method, because slashdot has too much in the way of readership and is too well-known. How about making a different site where people can post all the stupid shit they post here? Tech support questions, Ask Slashdot, book reviews, things like that? I like reading the discussions about this stuff, but it's not news, none of it. If slashdot were just news and all that other stuff went to another domain, then maybe it would filter it out better for those who don't want to see it.

Still, when I have 8 hours at work with no correspondance to do and a call every 2 hours, I'm glad for everything that gets posted, relevant or not.

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[HeghmoH]

Good point. Any time we think slashdot has become really horrible, we should all step back and say, "It's not that bad, it could be worse, it could be kuro5hin."

Re:Cheesey Creezey!!

[Malacca]

1. You insensitive clod!!!

2. If you had a Beowulf cluster of these joke evolutions...

3. All your base are belong to us.

4. ???

5. Profit!!!

Well....

[Dr. Mojura]

Short answer: no.
Long answer: yes, although the complete results were inconclusive.

Major Issues

[RoshanCat]

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.

Re:Major Issues

[Monkelectric]

I have seen the firefox zombie problem on systems with spyware. I suggest you reinstall :)

Say what?

[NeoChaosX]

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.

Heres the scoop

[aaron_ds]

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.

Good as gold: XP, 2k, ME, 98SE, OS X, Mandrake

[leonbrooks]

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.

Anyone else have their battery die?

[duckpoopy]

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?

No problems here

[AGTiny]

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).

Stable, but quirky

[rs6krox]

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.

Firefox on Panther

[prockcore]

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.

Re:Firefox on Panther

[hyperstation]

Firefox 1.0 on Panther is much more stable than previous versions.

no, firefox 1.0 on panther sucks balls. i stopped using it in favor of safari, which is faster and doesn't eat up huge gobs of memory and take over the cpu about every few hours.

on linux, it's great and i use it every day at work.

Where you should go with these problems...

[MTO_B.]

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.

solving the problem, slashdot style

[commodoresloat]

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.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[tacocat]

I know you aren't serious about this. At least I hope now, otherwise I'm wasting my time responding to a troll. But you may actually have some truth in what you say.

My first question to ask the original poster would be, "Have you done any OS updates between the two versions?" It would not surprise me in the least if MSFT was busy making patches to interfere with the FireFox application.

You might consider me a troll, but you do have to first recognize the rather extensive number of current lawsuits, convictions, investigations, and other forms of inquiry that Microsoft is currently trying to defend for just this kind of behavior.

Before you accuse the FireFox application of having a problem with Windows you had better prove the Windows doesn't have a problem with FireFox. Based on past performance I would trust FireFox long before I would trust Microsoft.

And you would be better off posting to Mozilla.org instead of trying to effectively FUD the competition against MSIE.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[BLAG-blast]

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.

Actually, no, I upgraded to 1.0 and it's noticable worse. It crashes a bit, and just on certain websites. It also takes up a fair chunk of CPU time when it's doing nothing, I've gotta kill it before playing video games, something I didn't have to do on the PR and 0.x versions.

However, buggy software isn't really news... ...although this crashing and CPU crunching is why I started using firefox in the first place...

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[Anonymous Coward]

I am running SuSE 9.1 (frehsly installed) and did run firefox pre for quite some while. The only problem I ever had with it was the "auto find as you type" - it would always kick in when you type a "/" in a input box (which is annyoing in webchats!). I already did disable it, set the timeout to really low etc, but 10pre would always open the "find" bar when I started with a "/" - annoying!

Then I installed v1.0 - the "find-as-you-type" bug is gone - yeah!

Unfortunately, about once a day I manage to crash firefox - something which almost never happened with 1.0pre.

So, yes, 1.0 is less stable. However, it didn't occur to me to whine somewhere about it, because that is not going to help.

Tels

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[NitsujTPU]

1) Why is your faith in open source so great that you are unwilling to humor the idea that there is a bug in the application? I am a professional software developer, and most of us LAUGH at the idea of "bug free" applications. It is considered, in some circles, so laughable, that one is considered a bit of a neonate to tout that their software is bug-free [that, or not connected to reality (at least, with respect to the technology)]. The first time I ran Linux (late 90's) I had plenty of core dumps.

2) Are you proposing that Microsoft has a "black ops" department, whose sole purpose is to cause Windows to behave incorrectly when 3rd party software is run? Additionally, this department is exceptionally good at keeping a secret. So good, in fact, that the only way to detect their work is by running open source (patently bug-free) software on their OS, to uncover these flaws? Given that open source software is bug-free, wouldn't such a department fear discovery when performing such an act?

I'm not saying that there aren't reasons to dislike Microsoft, but goodness, this is /. not Coast to Coast AM.

I'll tell you the single source of all of your Microsoft woes... the market. If the market will pump billions of dollars into a company, they have little right to complain about that company's software. There is competition. There was a lot more of it before all of you gave them all of your money. If you dislike Microsoft's product line, then download a Linux or BSD ISO, and install it. If you vote with your pocketbook, the company will listen. Hit companies that break the law with the law, and if you dislike the lack of competition, then purchase a competing product, or compete with them.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[jrexilius]

Actually, I have had the same problem as the poster and it was without exception after a recent MS update.

I think that one of the recent "security" patches may be keeping users safe from wanting to use another browser.

And it didn't matter FF1.0 or lower. It was something in the OS.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[jrexilius]

Actually, I would not be surprised at all if they decided to change a few API's without documenting it. If you are experienced enough to know that all software will have faults then you should also know that all business practices have faults as well.

I have heard frequently enough of vendors changing APIs and interfaces to keep out competitors.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought I had seen it all, but "Firefox crashes because... umm... Microsoft" absolutely takes the cake.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[shaitand]

Open source software is not bugfree by any means. But the development time is by orders of magnitude faster than that of closed source development. Combine that with lots of eyes and there are no "easy" bugs left like there often are in closed source offerings.

Most closed source supporters don't even dispute this. Instead they claim that it only works in a very popular project and most projects arent. There is a counter argument to that but I won't go into it. The point is that firefox is an extremely popular project so that argument doesn't refute that the open source development model should yield the ideal result.

