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Newest Firefox Browser Bashes Crashes (cnet.com)
Nobody likes it when a web browser bombs instead of opening up a website. Mozilla is addressing that in the newly released v53 of its Firefox browser, which it claims crashes 10 percent fewer times. CNET adds: The improvement comes through the first big debut of a part of Project Quantum, an effort launched in 2016 to beef up and speed up Firefox. To improve stability, Firefox 53 on Windows machines isolates software called a compositor that's in charge of painting elements of a website onto your screen. That isolation into a separate computing process cuts down on trouble spots that can occur when Firefox employs computers' graphics chips, Mozilla said.
So, now they've put the renderer in a separate process with reduced privileges? Like, for example, every other web browser (including Edge and Safari) did for security last 5 or so years ago? Uh, yay?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I wanted the firefox that crashes bashes you insensitive clods!!
Good people go to bed earlier.
The only reason I haven't dumped it completely yet is because there are some useful add-ons that aren't available for Chrome...
Don't worry, they work hard on phasing out XUL add-ons with version 57 at the end of 2017, so that they will have just as few add-on choices as chrome.
Maybe in 10 or 15 years Firefox will be production ready. So instead of crashing several times daily, it might only crash several times weekly.
Are you sure you're using the same Firefox as me? It crashes less than once a year, and that's on Debian unstable, with 33 extensions and hardly ever below 100 tabs. Firefox does have its flaws, such as dropping sound support, massive memory use and using lots of CPU even when idle, but crashiness isn't one of them.
If you experience crashes "several times daily", you'd better check your hardware. Or perhaps you're running some bogus DRM scheme.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
NT.
Nice try, but every time I've upgraded your browser it broke or removed features I use, and added useless junk on top.
I used to upgrade to the latest software as soon as it came out, but it feels like the likes of Microsoft and Mozilla are intentionally trying to train me to treat every software update with utmost suspicion and as a measure of last resort.
I can't see how the Firefox 57 release could possibly go down in a good way.
These changes have the potential to be the most disruptive ones to date, probably even worse than the Australis UI changes that drove away so many of Firefox's users earlier.
We aren't just talking about highly annoying UI changes here. We're talking about the risk for broken functionality, and in ways that aren't easily fixed. This is stuff that users can't just ignore or learn to work around.
If Firefox 57 does turn out to be the disaster that it could very easily become, I'm not certain that Firefox could survive it.
Firefox is already down to only about 5% to 6% of the browser market. It has almost no (0.03%) mobile presence.
Firefox really can't afford to lose any more users.
What's really bad about this situation is that it will likely be addon authors who are the most affected. These are the users that Firefox really, really can't afford to lose.
I mean, if I have to write my addons in a way that's compatible with Chrome, why would I even bother using Firefox at that point? Firefox is slower and more bloated that Chrome, in my experience. Firefox can also send a lot of info to Mozilla and others, so it's not like it's really any better when it comes to privacy.
If I'm going to get a Chrome-like UI experience from Firefox, and if I'm going to get a Chrome-like addon development experience from Firefox, and I'm going to get a Chrome-like privacy experience from Firefox, but Firefox's will feel slower than Chrome, then I might as well just use Chrome (or Chromium) directly.
I really don't like making this prediction, but I think that by this time next year we could see Firefox down around 1% or 2% of the browser market. At that point I think we'd have to consider it a lost cause. It's already close enough to being a lost cause as it is, while it's still around 5%.
Once Firefox gets below 5%, it just won't matter to web developers. They won't bother testing their sites in a browser that has so few users. The Firefox web experience will just end up getting worse and worse, until most of its users end up using Chrome.
We've seen this happen with Netscape Navigator, and it's looking like it's happening to Firefox now, too.
Nobody cares about your experiences with Firefox when all you have to say is the same thing people generally say about basically every software upgrade ever: "I don't like change".
Chrome crashes on me less than once a month (I typically have to reboot for security patches before Chrome chrashes). Firefox must be crashing a *lot* if a 10% reduction is significant.
