It's Official - FireFox is goin bu-bye! I cant stand it anymore.

[Mr.Guvernment]

Well after a good almost 2 years of loving and promoting FireFox, i am no longer using it, nor promoting it - i have read many threads of other feeling the same way - i know some people have no issues @ all - i was one, but no any more.

ever since 1.04 the program seems to have done nothing but gotten worse and worse and there is no sign of improvement, it is like since they are getting bigger, they are going the IE route of releasing buggy, not completle software or something......

i have done and tried everything, but the issue are presitent! and dont go away.

lets get started

I have used FireFox on approximatly 6 diff systems - ranging from Xp / XP SP1 / Xp Sp2 / Window Server 2003 / Sererv 2003 SP1 - laptops, desktops - some with IDE / SATA / SCSI drives - 512 of ram - 1g - P4 2ghz upto a p4 3.0 @ 3.6 as well as dual opteron and duel xeon' rigs.

I experience these problems on all systems - many have been freshly formated and FireFox the only thing on them for weeks on end until i do something with them.

issues:


Opening FireFox takes approx. 30-45 seconds to open and causes EXCESSIVE harddrive activity reading.
opening 1 FireFox and opening 4-6 tabs jacks up memory usage to 50-60mb of system ram - having 15+ tabs open i am looking @ around 180MB of ram usage
Opening a 2nd instance of FireFox while one is open (2 seperate windows) the 2nd window is missing my bookmarks - i have to close both to get them to come back - this only happens sometimes.
When right clicking on a link to open in new tab - firefox pauses and causes the entire system to stop responding to anything until it is done (10-20seconds) - this happens more often then not.
typing in a web site address to have FireFox tell me the site is not availible - do a search for the site in google, clikc the link - works fine
I highlight a single word, yet when i move my mouse it continues to highlight items even thought ia m not holding the mouse down


All of these problem have come to the point i am so annoyed and frustrated as the way i surf web sites all of the above cause me much annoyance i just hard shut off my PC and walk away, i think i have anger issue as last night i was ready to toss my Dell 2004FPW off my desk cause all of the above kept happening over and over and over!


So, how many of you also experience the same issue? i have used the bug reporting system for all of the above - but seems no resolutions yet :(

Is there a plug-in for tabbed browsing on IE or do i need to wait for IE7 oficially ?

[Dc5e]

I haven't experienced any of those problems. But I have experienced some after doing a format.

Are you running and extensions? The problems I ran into were extensions conflicting with eachother mostly. Spending like 30 minutes or so, I was able to pin point which extension would cause the problem and just fix it.

[Albigger]

firefox 1.0.6 with only extension tabbrowser preferences v 1.2.7.1 with both a win xp sp1 and sp2 machine and have not had any of these problems.

Aside from the occasional compatibility issue with a website, the only 'problem' I've had with firefox is if I leave firefox open for a long time without use (i.e. overnight for 12+ hours or something) then come back to it the next day the tabs are all slow to respond at first. almost like firefox completely unloaded itself from RAM and all went into the pagefile or something...

But nothing like you are describing.

as an afterthought I haven't really paid attention to mem usage but right now I only have 5 tabs open and mem usage is at 51mb, so that does seem kind of excessive, but I remember this being a 'bug' from even the early pre-1.0 days of firefox. (Although it is quite sorry to see they have not yet fixed this issue after this many releases).

[Albigger]

Well I just opened up the same 5 pages in IE 6 and the mem usage looked like:
2mb
10mb
10mb
15mb
13mb

However, firefox was all over, jumping down to 3-4mb for a few minutes, then up to 38mb. This may get on my nerves now also.


As for tabbed browsing I know netscape has it, and acoording to
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+offers+tabbed+browsing--in+IE+6/2100-1032_3-5738037.html
IE6 can have it with a toolbar (haven't tried it myself though).

[Dc5e]

I believe netscape is based on firefox now.

[The_Jizzler]

i thought firefox is based on mozilla, whish is based on netscape? maybe i got it all backwards!