Microsoft probably has the worst reputation for stability in the software industry and it is one that is not lacking in actual merit by any account. So this is not exactly random piece of open source software versus random equivelent closed source software.

This is one of the best open source applications with repute for one of the cleanest designs, against the absolute worst repute closed source firm and further a product of theirs with a known terrible design.

"Are you proposing that Microsoft has a "black ops" department, whose sole purpose is to cause Windows to behave incorrectly when 3rd party software is run?"

You try to make it sound like he is mel gibson in a Conspiracy Theory. This isn't exactly that, this is a company with a PROVEN track record of doing just that, RECENTLY and doing so IN THE BROWSER MARKET specifically. Read up on the MSN website and the way it renders in Opera.

Further you speak as if your a developer on windows, that means if you've done anything non-trivial you know that windows does NOT behave as documented in NUMEROUS cases. Finding a system call which is only used by one competitor with a significant user base and making an intentional design change to break them is easy enough. If too many people report the problem you can claim it's a bug introduced by the update instead of an intentional change. This would be blatantly obvious if the relevant source were revealed, but it's not.

It's hardly a conspiracy theory at all to believe Microsoft would engage in any illegal anti-competative practices they can which they believe will ultimately preserve more market share than they will cost.

Particually after US CERT advisories to change browsers firefox has become a serious threat to their browser monopoly. I'd venture Microsoft would be willing to risk a substantial number of customers to discredit the stability of the first fully stable release of the first significant threat to their monopoly in almost a decade.

"If you vote with your pocketbook, the company will listen."

Well, either listen, or engage in anti-competitive practices to ensure you no longer have that option. After all, allowing you the option to choose a competitors product simply because it is superior or you don't them is a bad business strategy! First step is as simple as a minor api change that doesn't affect many applications but that firefox uses. This way you can make some customers feel firefox is unstable. That way you can buy time until you can get DRM'd which use encryption that is only compatible with windows. After all, you've already got the DMCA in place to ensure competition can't beat that simply because they figure out how the encryption works.

Then you don't have to worry about competiton on inexpensive x86 systems anymore.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[mdfst13]

"I know you aren't serious about this. At least I hope now, otherwise I'm wasting my time responding to a troll."

I don't think that you are using the word troll correctly here (or if you are, I don't understand what you mean). A troll is someone who deliberately saying something offensive/stupid to get responses. By definition, trolls are never serious about what they say...if they were, they wouldn't be trolling, just speaking their mind.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[brunson]

There's only one computer in the house that runs windows (98, BTW) and strangely, when I got a message to install a "security patch" this morning and did so, FF started crashing.

Things that make you go "Hmmmmmm...."

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[berzerke]

..."Have you done any OS updates between the two versions?" It would not surprise me in the least if MSFT was busy making patches to interfere with the FireFox application...

It's not just any OS updates. Mozilla and Firefox lockup quite regularly on my Linux system starting very recently. I doubt this particular problem is an M$ conspiracy since I don't do M$ updates to my linux box.

That said, I think the problem lies with the flash plugin more than Firefox. I updated today and the same links that locked Mozilla (and Firefox) before don't do it anymore. Of course, you may have a different problem...

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[Anonymous Coward]

I also had a lot of problems when I upgraded. I found that I ended up having to do a complete uninstall/install (rather than an in place upgrade). When I did that, everything worked just fine.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[secretsquirel]

Been soley on linux for about 4 months now, but before that this used to happen all the time. Just weird little things. Can't prove it, can't give a good explanation for why I think they are any differant than your ordinary bugs, but there's just certain times when one of these little "quirks" pop up under suspiciously oportune circumstances (for example, the first patch after a competirors product gets some good exposure, ect..) , and also just have this sort of intangible "just doesn't fit'ness" that most users wouldn't notice that you just KNOW had to have fuckin been done on purpose by those SHADY LITTLE BASTARDS and you can't do a damn thing about it but not use windows. I'm am just waiting and hoping for the day when some voyueristic janitor who works the night shift at the wrong employees hotel room can finally prove it, also if someone realeased the full windows source that would work too.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[NitsujTPU]

Mmm, yeah, but then the program would just fail to compile, or fail to link.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[NitsujTPU]

Dude, we're not talking impossible here. I'm typing this from a Linux notebook, and I own only the Microsoft products that came with my equipment.

The point of my argument was that it's absolutely annoying to no end to hear people claim that just because a piece of software is open source, it can't be that software's fault. Certainly at some point in ones life, they have to accept the things that they like as "good" without needing to consider it "flawless."

I am an open source advocate, but I feel that making laughable claims in support of open source software is no way to promote it. How about, before we go pointing fingers, we take a quick look at the problem, and then prove that it's Microsoft's fault.

If open source software were naturally bug-free, nobody would be running software to track those bugs. If everyone in open source were a developer, there would be many more developers here.

If everyone on /. really believed that strongly in the movement, then they would do what I do and run it on their home equipment, and we wouldn't be worried about Windows bugs affecting open source products.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[TheRealSlimShady]

But the development time is by orders of magnitude faster than that of closed source development.

Remind me again how long it took for Firefox to release 1.0? Or how long it took for Netscape 6 to be released? And then tell me how open source development is orders of magnitude faster than closed source...

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[stoborrobots]

that depends... the following API change will compile and link successfully everywhere, but fail to run correctly and possibly therefore crash...

Before:

/* Return 0 for false, -1 for true */
int Is(void* a, void* b)
{
return (a == b);
}

After:

/* Return 0 for true, <>0 for false */
int Is(void* a, void* b)
{
return (a-b);
}

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[shaitand]

Do you really think I'd debate software quality with someone who judges an application by version NUMBER?

I can release software with a full .0 release for EVERY release as well, that doesn't make my development fast or slow. Firefox has been more stable than IE for at least 5 releases (if you only count full releases), 1.0 is just another number, it's notable only because it's a neat and even one.

By your logic, Netscape should increment by 10's, then they'd be at 60 now instead of 6 and would be WAY better than IE's measily 6!

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[ThJ]

Soo... what does it make you if you speak your mind but get modded as a troll?

