DOM Inspector Disaster In Moz- Advice?

[Cluttermagnet]

I just had a disaster where I invested a good 20-30 minutes writing a detailed response PM to a forum member who has kindly helped me with some minor forum glitches. Without knowing exactly how it happened, or which exact key sequence was unintentionally entered, stupid Moz 1.4.1 suddenly popped up a frickin' DOM Inspector window and then proceeded to lock down everything. I had to ctrl + alt + del and lost many open instances and tabs in Moz I had up at the time. Total shutdown of Moz was the only way, apparently, to recover from this? What is this obnoxious utility anyway? Something to do with Talkback and bug reporting? Is there any way to disable the frickin' thing? I see nothing such in Preferences.I always choose, when given the choice, a non-talkback version of browsers. Did the same thing in Netscape before that. I have always loathed, almost beyond words, these intrusive utilities (I was going to use a much more choice word here, but am barely restraining myself at the moment). They were just as detestable under Netscape. I'm grateful for all the work of the developers, but I'm not willing to invest all the time necessary to get current so as to submit only relevant new bug posts, etc. They seem a bit touchy anyway, and it's just an area I don't care to get into. Too much bug posting minutae, too much bug posting etiquette. It's an arcane world I don't care to navigate.Frankly, despite how good the current 1.4.1 stable build is, if I cannot disable DOM Inspector so it can never take over again like that, I'm going to give up on Moz and trash can it. Any advice? Is there some sort of registry hack I can safely do? That thing must go! It's not so bad that it popped up, if I could just shoot it, but it absolutely froze Moz. The bad keystrokes were my fault, but this behavior is inexcuseable. I'm steamed! Absolute garbage! Lost about an hour of my life altogether, and some pretty good thoughts- forever- to this piece of c**p! The ones in Netscape were just as bad. I will go back to using Firebird (0.6 stable, if I remember right). That one is great, but prone to sudden and precipitous memory leaks in Win98SE on a P4 2.4GHz platform (256M DDR). If they ever get around to plugging the memory leak, it will be my browser of choice for a good long time, but it has to support 98SE. Some of us are never going to get XP, you know. I hate XP. My next OS is going to be a Linux distro.The limited Help file included with Moz never even mentions this 'feature'.Hey, my pinky finger sometimes hits the frickin' Windoze key, but all you get is everything screetching to a stop until you click empty desktop to make the overhelpful popup list go away. The Windoze key doesn't freeze any programs like this turkey does. Garbage! Absolute garbage!So what is your advice? I like to try to keep more browser options on my HD's, but if this thing can't be tamed, I'd best take Moz out in back of the woodshed and shoot it and put it out of its misery. Bah Humbug!@

[nilson]

DOM inspector = Document Object Model inspector. It helps you to determine how an html page is linked with javascript and CSS, I think. All I know is it has nothing to do with error reporting.

[Neil P]

I just had a disaster where I invested a good 20-30 minutes writing a detailed response PM to a forum member who has kindly helped me with some minor forum glitches. Without knowing exactly how it happened, or which exact key sequence was unintentionally entered, stupid Moz 1.4.1 suddenly popped up a frickin' DOM Inspector window and then proceeded to lock down everything. I had to ctrl + alt + del and lost many open instances and tabs in Moz I had up at the time.  Total shutdown of Moz was the only way, apparently, to recover from this? What is this obnoxious utility anyway? Something to do with Talkback and bug reporting? Is there any way to disable the frickin' thing? I see nothing such in Preferences.I always choose, when given the choice, a non-talkback version of browsers. Did the same thing in Netscape before that. I have always loathed, almost beyond words, these intrusive utilities (I was going to use a much more choice word here, but am barely restraining myself at the moment). They were just as detestable under Netscape. I'm grateful for all the work of the developers, but I'm not willing to invest all the time necessary to get current so as to submit only relevant new bug posts, etc. They seem a bit touchy anyway, and it's just an area I don't care to get into. Too much bug posting minutae, too much bug posting etiquette. It's an arcane world I don't care to navigate.Frankly, despite how good the current 1.4.1 stable build is, if I cannot disable DOM Inspector so it can never take over again like that, I'm going to give up on Moz and trash can it. Any advice? Is there some sort of registry hack I can safely do? That thing must go! It's not so bad that it popped up, if I could just shoot it, but it absolutely froze Moz. The bad keystrokes were my fault, but this behavior is inexcuseable. I'm steamed! Absolute garbage! Lost about an hour of my life altogether, and some pretty good thoughts- forever- to this piece of c**p! The ones in Netscape were just as bad. I will go back to using Firebird (0.6 stable, if I remember right). That one is great, but prone to sudden and precipitous memory leaks in Win98SE on a P4 2.4GHz platform (256M DDR).  If they ever get around to plugging the memory leak, it will be my browser of choice for a good long time, but it has to support 98SE. Some of us are never going to get XP, you know. I hate XP. My next OS is going to be a Linux distro.The limited Help file included with Moz never even mentions this 'feature'.Hey, my pinky finger sometimes hits the frickin' Windoze key, but all you get is everything screetching to a stop until you click empty desktop to make the overhelpful popup list go away. The Windoze key doesn't freeze any programs like this turkey does. Garbage! Absolute garbage!So what is your advice? I like to try to keep more browser options on my HD's, but if this thing can't be tamed, I'd best take Moz out in back of the woodshed and shoot it and put it out of its misery. Bah Humbug!@