[Dc5e]

well all I remember was when I installed netscape on the computer where I work, in the about menu it says based on Firefox.

[Albigger]

I'm not sure if you tried searching but it may be worthwhile to search or repost your problems at the mozilla forums

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=38

EDIT: and a standard diagnostics, might be of some help:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic

[Mr.Guvernment]

Shall post them on those forums, never thought of that. :D thanks Allbigger, heading overt there.

i dont use any extensions - just an install and i am good to go :) , for the most part.

[Mr.Guvernment]

okay get this

i had 3 seperate firefox windows open, one has 3 tabs open - OC / and the 2 links above in tabs, the other had a single google window, the other had 1 frozen CPU window and 2 zipzoomfly windows - 92mb of usage

i close the other 2 windows so i got 1 window with 3 tabs open - still @ 92mb usage :(

[ckj]

I know there was a memory problem, but I thought they would have fixed it by now. The memory problem was it would use so much memory but it tended to to free up the space even though the memory wasn't being used.

[lilxvietxboi]

Well, if I were to stop using firefox, I wouldn't go back to IE. Never... maybe to Opera? What other options are there?

[Albigger]

There seems to be quite a bit of info over at those forums, here's a thread about startup times. Mostly peopel complaining that they have/don't have this problem, but maybe some useful advice on the second page, about half-way down (clean profile, don't just update over the old version)?

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=297192&highlight=takes+long+load

Although on freshly formatted systems this is obviously not the problem, unless you are importing reg values or keep old profile information...



EDIT: more advice, courtesy greenknight from This Thread (http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=289649&highlight=takes+long+load)

Try opening the browser in Firefox Safe Mode (Start -> All Programs -> Mozilla Firefox -> Mozilla Firefox Safe Mode). If the problem doesn't occur in Safe Mode, it's almost certainly a theme or extension problem.

Try the default theme, and try uninstalling extensions one at a time, testing after each one, to locate the problem.

If that doesn't help, try creating a new profile (don't delete the old one yet): http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/profile#new

If the problem is gone when running a clean profile, then do this: http://the-edmeister.home.comcast.net/tips-html/tips-restoring_your_browsing_data.html

[dicecca112]

# Opening FireFox takes approx. 30-45 seconds to open and causes EXCESSIVE harddrive activity reading.
# opening 1 FireFox and opening 4-6 tabs jacks up memory usage to 50-60mb of system ram - having 15+ tabs open i am looking @ around 180MB of ram usage
# Opening a 2nd instance of FireFox while one is open (2 seperate windows) the 2nd window is missing my bookmarks - i have to close both to get them to come back - this only happens sometimes.
# When right clicking on a link to open in new tab - firefox pauses and causes the entire system to stop responding to anything until it is done (10-20seconds) - this happens more often then not.

I get all those as well Gov. Its a pain I admit. Seems liek it needs to be optimized or something, never happens for the first couple days of a new windows install and Firefox install

[seadave77]

The main problem I have is the memory usage, and I just read the other day it was because Firefox wasn't purging the cache it uses for flash objects. There was a fix for it but I'd have to go look for it. Basically the fix forced it to purge that cache and it would work.

[mdameron]

Have you looked into opera? I've switched from IE-->Firefox--->Opera and couldn't be happier... EXCELLENT support community too! (google the site, I don't want to get owned by a mod)

[dicecca112]

can it use tabs like Firefox?

[lilxvietxboi]

Yes it has tabbed browsing. It displays an advertisment if you didn't pay for it though. But there was a deal a couple days ago where they gave you it for free. Not sure if it's dead yet.

[dicecca112]

what about an add-on like ad-block this or downthemall for firefox, does it have good addons or no?

[hibner]

I found a fix for the memory leak here (http://www.help2go.com/article240.html)

Current versions of Firefox tend to use more and more of your system's RAM as time goes on. Geeks call this problem a "memory leak." This particular memory leak is not the fault of Firefox - the Macromedia Flash plug-in is causing this problem!