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[tacocat]

To reply to your items:

1. I'm not in any way suggesting that FireFox is bug free. That would be, as you have already stated, unrealistic. I'm simply suggesting that bugs are sometimes not internal to a single application but the result of poor interaction between two applications or through the API
2. Yes and No. They don't have a Black Ops department specifically, but there is more than sufficient evidence that Microsoft has taken deliberate and misleading actions to discredit the competition. Case in point: Dr-DOS, WordPerfect. There are probably others as well, but I don't feel it necessary to conduct those searches. After all, they have been convicted on two continents of these behaviors already. It's not Black Ops per se, but they appear compete by oppression not innovation.

Your statement about voting with your pocket book is encouraging. But there is a tremendous perception that must be overcome first. Many of the problems that present a global shift from Microsoft to Linux (or any other) are non-technical. People are used to the interface. They are convinced they won't be able to do what they do today. They are unfamiliar with the concept of a command line interface. And most of them do not want to become sys admins.

I think a lot of Linux OSes are fast approaching a viable solution to the non-technical consumer. The risk is that they are also becoming just another Microsoft through poor customer support, veiled documentation.

I don't think FireFox is bug free. But considering that this is an Anonymous post and that it is discrediting an Open Source application in direct competition of one of MSFT's cornerstones products. I think it would be prudent to exercise some caution. Nothing more.

As for me, I have been Microsoft Free for over five years.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[tacocat]

The point of my argument was that it's absolutely annoying to no end to hear people claim that just because a piece of software is open source, it can't be that software's fault. Certainly at some point in ones life, they have to accept the things that they like as "good" without needing to consider it "flawless."

No where did I ever say FireFox was innocent. But I would recommend a more thorough avenue of Root Cause Analysis by making sure that there is nothing in the core OS which changed between the pre-release and the final release.

If nothing changed (no updates or downloads from MSFT) then that should be cited and recognized as a point of consideration.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[tacocat]

My flash plugin is OK, but I'm also running an old version of FireFox.

But this is the most informative thing I've seen here, other than the multiple comments about MSFT security patches have an effect.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[eissimuf]

This is just in response to your comment:

"Are you proposing that Microsoft has a "black ops" department, whose sole purpose is to cause Windows to behave incorrectly when 3rd party software is run?"

Now I'm not saying that this is occurring with Firefox, but I feel it's worth pointing out that Microsoft has done shady things on at least two major occasions:

1) Back when there was an alternative to MS-DOS (DR-DOS), Windows spat out bogus errors to make it looke like DR-DOS was incompatible with Windows.

2) Microsoft's infamous 10 incoming connections limit that was introduced in Windows NT 4.0 to kill competing web servers which ran on Professional. Microsoft wanted to force people to purchase Server just to run apache. It was later shown that Professional and Server contained the same executable code and that a collection of registry changes distinguished the products.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[Ash-Fox]

IE renders HTML v1.x to 3.x of the w3c HTML specification and reccomendations (not a standard) just fine.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[Ash-Fox]

I don't believe that's the case with freenet, AROS and if you look at most of the projects on sourceforge (Don't look only at the most popular, look at how many projects there are, and check how many of them are suitably developed).

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[TheSunborn]

An order of magnitude faster???

It took > 3 years just to make a browser in a usable state. That is not fast, that is extreamly slow.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[NitsujTPU]

Sure, but what about just looking at the debugger output from the bug report? While such errors may not be entirely transparent, the debugger output would provide good guidance in the right direction.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[NitsujTPU]

Ok, true.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[bobbyjack]

"Finding a system call which is only used by one competitor..."

I'm interested: how?

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[TheRealSlimShady]

What other metric do we have? Your claim that Firefox has been more stable than IE for 5 releases is pretty subjective. I find them both equally stable, although Firefox has been consistently more secure. However, if the Firefox authors don't deem their product worthy of a 1.0 release, then we must assume that their product isn't ready yet, hence hasn't been improving orders of magnitude faster than a closed source app.

I wasn't actually arguing in terms of version numbers, just in terms of production (final releases, not previews) releases...

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[shaitand]

If you read my post again, you'll see again, that this argument is meaningless in this case. We aren't talking about freenet, or AROS, we are talking about firefox. Firefox is extremely popular and has a huge developer base.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[shaitand]

"if the Firefox authors don't deem their product worthy of a 1.0 release, then we must assume that their product isn't ready yet"

In their eyes yes. Perhaps the authors have a bit higher standards of "ready" than their competitors? Internet Explorer has been in development for how long? From the very first release of IE to the release of sp2 is how long it took Microsoft to develop a program of the stability, security, and function set IE has today. Version numbers, or the number of releases or whether those releases were labeled preview or stable is meaningless.

The fact of the matter is that in 2 years the mozilla foundation has using an open source process developed and released a browser with a comparable feature set (arguably a superior one), comparable stability, and superior security. They've done all this without adding any features that break standards compliance, and yet HAVE added great features which IE is lacking, such as popup blocking, transparent png, and tabbed browsing. There is a multi-search bar. There are several annoying javascript functions which you can disable. There is an interface through which almost all critical default settings and behaviors are accesible to the user and can be directly manipulated. The browser they've released weighs in at under 5mb and is completely self contained, it can operate out of a folder. This browser runs on a plethora of platforms which IE is incapable of running on.

It's taken MS over 10yrs to develop a browser which is inferior to what the mozilla foundation developed in 2yrs. You can talk about "stable" releases and version numbers all day sir. But you'll never convince me that achieving a result in 2yrs isn't faster than achieving less or even the same results in 10.

Re:solving the problem, slashdot style

[slashusrslashbin]

If you vote with your pocketbook, the company will listen.

Good point, but I prefer to vote with my PowerBook...

A new forum for FUD?

[Sowelu]

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.

Re:A new forum for FUD?

[WIAKywbfatw]

I love this comment. I'm sure there are a bunch of people who read it and nodded along in agreement as they did so.

Now, let's just see what happens if we replace one word of your post:

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 MSIE 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.

I wonder how many of those people would nod along now?

Sorry, but it seems to me that if you're going to cut Firefox so much more slack than you would MSIE then you can't complain if someone was to suggest that you lack objectivity.

Re:A new forum for FUD?

[Sowelu]

Actually, I probably would have said the exact same thing if it was MSIE. It ticks me off that someone would post a bug report on the front page without even any documentation. The idiotic post of a Half-Life 2 bug earlier at least had documentation. Maybe it raised my standards too high?