First off I am sorry to hear that you lost some information :(But I don't think Talkback is too too bad. It just sends information on the crash back to the Mozilla folks so they can investigate it (AFAIK, no personal information is sent...but I don't have a Talkback build and haven't for awhile...does it ask for a name or such?)And third, if you do can Mozilla...and go back to Firebird...I'd say go with the newly released 0.7 :)PS Did you try the new Mozilla 1.5? It might not get rid of your DOM problem, but you might like it...I don't personally like the suite ever since I jumped to FB, but thats just me

[Cluttermagnet]

Some good points and suggestions, steeler fan. Thanks! In fact, I think it was your post that originally motivated me to try a 1.4 version of Moz in the first place.. I have been using Moz off and on for several years now and had used several up through about 1.3.x. I have generally liked Moz all along. I also tried numerous others such as Phoenix, Firebird, K-Meleon, and Beonex, all generally Netscape related in some way.Hey, I absolutely love Firebird! If I can get one that runs smooth for me on 98SE it will hog all my surfing time for sure. Looks like the latest I have run is 0.6.1 stable. Except it ain't actually all that stable for me, it is a big resource leaker with 98SE. So I will try 0.7 as you suggest.Meanwhile, that DOM thing is so obnoxious that it is a total deal-killer for me. As good as Moz 1.4.1 is, if I can't do away with DOM Inspector (at least disabling it), then the old non-Phoenix builds of Moz are history for me. Once burned, that's a shame. Twice burned, shame on me! I won't even give it a second chance. It dies or Moz goes away. Which would be a shame. I hope someone reading this understands the issue and knows how to politely neuter DOM. Please tell me how. That stupid utility has already wasted a couple of hours of my precious time. The problems it caused were not just minor ones. Oh, BTW any fears about a talkback utility ratting out sensitive personal information on me are not even on my radar screen. That was never an issue for me. My extremely emotional objection to DOM Inspector in particular is because another negative gets layered on my already irrational and overpowering loathing of 'interruption' schemes in general. Interruptions are best handled very diplomatically. But programs handle this delicate task in so many different ways, some of them detestable. When my pinky finger strays across the top of the Windows key and I get an unintended key stroke, that is annoying. It pops up a non-overridable window that you _must_ deal with first, now. Fumble it up, click it away again, get back to what you were doing prior to the unwanted interruption. It steals and hold focus captive until you shoot it.The old talkback windows in the older Netscapes were of the extremely annoying type, and if I had not figured out how to disable them in the first place, when they popped up, I immediately hammered them down like 'whack-a-moles'. If Netscape had just crashed, I had my priorities, and the last thing I wanted to do was to lose time filling out a form for some unknown person who probably did not need my redundant info anyway. Again, my sincere appreciation goes out to the legions of talented folks who have refined our non-MS browsers, but this is getting into the area of control issues for me. If Netscape just crashed, I have other fish to fry. Reporting a crash is way down my priorities list. Especially because the frickin' utility insists on doing it immediately, which intuitively sounds like it would indeed be necessary. It's "don't touch anything, leave it where it crashed and let us take photos".DOM hits a new low, because apparently on my machine, accidentally bringing it up causes a total freeze of all of Mozilla. DOM easily reaches the 'loathesome, detestable' level for me. I lost a nearly completed PM, a pretty good one, too. I also lost a number of open browser instances, some also multiply tabbed. I was far along in a lengthy session and all the open sites tended to be interrelated. So I also lost a good bit of work, especially if certain windows resulted from searches rather than url clickthroughs. There will be sites that I may go dig for in my history, but the interrelational context of all the open pages is lost to the extent I can't remember my exact thinking and frame of mind at the time. And what all I had up at the time. All this from a tiny, accidental dragging of one or more smaller fingers over some keycap(s) in a lower row on the keyboard. I have no idea what I 'typed' to bring this upon myself. This kind of behavior in a software utility is detestable. Such software needs to be taken out back and shot.