To fix it, just follow these steps:

* In your location bar, type about:config and press Enter
* Right-click on the screen to bring up a menu, click on New then choose Integer
* A pop-up box will ask you for the "preference name". Type in browser.cache.memory.capacity and click OK
* Another pop-up box will appear - type in the number 60000
* Close Firefox and restart the program. No more memory leak!It sets the amount of max ram usage (60MB). I tried it and with minimal testing , mem usage has not gone over 40megs. That was with 2 windows open and 3 tabs in each window.



EDIT: scratch that idea. After a few more opening windows . 65meg mem usage. And after closing all but 1 window with 1 tab of google's hompage, mem usage only dropped to 58 meg.
sorry for the bad info. :-/

[telexen]

I've been using firefox, firebird, pheonix, and mozilla for a very, VERY long time (very early builds of mozilla included...LONG before firefox was spawned)...and I've never experienced anything like any of those problems you have.

and BTW...netscape has almost always been based on "mozilla" in one way or another...

[JTanczos]

# Opening FireFox takes approx. 30-45 seconds to open and causes EXCESSIVE harddrive activity reading.
# opening 1 FireFox and opening 4-6 tabs jacks up memory usage to 50-60mb of system ram - having 15+ tabs open i am looking @ around 180MB of ram usage
# When right clicking on a link to open in new tab - firefox pauses and causes the entire system to stop responding to anything until it is done (10-20seconds) - this happens more often then not.

I set up netscape 8 on my mothers computer and have those issues with it. She has Win98SE with 256meg of ram. Mozilla Netscape 7 had loads of memory issues as well tho. At least on Win98 where it would actually require a reboot to fix the problems it caused. Maybe they wernt serious enough to be noticed by the masses that use XP. :shrug: I don't think it is firefox itself but mozilla that is to blame.

Btw. I am unaware of Netscape 3 and 4 but 6 and 7 are based off mozilla. Firefox is based off mozilla. Then Netscape loved firefox so Netscape 8 is based off Firefox which is based off Mozilla. heh So one mem leak bug messes up multiple browsers.

JT

[Jimbob7]

Been using Opera for around 4 - 5 months now, a lot better than firefox. You can custermize it a hell of a lot, its faster than Firefox, keeps tabs when you close it, so all your tabs you had open will reload with Opera. Plus it has many many features, things you just don't get with Firefox or IE.

[mdameron]

what about an add-on like ad-block this or downthemall for firefox, does it have good addons or no?

Dicecca, if you're a student, Opera is only $20 (free, of course if you like the ads)... well worth it to me, firefox was getting too clunky when you add the useful extensions.

Note, according to secunia, Opera is the only one without a major security breach. Also has an excellent popup blocker, and all the toolbars are fully customizable, including where they appear in the browser. Opera is closed source, and there are a TON less available plugins. This is good and bad, bad because some are really useful, but good because plugins are what drags firefox to a halt. Plugins really aren't "click here to install" either, some file editing is involved.

Anywho, at the risk of sounding like a salesman, i'll stop here. You should definitly give the latest version a shot... I enjoy it WAY more than firefox and IE combined. :D

[Mr.Guvernment]

Well

if you havent yet try out FireFox 1.5 beta 1 - it "might" be the knight in shining armour - i have it on my laptop now and so far none of the above issue have appeared - yet, but only been using it for about 2 hours now.

[Mr.Guvernment]

Ignore - first bug

opened a page

opened a second tab off a link off the first - clicked a link on the first -
went to 2nd tab
went back to 1st - right click / open link in new tab - doesnt work :(

[dicecca112]

Guv have you tried a moox optimized build? http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=2&url=http%3A//www.moox.ws/tech/mozilla/firefox.htm&ei=MtMhQ6fPJa3OaJnjrbwD

[threeme2189]

no probs here...
btw i have 15 OCF and one more different tab open and ff is using 90Mb of memory. il restart it and see if the memory leak fix helps..
hmmm its at 61 mb and il check if it goes up *goes to find threads to open*
well i opened like 8 more forum sections and i curently have 24 tabs open.
il see what happens with IE. IE used bout 14-20 megs per page after i opened like 10 pages and my pc started to crawl, whereas firefox uses MUCH less. (74 mb split between about 24 pages, do the math).

so for now im sticking with firefox.