I don't even -use- Firefox. I use IE. I guess an undocumented report of an IE bug on the front page would be a different matter, but only because the vast majority of people still use IE. (Even the majority of slashdotters!) The issue here is a post, with no documentation, that would scare people off of even trying another browser.

well ...

[hal0802]

Is it just me

It is just you.

Excactly the opposite..

[fforw]

I had lots of crashes with the preview release (mostly on opening media files and when sites opened a new window with javascript).

1.0 on the other hand runs stable as a rock for me. ( both installed it on my 2 linux computers)

Re:ITS JUST YOU

[eviljolly]

Must be a user error :)

WORKS FOR ME

[MrNonchalant]

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.

I wouldn't know...

[Anonymous Coward]

I use a mature, stable browser that hasn't crashed since I installed it.

Couldn't resist

no fatal problems

[bersl2]

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.)

Browing MapQuest...

[ZorinLynx]

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

Re:Browing MapQuest...

[benow]

If it's a display issue, the excellend AdBlock extension may help out.

Re:Browing MapQuest...

[jessONslash]

If you are on Linux, try upgrading the graphics libs, libtiff etc.

Works For Me

[azzy]

WFM

The author better have enough karma to waste...

[slimyrubber]

I am modding the story off topic!

1.0 was a mis-step for me

[Toby The Economist]

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

Re:1.0 was a mis-step for me

[vsync64]

You can disable the "popups blocked" message by left-clicking (yes, left) on the yellow bar to bring up a popup menu, then select "Don't show this message when popups are blocked". For plugins, set plugin.default_plugin_disabled to false in about:config or wherever. I usually chmod 0 libnullplugin.so too, for good measure.

I didn't use find in page much didn't even notice its absence but it was useful to search for something on Google, then change the search type and find the exact instance of my phrase on the result page.

Sorry to hear you had such a bad experience in the channel. It certainly seemed more geared toward highly optimistic advocacy than helping users. I was outright ignored when I asked about my build problems on FreeBSD, as well as about the same UI issues you mentioned.

I notice the same thing as in 1.0 PR...

[Jugalator]

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". :-/

Really guys

[cephus440]

This should be deleted. This is really sorry.

Ask Slashdot:Is Windows XP less stable than Win2K?

[oddman]

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?

It's very strange ...

[roubles]

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 news??

[Magickcat]

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.

Re:Is this news??

[Sebastopol]

>> 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.

Geez, somebody woke up on the god-side of the bed this morning...

Why don't you apply your philosophy to yourself: either stop being a hypocrite or shut your pie hole, Mr. Condescending.

Re:Is this news??

[Drakonian]

Check your settings.

Shit, I left on the "Crash Erratically" setting! That cleared it up, thanks a million.

Re:Is this news??

[Magickcat]

Geez, somebody woke up on the god-side of the bed this morning...

Why don't you apply your philosophy to yourself: either stop being a hypocrite or shut your pie hole, Mr. Condescending.

His article was really more appropriate as a comment like this one or yours - it wasn't suitable as a story in itself. It's a valid opinion, but put forward in the wrong context.

Having a differing opinion to someone else is a valid form of debate - it's not exclusively a sign of crankiness or deification. I find that it's best to judge an arguement on it's merit instead of commenting on the imagined emotional content anyhow.

I'm all for debate and discussion - that's what the Internet is all about. I just don't think that everyone's random thoughts on things deserve to be called news. My ideas are no exception either of course.

No problems here

[Bruha]

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.

Mac OS X version crashes frequently

[ideeuh]

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.

Re:Mac OS X version crashes frequently

[Anonymous Coward]

well, i had an opposite problem. 0.9 and 1.0PR were crashing all the time, 1.0 is rock solid. i use Mac OS X 10.3.6.

Dunno about 1.0, but...

[Mike Hicks]

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.

Way to go barfy!

[Maeric]

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 and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Mine works great

[panic911]

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.

Website?

[oddman]

The website you are looking for is mozillazine.org. Not slashdot!

modding stories!

[Sai Babu]

YES!
Let posters rate the story. /. archives would be enhanced by story ratings.
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.

Re:Glad I am not the only one!

[MsGeek]

You might want to try Mozilla instead of FireFox. I have noticed a weird bug with FF that sends CPU use up through the roof and behavior that reminds me of a memory leak. Yes, I have reported the bug. Moz doesn't do this, oddly enough.

BTW: this n00b bashing has got to stop. This is the kind of attitude that kept me away from Debian for the longest time. Rather than being defensive, be helpful. Otherwise Mozilla/FF's loss is closed source browsers' gain. (Yes, I'm talking about Opera and IE.)

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

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?

no problems..

[atheken]

On OS X - rock solid, but keybindings aren't perfect yet - can't complain though.

It was fine until

[Yynatago]

It was going fine until I clicked this link

updates may be the culprit

[unconfused1]

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.

Why not a Poll?

[wvitXpert]

I'm with everyone else, this is not a front page story. Seems more like a poll to me.

Has Firefox 1.0 crashed for you? If so explain.

No it hasn't.

Yes it has.

Cowboyneal uses IE :P

No Problems except Adobe

[Bitwick]

I haven't had any problems except with Adode. Takes forever to close when it opens something up in a tab.

Re:No Problems except Adobe

[Edward Kmett]

Same here. Everything works fine until I open up a pdf file, then the app seems to hang for long stretches of time and won't let me close it for 30 seconds or so. It is bad enough that I downloaded the 'view this page in IE' plugin and use that when I browse a page that contains pdf links.

I never had a problem with Firefox when I was running it on my Mac, but now that I'm using it on my Windows machine and this problem is basically crippling my use of it.

Konqueror

[Brandybuck]

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.

I have been having problems w/FF1.0 as well

[utfan2004]

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.

Firefox rendering Slashdot

[p0]

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?

Re:Firefox rendering Slashdot

[wwahammy]

Slashdot does not produce valid html or xhtml. That is part of the problem. Secondly the rendering problem has actually been fixed in the development versions of Mozilla but they haven't rolled it into the released versions because they don't consider it tested enough. Search bugzilla for this bug and they'll tell you where to get the development version but you might have bigger problems with that than slashdot rendering incorrectly.