I haven't had a crash in Firefox in years.
Well, THAT makes sense. Linux doesn't have GPU drivers. Software render all the way!
I can see dropping support for XP/Vista and 32 bit Macs (those vendors don't support those operating systems. Why would you support an operating system that no longer gets security updates at all?) Are they really dropping support for 32-bit Linux though? That does bug me a bit, but there are also many Linux distros that are dropping 32-bit support as well. Keep in mind, the Linux kernel no longer supports 386 chips either (there is a fork for that).
Even open source projects can't maintain things forever. Dropping ASLA support seemed superfluous though. Why remove something that's already there and works?
Because Vista = Server 2008. Some people still need to keep them servers alive for industrial purposes. With browser support fading, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep these machines alive.
Firefox does not crash for me under linux, hundred tabs open, many windows.
What usually crashes is the plugin container.
Some dammed java or flash locks up.
Fortunately I can kill the browser or browser window from a terminal.
Never crashes the system.
Chrome has tons of choices for extensions... that haven't been updated in 4+ years.
Why do you need to run a modern browser on a dedicated server?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Change for the sake of change is dumb. Software people can't understand the fact that something might have a design end. Has the shape of a hammer changed in the past hundred years? No. Are these changes beneficial to anyone? Has an interface study been done on the results? I switched to Chrome after Firefox picked the "australis" look and became Chrome Junior.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
What other browser do you recommend? I haven't yet found one that is worse. Firefox may not be perfect, but it is still much better than the alternatives.
Witness BitZtream getting pwned!
I use Firefox on several desktops and laptops at work (Windows and Linux) and I can't remember the last time I had a crash. I usually only have 2 or 3 extensions loaded and maybe up to 20 or so tabs. Memory usage seems to be a bit lower since v52 came out, but that might have to do with dropping support for most plugins.
Uh, bug fixes, McFly.
TLS 1.whatever support to connect to whatever site/device that runs some shitty java applet?
Basically, the other side of the "keep an old portable version of a browser to connect to SSLvBroken shit like your HP switch" coin.
So instead of crashing several times daily, it might only crash several times weekly. Not that you'd want to run it that long without restarting the app since it'll be using all of your memory by the end of the day.
Is there a different Firefox than the one I'm using? The machine I do the majority of my browsing on is a Win 7 box with 16GB of RAM. I haven't seen a crash in at least a year, probably more. I have had 15 separate windows open with 10 to 30 tabs open in each for the last 2 or 3 months. I just rebooted today for updates. I will shutdown and restore my Firefox session when the memory usage creeps up and bogs it down. But the most I've seen it get up to is a little over 8GB of RAM usage. Which is ridiculous, but not as bad as you seem to be exaggerating it to be.
My one big sticking point to switching browsers is the Tree-Style-Tabs add-on. I can't find a single other browser that does this well. Opera is the only other that comes close, but I can't stand that it has no way to hide the tabs across the top of the browser. I could live with the vertical tabs not being nested if I cold just find a way to hide the horizontal ones.
We at Moz://a are pleased to announce that Firefox 57 will be the Chromium source code with all the icons changed to the Firefox logo. Now we don't have to actually work on our browser we can make fun of extension developers and see all the hard work they done wasted while we roll in the Yahoo sponsorship money.
On 6200 Windows clients and 1900 Mac's. Firefox is above and beyond the most crash prone browser - it even tops IE 11 (Fwiw Chrome > IE 11 > Firefox are the most used browsers in my organization according to software metering).
I use Firefox as my main browser, and I understand the problems some people have with it. Thing is, I tend to see Firefox's flaws as emerging from using it with lots of addons as intended. Adblock + noscript + various EFF tools are bound to bork it from time to time. I'm kind of impressed it's as stable as it is. Not to mention I'm the kind of crazy person who has 300 tabs open right now.
I used to use Opera as my secondary, back before they dropped Presto and abandoned their very functional email/rss components. Now it's Chrome with adblock.