[TheGreySpectre]

free opera for the win?

[Mr.Guvernment]

SHall try that moox optimized build :)

threeme2189 - when you close those tabs does the ram usage go down at all ? for me it never does.

Got the free opera installed now, still getting a feel for it though, great that they learned the banners are no goood!

[Mr.Guvernment]

k, well i was holding onto FireFox for some hope but tonight it keeps crashing after opening 3 or more tabs so i am now only using Opera (FF has been uninstalled), after custiomizing it - i am in love, really.

what i LOVE is the status bar that when loading pages it shows you host fast it is downloading the page, how much etc etc is great to know.

Also not to mention scorlling long pages is really really fast is so smoothhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[shellshock]

Is opera free nowdays? I know u used to have to buy it

[Captain Newbie]

I'd recommend Safari, but I doubt that you'd want to spend $1500 on a good Mac.

Haven't had the troubles you mentioned about Firefox, but I've had a fair share of other glitches with it. I tolerate it. (been using since .1...)

[mdameron]

Is opera free nowdays? I know u used to have to buy it

Yes it just recently became free, I'm impressed you've missed the many threads started about it.

[mils128]

After reading this thread i decided to give opera a tryout. i opened it up set up my bookmarks came here and checked a thread then hit the back button,OMG it wasn't even a blink of an eye before i was back. it was amazing. as soon as this miracle from god happened. i dumped Firefox. Opera's nice little features are what i am in love with. first, downloading exe's i can open them .. couldn't do that it firefox always had to save it to disk. next Opera feels faster. i haven'th ad to install a java or anything plug-in at all. i highly recommend opera to anyone.

[gt24]

I finally tried out Opera... and I'm typing this post in Opera! :) Switching from Firefox takes a bit of work though and I was intially not wanting to use Opera because it was so different. So, below, is instructions on how to Firefox your Opera browser!

CON :: NO THROBBER!!
YET :: A status bar will appear at the bottom of your screen that will tell you your page loading status. It is a good idea to keep this where it is. It will appear when you are loading a page and vanish when you are not. For tabbed pages, the icon for the page will appear like a ripped page when loading, a full page when almost done, and the site's icon when it is finished. Keep this in mind... and things will get easier as you keep using Opera.

Many of the Opera commands are similar to Firefox. Middle click dumps a link into a new tab, middle click closes a tab, CTRL-N gives you a new tab, and alike. However, do note that Z and X are back and forward (assuming you aren't typing in a typing area). To learn about other Opera-ish things, view the following flash movie. Opera has some strange features that you don't have in Firefox, so as boring as it sounds, you kinda need to see the following movie to understand the additional, and pretty sweet, features of Opera.

http://nontroppo.org/-/media/UI_Intro.htm

A show stopper for me was the fact that the tabs were NOT below the address bar. For some reason, this was psychological warfare... :) However, there is a tutorial on how to fix that. There is no rearranging toolbars (other than Left, Top, Right, Bottom, Off), so you have to juggle your address bar icons into a toolbar that would be above your tab bar. The following tutorial also shows that toolbar customization works very similar to Firefox's approach.

http://nontroppo.org/-/media/mainbar.htm

This workaround that is shown in the flash movie prevents you from having a two toolbar icon system. There simply isn't enough toolbars! However, there is two approaches on how to fix that problem. First off, there is a "Start Bar" that will appear only when you are typing a URL. It will appear below the address bar. You can put your icons here. Yet, if you are like me, you will be annoyed and turn that toolbar off... So, the next option is the view bar...

The view bar is a toolbar that will appear below all of the toolbars at the top. However, the toolbar is turned on/off by clicking a button (the view button, to the right of the Google Search). So, I put the less used taskbar icons in there and click the View button when I really need them.