Re:Firefox rendering Slashdot

[simetra]

My solution? I use Opera.

A buck says I get modded (again) as a troll because I'm not a FireFox fanboy. Oh well.

Re:Firefox rendering Slashdot

[ICA]

See this post in this very article for a temporary solution. Works great.

http://tinyurl.com/5e5pl

Re:Firefox rendering Slashdot

[BenjyD]

I can't seem to find the source code on that site. Is there an opera-dev site somewhere, or do I need to use anonymous CVS to get it?

Firefox had always been unstable; however, ...

[mkeroppi]

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.

Rant

[karniv0re]

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.

It's the App's fault not mine

[TrueSpeed]

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?

Crashes every time i close it

[PktLoss]

I'm running firefox 1.0, it crashes every single time I close it, PR1 exhibited the same behavior.

Firefox 1.0 is not perfect

[Offwhite98]

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.

0.9.3 to 1.0 to nothing back to 1.0

[Timbo55]

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.

Answer...

[Whatchamacallit]

"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?

Re:Answer...

[Antique Geekmeister]

Ahem. The fix to that problem is to log in as a local administrator, *then* run Acrobat Reader.

Re:Answer...

[TheLink]

While you are at it, you may wish to go through the Adobe Acrobat Reader preferences and turn off the "Allow File Open Links"/"Allow file Open Actions and Launching File Attachments" or whatever they call it in your version and the other "ripe for future security problem" features (e.g. cross document links).

Only turn them on if you need them.

Re:Answer...

[Whatchamacallit]

Ahem... No it's not! I am an Administrator. Why should have to login as the local admin account? That's just stupid. Besides, the local admin accounts been renamed and the password set to a random large hex sequenced password. No way to login as local admin on the company builds.

No, but I have noticed it uses CPU time randomly

[Prien715]

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?

This may be extension related

[casperjeff]

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?

Frankly, I think the opposite

[stonda]

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.)

firefox not suitable for slashdot

[daveb]

Well for some reason i can't reliably display slashdot pages in mozilla. Really - I'm not trying to troll or anything.

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

Re:firefox not suitable for slashdot

[wwahammy]

Slashdot does not produce valid html or xhtml. That is part of the problem. Secondly the rendering problem has actually been fixed in the development versions of Mozilla but they haven't rolled it into the released versions because they don't consider it tested enough.

Re:firefox not suitable for slashdot

[snig64]

http://www.hardgrok.org/blog/item/slashfix-firefox -extension.html Try that, then reload firefox and slashdot.

Re:firefox not suitable for slashdot

[wolverine1999]

Just press CTRL-+ like I do. (control and +).
It enlarges the font and the problem goes away.

New Profile

[michaelkpate]

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.

Wtf?

[empaler]

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...

I had opposite results

[gad_zuki!]

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.

Re:I had opposite results

[Peter La Casse]

>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?

Call me old fashioned, but DNS/network/firewall issues should never cause a web browser to crash and enter into an unusable state.

Re:I had opposite results

[Barney]

Ditto for the pop-up crash in 1.0PR, which made amusements like Project Rockstar unusable. I am _so_ glad it's gone in 1.0.

Of course, for me that was in Linux -- Firefox 1.0PR in Windows had a few differences from the Linux version (and didn't, as far as I could tell, have the popup crash).

That said, I haven't had any problems with Firefox 1.0 on either the Windows or Linux machines. But I might not qualify as a high-intensity user.

Re:I had opposite results

[rhyno46]

When was this? Do you have DNS/network/firewall issues which could be causing this?

These are legitimate questions for a bug report. And they will be helpful for debugging. However, a bug caused by a DNS/network/firewall problem is still a bug. No matter what happens, the program should not lockup or crash.

I'm not a programmer, but I used to be in software QC/QA and I can tell you that nothing was more frustrating than a bug that was returned "as designed" due to a 3rd party or external product. Whatever happens, software should gracefully fail.

Re:I had opposite results

[Dryth]

When was this? Do you have DNS/network/firewall issues which could be causing this?

I actually had the same problem myself, the day 1.0 was released. I cannot see it being a DNS or network issue in my case; I've never had such issues before, and none of my other applications or systems on the network experienced any hiccups.

The machine itself was a WinXP box with Zonealarm installed. Zonealarm itself didn't blink during the entire event. The crash was the type that has Windows screaming to have me provide feedback... something I'd hoped to never see, running a barebones Firefox installation.

My Firefox installation was broken after the crash. I downloaded the latest installer with Internet Explorer (shudder) and installed it overtop. Thankfully all my bookmarks and settings were preserved.

Re:I had opposite results

[MmmDee]

Ditto for the pop-up crash in 1.0PR

Excuse me, but you obviously misunderstand the nature of FF pop-up blocking. What more effective way to perform its function than to crash the application/computer--no more pop-up. I guess IE in XP is just behind the times, it simply keeps the pop ups from displaying... bad MS, bad MS.

Re:I had opposite results

[HeghmoH]

Not to mention that leaving the browser in an inconsistent state because it died in the middle of an update is evil. Fail gracefully!

From a clueless newbie

[taxevader]

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.

No problems

[smeschini]

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!

i had a similar problem

[jdkane]

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

Re:No, but I have noticed it uses CPU time randoml

[Johnno74]

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.

I'm noticing it on Mac OS X.

[SeaDour]

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.

Re:I'm noticing it on Mac OS X.

[sellison]

I use an iMac G5 at home and a Dell Dimension at work running XP. I have not noticed any problems with crashes on either platform; 1.0 PR1 or the current full 1.0.

Re:I'm noticing it on Mac OS X.

[hawkeye]

Just because the OS is stable, doesn't mean the application is :-)

If you're upgrading from a much older (say Preview Release) version of Firefox, it could be that some remnants (in your "profile" directory) are causing problems with the new version. I've had more luck "upgrading" on Windows than Linux/UNIX... OS X is based on FreeBSD, so it's likely to have the same structure as the other Unices...

Cheers,

- Hawkeye

Re:I'm noticing it on Mac OS X.

[SeaDour]

Actually, Firefox is a fresh install, but I *was* using Camino for a few months before I decided to switch to Firefox. Are their profile information shared?