It might be ironic that my favorite mobile browser was Safari with adblock. Never had a single problem with it. Plus Apple for all their faults has been willing to tell bloatware peddlers to go hang themselves.
Marketing genius! Is it tough on crashes? Does it stamp the crashes out? Does it get the crashes before they get you? I could keep doing this all day. If you'd like I can hire my marketing skills out on a very affordable rate.
We'll make great pets
In "about:config" change "fayout.frame_rate" from -1 to 60 (or whatever your monitor runs at). For some stupid reason, Firefox renders as fast as your CPU can handle 100% of the time. Even at 60 FPS, it uses ~1% CPU when idle so I'm guessing it was going like 6000FPS when unrestrained.
Mind the frickin' laser...
100 years might be a bit of an understatement; claw hammers may have been first invented by the Romans shortly before the common era (I cannot find any hard sources, unfortunately), and can be seen in artwork no less than 500 years old. One can be fairly plainly seen at the left-middle of this engraving: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Well maybe thats due to Linux.
My FF52 has been crashing about 4 times a day in the last few weeks.
It's still my daily driver, because it is the only browser that properly support side tabs via the treetab plugin.
46137
Why would you support an operating system that no longer gets security updates at all?
If you had enough users, why wouldn't you? While the OS isn't getting patched, the system, sitting behind a firewall (even a residential router) isn't going to magically get compromised. However web browsers (and associated plugins like Java, Flash, and Adobe Acrobat) are a huge attack surface, and an updated web browser will do a lot more for that than an updated OS.
Is this due to the extensions you're using, perhaps? I'm fairly certain that Firefox hasn't been shut down or restarted since the last time it was updated. The only think that ever bothers me is its complete unresponsiveness when it's loading a large PDF. I'm pretty sure that my trouble started when I started using the decentraleyes extension, so I choose to live with and wait out Firefox's pauses.
I'm actually questioning what Firefox you are using. Sure the GP sounds like something else is the cause. Multiple times daily is not what I would associated with Firefox. But once a week, easily. Hell one update completely fubared the thing which is when the straw broke my back and I switched away. If I was going to start with a new profile there was no reason not to try an alternative.
I've had the same results using firefox ESR, it never crashes.
massive memory use
Chrom* uses much more memory than firefox thanks to 1 process x tab model and yet a single tab crash can still bring the entire browser down.
I use FF, FF Portable and Chrome.
They all work fine and so close to equally fast you may as well say they are equally fast.
In "about:config" change "layout.frame_rate" from -1 to 60 (or whatever your monitor runs at). [...]
Thanks for that. I have my video card fans setup on a temperature monitor and it made no sense they would increase with FF.
da funk? My CPU load in FF just dropped to below 104%
system load just dropped by 0.8
Why the fuck is this not the default?
dafuq, mozilla...
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
Yes, Tell that to us. Just a couple weeks ago I had to search in more than 50 computer shops and stores and fail to find a computer capable of running DOS and latest version of general-electric PLC programming software that they still claim support for. because no one in here has anything older than 3 intel tics.
Yes, Please do blame us 3rd world countries for holding you back.
Am from Iran, 3rd world and all the import/export drama.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
I set FF to just download PDFs, that way I can open them in something that can render PDFs properly.
Don't get me wrong, pdf.js (what FF uses to render in browser) is incredibly useful. Unfortunately it can be slow, and some issues with embedded fonts still seem to exist.
Personally I use Evince on Linux to read PDFs.
I've found that some (most?) Linux distro's recompile FF to their release packages, instead of simply using the Mozilla provided binaries.
This creates a much more stable browser.
I use Funtoo Linux, and always go the compile route when updating FF. The one time I decided waiting for it to compile would be too long (was in a time crunch) it was a terrible experience. When I later "upgraded" to the self-compiled version it stablized.