[Neil P]

Some good points and suggestions, steeler fan. In fact, I think it was your post  that originally motivated me to try a 1.4 version of Moz. I have been using Moz off and on for a few years now.Hey, I absolutely love Firebird! If I can get one that runs smooth for me on 98SE it will hog all my surfing time for sure. Looks like the latest i have run is 0.6.1 stable. Except it ain't actually all that stable for me, it is a big resource leaker with 98SE. So I will try 0.7 as you suggest.Meanwhile, that DOM thing is so obnoxious that it is a total deal-killer for me. As good as Moz 1.4.1 is, if I can't do away with DOM Inspector (at least disabling it), then the old non-Phoenix builds of Moz are history for me. Once burned, that's a shame. Twice burned, shame on me! I won't even give it another chance. It dies or Moz goes away. Which would be a shame. I hope someone reading this understands the issue and knows how to politely neuter DOM. That stupid utility has already wasted an hour and a half of my precious time.

I can't seem to find how to disable the DOMi...lots of docs on how to enable it though. Oh well, Seamonkey is dead anyway, stick with Firebird

[Gus K]

With Firebird I have lost a long forum post a couple of times. For me it seemed to come with lot's of previewing, bouncing around by opening extra tabs to check on something, and following links. Seemed like it just got overloaded and hung up.

[nilson]

Whenever I am writing something important, regardless of the application, I make intermediate saves, or in Firebird's case, copy to the clipboard or Notepad.

[Guest LilBambi]

I have been using Firebird 0.7 and that old long post problem appears to be fixed at least in Win98SE Cluttermagnet ... would highly suggest you consider Firebird 0.7 ... it is the fastest browser I have even seen in Win98SE too! I love it! Just my 2 cents worth

[Guest LilBambi]

Whenever I am writing something important, regardless of the application, I make intermediate saves, or in Firebird's case, copy to the clipboard or Notepad.

Me too .. I do that in IE as well ... just in case!

[Cluttermagnet]

Thanks, guys. All good points. I do often try to make frequent saves to the Clipboard, and I use a nice little addon utility called Clipboard Plus that extends the number of different entries literally into the hundreds if you want. All are stored pretty much indefinitely until they 'drop off the end' as item # 201 gets saved. This sometimes covers weeks or a couple of months and can be real handy. It crashes once in a while and forgets, but not often enough to take it out back and shoot it. Also, at times I simply first compose in Notepad or Wordpad, or more likely in CWordpad, an excellent free one that has a few extra features and can crank out .doc or .txt or various other formats. But this is usually reserved for one I know I am going to consider important at the outset. With forum PM's or forum posts, I'm in a much more relaxed posture and I forget the basics and often invest an hour or more polishing and editing a post before unleashing it on my poor fellow forum members. So that's where disaster usually strikes.Well, steeler fan reminded me to check out Moz 1.4.1 in the first place, and I like to keep a larger stable of alternative browsers around, anyway, so I decided that rather than shooting it, I am going to put it in detention for the week and make it write a letter of apology to me and the group at large. And maybe wear a dunce cap myself for the rest of the evening. I doubt I should be driving it much over 30, anyway, what with how fast I blow by any help files and FAQ usually in my haste to get started with a new version. I think I should have declined the DOM Inspector option and taken the Full Size Spare Tire option instead.Yeah, everyone is right, it was past time to get Firebird 0.7 and I did that earlier today and put a few extensions in it like NukeGraphics and ClickFlash (or whatever) and the Browser Phony Alias one (whatever it is called). So I am using Firebird 0.7 right now to read and post back to this thread, and nothing awful or ugly has popped up so far to steal my work. I will spend the next week using only this browser and I bet it still has a job after then. There, I just put a copy of "Eat Or Be Eaten" by the Firesign Theatre in the CD drive and cranked the volume. There, the guys just opened a couple of Airhead Lites. Ah, contentment. Peace is slowly returning to this tiny corner of Postville (or was that Puttyville?)...

[Stonegiant]

Whenever I am writing something important, regardless of the application, I make intermediate saves, or in Firebird's case, copy to the clipboard or Notepad.

ditto