Opera likes Sidebars, a feature you kinda see in Firefox. When you click on history in Firefox, it is a sidebar. When you click on it in Opera, it is a tab that displays like a webpage!! You have two options here....

You can display a sidebar toggle that you can click on to show the sidebar. This, however, also doesn't work for me (I'm picky!). So, the second option is to drop the "Panels" button on your taskbar. Click the Panels button to show the sidebar (herein refered to as the Panel). The Panel can be customized just like the toolbars.

Now that you have the Panel working, you can use the tab displaying feature to your advantage. If you display the history Panel item, you have a small history view (yes, I know, it is different than Firefox's view). Click on the double arrows at the top of this small view and you get this view cloned into a new tab. This is pretty darn nifty! Overall, I don't mind the new history view and I think I can get used to it.

One last thing... go skin hunting... :) The skins for Opera are pretty impressive compared to Firefox's skins... personal preference of course.

CON :: No Extensions!!
YET :: You don't really need extensions! Well... I miss WeatherFox... but, I can live without it. The key to learning if Opera is right for you is by using it. Can you live without your extensions? Is the new features worth it? At the very least, it is worth a try...

I shall continue to learn about Opera... and hopefully learn some new tricks along the way...

[Mr.Guvernment]

^^ very nice review - to be honest ir earely ever get into the extra's - plug-ins etc - i just like my tabs and thas about it :D

[Zulu-1]

firefox is fine for me.. and im using 0.9 :p ... im just too lazy to upgrade...

[Mr.Guvernment]

^^ dont if it works..lol

and i still cant et over how well opera scrolls So fast and smooth!

[Skeen]

I had alot of issues with Firefox also. Every version I tried, it was fine at first and then seemed to aquire issues as time went on. It always eventually "broke down" and I had to do a reinstall.

Now on Opera and I love it.

[Mr.Guvernment]

^^ that was it with me - i loved FF fresh install - i did think at some point it might be all my bookmarks - well over 400, then i cleared thema ll out and still issues

i hope FF get's it's act in gear or it is going to be Opera MS has to worry about now FF.

[Albigger]

Just a heads up 1.0.7 firefox edition is out now. I know some of us have switched over to Opera already, but in case you still need to use firefox occasionally it is out there.

I installed it, haven't noticed much difference but I wasn't really having any problems before so...

[OkydOky]

Just switched to Opera.

And loving it!

[Enablingwolf]

^^ that was it with me - i loved FF fresh install - i did think at some point it might be all my bookmarks - well over 400, then i cleared thema ll out and still issues

i hope FF get's it's act in gear or it is going to be Opera MS has to worry about now FF.


Being a long time user also and trying to keep up on any fixes that are out for it. One thing that I never have gotten over. The browser just closing. Once it does that any virus scanner I use will want to pass it. I think that is the delay you might be experiencing. It took me awhile to figure out why FF sometimes took a bit to reopen sometimes. Even after not crashing. It does this with my prior scanner and my current package. It is hard to pin point an issue if there is no way to replicate it.

If I can get one domain to work correctly I will be more than likely jumping ship. There is a few things I will have to get used to, but FF is getting out of hand. I enjoy some of the features FF employs, but it is becoming a burden to fix it, tho I have fixed so many issues I am quite fast in doing so. A person can only take so much before they wander in a new direction.

[JohnDoemakt]

What you need to do when starting to use Opera is to create your own contextmenus, toolbars, buttons, mousegestures, searches, hotkeys etc. The people over at the Opera forums are a great resource and there are plenty of pages that help a lot, like this (http://nontroppo.org/wiki/CustomButtons) for example.

Here (http://home.no/brillegeit/Operaconfig.jpg) is a picture of my context menues, although they are changed a bit now. (Programs/Favorites have real items now, I have also added "Open this page in IE" / "- FF" submenu) The first five is when I right click on a normal page, the sixth is RC on a link and the last one is LC on text.
There is also a similar one when RC on pictures.