I guess a lot of it depends on what your system has for native libs, and compatible versions. If you're using a huge binary blob from Mozilla you're missing out on utilizing shared libraries, and possibly using out-dated, bundled in versions of those libraries.
While Firefox is not exactly super crash-prone, I noticed over the last 2-3 years that it has a nasty habit of gobbling up memory. When I run my machine non-stop over the weekend, it is totally normal for it to eventually reach about 1.5 GB of memory usage (no matter how many tabs I have open at that point) and then strange things happen - like graphics not loading correctly, GUI elements not showing up anymore, web pages freezing etc. So I can totally understand it if people who use Firefox more than me, e.g. at work, have problems at least once a day. It is simply not stable under heavy usage.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
The CPUs being dropped are over 15-years old, you aren't going to be able to render and scroll in most web pages with that hardware. The OSes haven't been supported in years by their manufacturers so using them, and expecting to limit the rest of the world from using modern features isn't realistic.
Very funny.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
What's wrong with Firefox? My experience with Firefox (on a mac) is quite fine. I'm using it since the demise of Camino, and it's absolutely not worse than Safari or Chrome/Chromium, which I use at work. It is slower, that much is true, but the last crash was a long time ago, while Chrome crashed on me only last week.
What are you missing? I moved from ff to Chrome and didn't find any lack of extensions.
As for updates, if it ain't broke...
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The browser should render by default at vsync with the -1 setting. Perhaps the detection fails on some platforms?
Indeed. I can say a lot of bad things about Firefox, but it never crashes on me. Ever.
I did switch to Pale Moon about 2 years ago, because it's just as stable but way faster. I use Firefox mostly for "broken" web sites that are designed only to work with popular, name-brand browsers.
I think the stability issue is limited to windows?
My colleagues also complain a lot about firefox stability, but i never have problems with it on Linux (ok, not never, but very very few) while they use windows.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
then update the OS!
local users without security updates, you are looking for trouble, no matter what browser you use...
better yet, install linux, run your app in wine, install freeNX, xpra, LTSP or even tightvnc (test to see what fits better your clients and app) and use it to run your app. Use native linux apps and only use wine for really support old apps
Higuita
When Firefox added extra security. They added a huge bug. I now find that I often get a black screen, after which no pages will load properly. I've largely been unable to use Firefox for the past few weeks.
Check my post history, I've been posting about that browser for a decade. I was THE diehard, I loathed Chrome.
I fought tooth and nail to keep Firefox, I hate many things Chrome does, which FF does better. It looks better, the plugins (I use) are much better, it's a great browser with a little work.
EXCEPT IT IS IMMENSELY SLOW.
and I don't mean "oh golly, that's not snappy" I mean it's SLOW, frequently delays, lag, lockups, freezes, script errors (slow, then error), more slow, lag, it's just atrocious, it's awful. They should stop coding for a YEAR and just optomise it.
I really feel horrible even posting this from Chrome, the thought breaks my heart, but guess what? IT'S NOT INCREDIBLY OMG HOLY ....... god damn slow,.....
Sorry Mozilla, it's over - I had my say on the reddit firefox site and that's it, I'm out - no more. I can not endure that performance any longer - it's been 2 years and I tried every god damn thing.
So long. Sorry.
Spotted the guy who has no idea how huge software projects like a web browser works.
In "about:config" change "fayout.frame_rate" from -1 to 60 (or whatever your monitor runs at). For some stupid reason, Firefox renders as fast as your CPU can handle 100% of the time.
fayout.frame_rate = -1 means "refresh at device rate", not "infinite refresh rate" (that's what = 0 does). So setting it to 60 should have no effect on a typical system. See developer comment here.
Mostly? Just missing side tabs. Sidewise is "ok", Tabs Outliner makes me want to claw my eyes out, and the few others are just trash.
about:performance is your best friend.
Firefox crashes once a day here since version 52 and even with 53. With 51 it was stable. Possibly Quantum is more the problem than the solution?
... crashing several times daily..
Maybe you forgot to remove the Adobe Flash plugin.