My experiance

[L0k11]

I just did a clean install, xp, service pack 2 and the latest firefox.

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

Re:My experiance

[squall14716]

0.8 was the first release called Firefox.

Re:My experiance

[AstroDrabb]

The best Firefox so far for me has been 0.9

So go to the Mozilla ftp server and download 0.9.3, (this is one of the Mozilla mirrors). When the next version/update to Firefox comes out, try that one to see if your problems are fixed. I personally have had no issues with Firefox 1.0 on 4 different computers I have (2 WinXP and 2 Linux-Fedora Core 3).

i also had more luck with 1.0PR

[l0ki]

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.

Column: "Ask slashdot"

[Spy der Mann]

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.

Opposite experience

[AstroDrabb]

I have the complete opposite experience. FF never crashes on me. I use in on a WinXP SP2 work computer, a Fedora Core 3 work computer, a WinXP home computer and a Fedora Core 3 home computer. Four separate systems, and Firefox runs just great on them.

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:

Win 2k/XP
C:\Documents and Settings\USER_NAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\RANDOM.default\
Linux
/home/USER_NAME/.mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/RANDOM.d efault/

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.

Re:Opposite experience

[man_ls]

I should *have* to delete my entire application profile, in order to upgrade the version?

I like Firefox...but the fact that the API for extensions breaks every version upgrade (hopefully that's done with, until 2.0???) coupled with the fact that it simply can't handle existing on the same machine as an older copy of itself really annoys me.

Those are the sort of things that prove to me that Open Source software just doesn't quite get it...they're almost there, but they miss the mark in the end.

Re:Opposite experience

[BenjyD]

Anything prior to 1.0 final was a beta release: of course upgrading from a beta is going to be more complex as major code changes are still being made.

Re:Opposite experience

[AstroDrabb]

I don't think you are looking at this issue correctly. Firefox just _became_ a general release 1.0 product. Prior to that it was BETA. Even though it ran great and was popular prior to 1.0, doesn't mean the software should be expected to behave like 1.0. You see, software developers often come up with a road map to a major release such as Firefox 1.0. With each step between that major release adding features and fixing issues. There are going to be things that break. For example, with the extensions. The extension API needed to change as issues came up prior to 1.0. The same issue applies to a users profile. Now at version 1.0, you should be able to expect your extensions to work and your user profile to be stable between minor version changes.

This isn't something specific to Open Source software. All software goes through similar issues until a major release, even beta software from MS. The reason you don't often notice it with proprietary software is because a normal user is not allowed access to that beta software and only sees the final product. In contrast, with Open Source software you can run directly from development CVS if you want (which I don't recommend for non-developers). If you don't want to experience these issues with Open Source then don't use the cutting-edge Open Source release, stick with Open Source major release just as you do with your proprietary software.

Re:No, but I have noticed it uses CPU time randoml

[pixelfreak]

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?

it seems so

[thanew]

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

Yep!

[serenarae]

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.

Re:Yep!

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Just upgrade your plugins to the newest version.

It should fix your problems.

It still doesnt work right

[bobsacks]

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?

No problems

[p51d007]

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....

Try Fox News

[Anonymous Coward]

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. :)

Re:Try Fox News

[6800]

NoNo, would someone mod this up because I like foxnews too :-)

big picture anybody?

[ElGnomo]

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)

No issues

[thomthom]

I've had no issues with any of them.

maybe this explains your frame loss...

[pikine]

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.

Me too!

[vitasthefetus]

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"

Bad extension?

[dtfinch]

With previous test versions, I've experienced crashes caused by an extension I had installed which was no longer compatible after the upgrade.

It's just you

[strider44]

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.

Re:It's just you

[chawly]

I also have no problems to report - maybe I'm lucky. The 1.0 release seems faster than previous releases and less bother to install. I have the "installer" version on Mandrake Linux 10.1.

1.0 is very stable for me on two installs

[gwhalin]

I have had zero crashes with 1.0. I think it seems much more stable than any release prior.

I am amazed that this was a front page post on /. Ridiculous. One person has a flaky install and the editors make it seem like it is a widespread problem!?!?!?!

Re:1.0 is very stable for me on two installs

[Chess_the_cat]

What are you on about? He's asking if anyone else has had similar problems. No where in the article does it claim it is a widespread problem.

For what it's worth: it crashes at least once a day for me. Or when I click on Downloads from the Tools menu. Oh, and Slashdot doesn't render properly at all: the text bleeds off to the right hand side. I'm sticking with it though because I love tabbed browsing.

Good old Debian

[onlyjoking]

Good old Debian, hey? :-)

Jesus, quit bitching about this story, people

[sbma44]

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.

A new forum for FUD!

[pikine]

"it looks like a great way to turn a lot of people off MSIE without just cause"

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 ... 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.

IT does crash more

[EightBits]

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.

Firefox 1.0

[ReeprFlame]

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...

Re:Firefox 1.0

[KarmaMB84]

I don't think Mozilla.org has any say in whether people update themes and extensions to work with their updates quickly or at all.

Re:Firefox 1.0

[ReeprFlame]

Even so, don't you think it should be the same relative platform that the themes run off of? They STILL should work... I mean it went from FF1.0PR to FF1.0 not Firefox1 to FireFox 3.2 or something...

IMO It's just U

[drseuss9311]

I have been a 'heavy' user...
I have found firefox to be robust.
xpi handling was a bit rough back at .8 and .9 but it's much better now
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

It's..

[njan]

..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.

Bandwagon has a flat tire?

[Crescens]

Seriously, with all the different systems out there people are expecting a perfect piece of software? Sure, you may have dropped IE for it because of security flaws or whatever reason but that's no reason to expect the entire world from Firefox.

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.

Re:Bandwagon has a flat tire?

[TheLink]

Crashes are a general indicator of code quality, and security.

More crashes = lower code quality = lower security.

I'd rather UPGRADE from IE, not downgrade. And it better be a significant upgrade to be worth the costs of upgrading/switching.

So far Firefox does NOT appear to be significantly more secure than IE esp if both browsers are configured by expert hands.

Didn't you see the recent bugtraq post about randomly generated malformed HTML being more likely to crash Firefox than IE? THAT is a bad sign.