Adding custom searches can also save you a lot of time and armmovement. By going to the adressbar (F8) and typing "g overclocking", it will do a google search for overclocking. By pressing SHIFT+CTRL when I press ENTER, the page will open in a new background tab, so you don't even need to CTRL-N a new tab to do a fast search. I have added [i=imdb] [w=wikipedia] [d=dictionary] [ig=google image] [gg=google "I'm feeling lucky"] [p=piratebay] [t=torrentspy] and a few more that I have forgotten. :D Im also about to make a "piratesearch" that launches 4-5 torrentsearches at once.

You can have up to three functions on a single button (plus you can give it a dropdown menu) and have it do basicly anything you want from starting a list of sites in the background to have Counterstrike connect to your favorite server, or the server whos IP you have marked.

You could also read this (http://tntluoma.com/opera/lover/7/01/). Its rather old, but I think it covers the Opera basics.
This is my Opera (http://home.no/brillegeit/operanotoolbars.JPG), free for buttons since I only use hotkeys and contextmenus.(7.21 skin on 7.54 Opera)

[schismspeak]

Just to let you guys know. The reason the scrolling is so "smooth" is because Opera defaults at scrolling 7 lines or so, instead of the usual windows default of 3(you can change this in your mouse settings.), which is what FF goes by. I'm using it and I like it better than FF, I wasn't really having memory issues with FF, just random little things that get annoying over time.

[JohnDoemakt]

Are you sure he wasn't talking about when you click mouse3 (wheel button) and move the pointer up or down, because that scroll is smooth.

[Mr.Guvernment]

just regualr scroll with my mouse wheel :D

[Captain Newbie]

'Fox on linux works well (1.0.4)- with the exception of the scrolling, which is (as is typical) jagged. - have yet to try opera as of today.

[gorilly]

Opening FireFox takes approx. 30-45 seconds to open and causes EXCESSIVE harddrive activity reading.
opening 1 FireFox and opening 4-6 tabs jacks up memory usage to 50-60mb of system ram - having 15+ tabs open i am looking @ around 180MB of ram usage
Opening a 2nd instance of FireFox while one is open (2 seperate windows) the 2nd window is missing my bookmarks - i have to close both to get them to come back - this only happens sometimes.
When right clicking on a link to open in new tab - firefox pauses and causes the entire system to stop responding to anything until it is done (10-20seconds) - this happens more often then not.
typing in a web site address to have FireFox tell me the site is not availible - do a search for the site in google, clikc the link - works fine
I highlight a single word, yet when i move my mouse it continues to highlight items even thought ia m not holding the mouse down


-yes it does take longer to open, but not that long, only around 10 seconds.
-i dont use tabs and can open about 15 windows with no problems
-right click to 'open in new window' causes me NO problems
-never had a problem with firefox not finding sites

i have been using firefox for a year and a half- 40 users at the company i work for are now using it and not one moan from anyone.

ithink maybe you should check your set up first as i use it every day, with differnt proxys, for different types of sites and even for going through ports and get no probs.

maybe im just lucky i dunno... i just find that a fresh install every now and again (then importing all your stuff back) helps it stay on top.

ill try opera!

[Mr.Guvernment]

^^^ as i have stated i have used FF on various computers and experience these issue on all of them, from clean formats to older systems. i have been using FF almost 2 years now and it wasnt till recently these issues started for me which to me says something about FF is changing. (with in the last, mm i think since 1.04)

I do know some people they dont recognize a "possible" problem, they just, example, restart FF when there sysytem is slow and go on about their buisness.

i thought it was my system - but when it happened on numerous systems (in our office as well) i knew it was just me going crazy.

[gorilly]

seriously though my firefox is sweet as, like i said i must just be lucky. also the new deer park is quite good.

ive just downloaded opera and am using it to type this message. all i can say is that since i last used opera it has changed A LOT!

it used to suck badly but this is fantastic, its like a even lighter verson of firefox, still need to get to grips with the features!