Working in IT security, I expect most software to have bad/terrible security bugs, and most do. Most programmers suck (including me).

But I don't recommend or intend to use most software that I test or encounter. Definitely NOT!

If you're on windows, you can't practically get rid of IE anyway. So if Firefox really isn't much better - and is only better because hackers aren't targetting it yet, why bother? Just keep IE patched and configured (set the My Computer zone to something like high security for normal users and you'd be fine for most things - the admin account can have it as default, since you don't browse untrusted sites as admin).

Re:A real geek....

[joe83]

Meh. A real geek uses Links in a console. GUIS are for N00BZ and wimps

suspecious anonymous story...

[Raspberry]

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?

maybe on windows...

[Chuck Bucket]

I've had no crashes since upgrading, but I'm only playing on Linux and OS X.

DV$BCB

no problems here

[AbsurdProverb]

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.

Nope

[Roguelazer]

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.

Re:Nope

[reverius]

there's a 1.0 firefox build for BeOS... check it out at http://www.livejournal.com/community/bezilla/59105 .html

it works pretty well in my limited testing, but there's one caveat... it may not work with a previous Firefox profile, and it may not be able to generate its own, so download an empty profile from here: http://www.bebits.com/bob/18058/firefox10-emptypro filebeos-v1.zip and unzip to /boot/home/config/settings

have fun :)

Suggestion anyway

[Corwyn_123]

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.

Firefox 0.9.3 for me

[Skim123]

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.

A few suggestions

[Captain DaFt]

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.

sux on linux

[xfrosch]

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.

Re:sux on linux

[wizkid]

It's working fine for me, accept the menu close doesn't work.

Typical for 1.0 release. there's always a few bugs that slip through. It sounds like firefox got a few extra bugs on the 1.0 release. Note that they'll all be fixed on the 1.01 release.

Spam, spam, spam... Wonderful spam...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Spam, spam, spam... Wonderful spam...

Firefox 1.0 = STABLE.

[Chanc_Gorkon]

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(.

In all seriousness

[diamondsw]

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've had the same problem

[rossjp]

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.

Solid on 98SE, Buggy on OS X 10.1.5

[psalm33]

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

Back up bookmarks, then delete preferences

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

How to send Talkback reports for hangs

[jesser]

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.

Bug Splash

[darth_silliarse]

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

My experience...

[Junta]

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.

Yes, It's just you.

[OhBrian]

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?

both..

[destiney]

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.

Re:Mozilla-firefox crashes

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Talkback Reports Show Similar Problems

[zachlipton]

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...

Re:Talkback Reports Show Similar Problems

[man_ls]

Mozilla Quality Feedback Agent doesn't work for me.

It won't send reports, keeps popping up when I don't want it to; I have to delete my crash event and make it go away.

100% cpu usage bug

[__aailob1448]

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.

Its more stable...

[MattyCobb]

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!

i heard about this other great browser...

[binarybum]

uhh, try mozilla 1.7.3 - works fine.

I'd say most slashdot reades use Firefox!!!

[Mike Zilva]

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.

v1.0 vs VPR

[Hawkeye477]

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 ...

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 ... surfing porn becomes very annoying with this ... lol

had to do what?

[mat catastrophe]

"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?

extensions can cause problems

[EMR]

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..

Look at the timing of this "anonymous" coward...

[Bloody Peasant]

Isn't the full page ad in the NYT that the Firefox people are organising about to come out real soon?[*] If so, one has to wonder why the person with the "complaint" prefers to stay anonymous. Don't they want to be helped? It would appear not.

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.

Extensions and Themes Blank...

[crypTeX]

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

[Easy2RememberNick]

Yes, it crashes more often.

Crashes Abound

[drkich]

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.

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&cid =10834742 and you know what happened, someone answered my question.

Nope

[juglugs]

Erm, No...It works just fine for me

Crashed once when I visted MSN's newsbot...

BUt otherwise, it's great...

Seems ok to me

[cb8100]

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).

Yes.

[Lord Bitman]

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

Im still on phoenix 0.5

[bxbaser]

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.

Amazing, I posted this story last week.

[crashnbur]

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...

Forums / MSIE

[Craig Ringer]

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."

Close, but not exactly.

[BubbaFett]

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.

Re:Close, but not exactly.

[The One KEA]

Have you tried a complete uninstallation and reinstallation, including the reconstruction of your profile? I know it sounds stupid but in almost every single case, an old profile with cruft is the fastest way to destabilize Firefox.

Moz probs

[lonb]

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.

Agreed.

[mickq]

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.

Camino and Firefox (OT kinda)

[jshriverWVU]

I've been using Camino since it changed names, and a while back I ran out of HD space and when I shut my OS X machine down, I lost everything in Camino. I eventually tried deleting/uninstalling it from my system, but there seems to be a .plist or hidden config file somewhere that is used for configuring bookmarks, etc.

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.

1.0 working better for me...except...

[penteren]

...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.

Disable Java

[magi]

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.

Re:Disable Java

[sublimespot]

I installed java 5.0 with firefox 1.0 and its great. No problems and no issues setting it up or using it.

Who'd've thought?

[khrtt]

So that's why my reseating of I/O cards wasn't helpign much! Firefox was at fault!

mod parent UP - PLEASE

[daveb]

THAT worked a treat. thank you thank you thank you .. must change sig now

Thanks for the responses! :)

[sammyp42]

Hi all,

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.

Re:Thanks for the responses! :)

[DuncMan]

Was I wrong to get ordinary users to start using a pre-release version of a great browser???

Yes, since they're ordinary users and not technical types who understand what you're getting them into...

You mention problems with upgrading Firefox but version 1.0 is the first version that the general public should be using. There have been no upgrades from that yet.

Re:Thanks for the responses! :)

[sammyp42]

Yeah, but a number of these users has lots of spyware/adware on their machines... most of which came in through IE. Figured they needed a good fix then and there. Oh, well...

Re:Please Help Me With My Modem

[berniecase]

Heh, awesome. I was going to comment about how it's stupid stories like these that make me not want to visit Slashdot. It's about as good as the XP SP2 blew up my compooter, M$ sucks donkey balls!

Firefox crashes? When?

[ffsnjb]

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.

Re:Look at the timing of this "anonymous" coward..

[thebatlab]

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.

The Opera web browser.

[rice_burners_suck]

Firefox looks promising, and Mozilla (the monstrosity that it is) looked promising before that, but honestly I have been using Opera since version 3 (now it's version 7.54) and I can tell you that crashes are not a problem. It's multiplatform, has a native FreeBSD build, and once you turn off all the stupid toolbars and fix a few of the default settings (which takes about five minutes to do after installation), it's a really good browser. I have to say that it's been one of the most satisfying pieces of software I've used.

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.

Firefox 1.0 being funky

[Veemon]

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.

No problems with it. Sorry.

[mjh49746]

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.

Rhetorical question

[mrchaotica]

Great post! But is it a pun or a grammatical error?

Re:Rhetorical question

[Cryptnotic]

It could be both, I think.

Re:Rhetorical question

[mrchaotica]

Dangit, I said "rhetorical!" Sheesh.

: )

Why isn't this a poll?

[SpaghettiPattern]

Yeah, why isn't this a poll?

Sheesh

[ScrewMaster]

All you people get real. Firefox 1.0 on Windows XP SP2 is perfectly sta

yep

[mabu]

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.

Re:yep

[The One KEA]

They probably did work it out - in 1.0. 1.0PR could have had bugs in the update mechanism.

You should take the traditional route and download a full install. Be sure to clear out your profile beforehand.

Extensions

[Headcase88]

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).

Re:Extensions

[ninthwave]

The idea behind firefox is to have minimal features intalled and to let the user add the features the need / want. This means security is easier to maintain and the code base is compact and optimised.

I think the idea works well, I believe during the release cycle to one there have been some fundamental changes to the xul system and the extension system. I am hoping that 1.0 and on the extension system will be stable enough to not have to wait for extension releases.

To the original posters comments about Firefox 1.0. I have it on Red Hat Enterprise Workstation, Slackware, Windows 2000, Windows XP Sp1 and Windows XP Sp2 and they are all working fine. I use the Swithc Proxy Tool, The Advanced Higlighter Button and Disabe Targets for Downloads extensions installed. I have not seen any major problems with 1.0 except for sites that have caused problems in all versions of Firefox. I have had maybe three crashes in total. I have filed my bug reports on them as they happened.

/. tech support

[tribh]

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".

Re:A real geek....

[mwilli]

How well does /. show up in lynx?

I don't expect an answer, I'm just trying to seem smart, that's right *seem* smart....

no problems - bad memory perhaps

[wolverine1999]

I have no problems with 1.0.
Perhaps your PC has some bad memory. Try a memory test such as Memtest.

Firefox disappoints?

[wikinerd]

Not everyone is happy with Firefox... See this and this.

Re:Firefox disappoints?

[BenjyD]

I don't understand that inquirer letter:

The fact is that Firefox only cuts the mustard as a modern browser because of its extensions (...
Without these missing extensions (for example one called autohide which facilitates kiosk browsing), Firefox is, in my opinion, a long way behind some of the IE-based browser

Is he saying Firefox doesn't have these "missing" extensions? Or that he doesn't know how to install them? Or is he saying "if I refuse to install any of the functionality of Firefox, it doesn't have much functionality"?

Re:Firefox disappoints?

[BenjyD]

OK, I should learn to read. Still, the extensions are released by different teams and will be updated soon, I'm sure.

Ignore me.

Genuine feature loss from RC1

[BeCre8iv]

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.

Re:news outlet?

[reallocate]

Slashdot may bill itself as a "news" site, but it neither collects or writes news. I doubt anyone bothered to verify tyhe bona fides of that Firefox submission.

Yes, I'd love to see /. begin to practice responsibile journalism. But they aren't do that now.

best version was the 0.9.3

[xot]

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.

Several features I miss from 0.9.3

[Fantastic Lad]

1. Cookie management capabilities have been limited. I used to be able to verify every cookie a site wanted to set. I enjoyed that. Why remove this feature? It's just a single radio button, after all!

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

Backup your profile...

[ImaLamer]

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.

RE: Is Firefox 1.0 Less Stable than Firefox PR1.0?

[Elry14]

The only issue I've been having with Firefox 1.0 is that every compressed file it downloads is corrupt. This wasn't a problem for me with 1.0PR. I haven't had it crash at all and it's still my main browser (home & work). I fall back to Mozilla when I must and IFF Mozilla doesn't work I try IE.

TIP: Howto makes xorg-x11-6.8.0 crashes using Fire

[wangxiaohu]

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=1685 63

never felt that!

[avallark]

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

Mod Parent Up

[negyvenot]

The Slashfix extension does not work as advertised. Still the same rendering error. Ctrl-mousewheel works though.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[Fnkmaster]

Yes it does. I think you are mistaken. Take a minute to understand how it works and you'll understand that it necessarily works, within the limitations discussed on my web site. There's nothing to "not work" - it's about 10 lines of Javascript that force a page reflow. The limitations I've already describe hold true - it is triggered by a page load event on slashdot.org, meaning the page has to be finished loading (so if /. hangs while loading which happens every once in a blue moon for me, but may happen more often if your network configuration is screwy), it won't work. And if you load /. pages in background tabs (i.e. default middle click setting), the page load event apparently never gets triggered either - but I consider that a Firefox issue where the API isn't properly working, not an issue with my fix.

Learn to read the instructions before you start whining, people.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[negyvenot]

Actually it solves the overlap problem, but does not solve the other annoyance, where you see no text, but horizontal green lines in the window

Re:Mod Parent Up

[negyvenot]

My apologies. I should have RTFA.

Stability, GLibc and the road back to Mozilla

[theufo]

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.

Extensions???

[damniel]

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.

Re:15$ for a driver

[GoRK]

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!

Re: Is Firefox 1.0 Less Stable than Firefox PR1.0?

[Bumbledum]

I had the same experience on upgrading firefox. I haven't messed with it yet and just use netscape, secure IE from winferno or Smart Explorer.

Tuck

Other causes /w flash or plugins

[phorm]

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.

My keyboard, myself.

[Kommet]

Thanks to the number pad, my keyboard has 3 nipples, just like its owner...

firefox under Slack

[pbhj]

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?