Jump to content

I'm Giving Up Firefox


teacher

Recommended Posts

Yes, you read right. I'm calling it quits on Firefox for a while. I do believe they rushed a bit on this one. Here are the things I have noticed that are causing me to switch:*Memory leak? I don't know quite whether it is a memory leak or what. Here's the situation. I am working on an on-line test for my students. I enter 30 questions in and get ready to go to the next one and Firefox crashes. Everything is gone.*I'm working on test questions again - dictating with DragonDictate. The two together crash my browser.*I'm working on questions again - again dictating with DragonDictate but using IE7. IE7 cruises along and I successfully add my 48 questions for this test without error.*I go to look at my options and cookies and no longer have any option to tell it to be for the originating site only (am I only dreaming that I had this feature?). I have tons of cookies now for 207. and other horrible sites that I must clean up by hand.*I read an article telling how to fix this but when I go to about:.... I find I have it set correctly and still have the cookie problem.*I no longer have the option to load images from the originating site only. Am I alone here? Any other Firefox fans a bit disappointed? I'm using IE7 now at work and Safari at home. I can only take so many times of entering a lot of test questions and then losing it all before I get really frustrated. Sometimes it takes me hours to load questions because I don't have much time actually in front of my computer but input them between helping students or during class changes or lunch. That small amount of free time adds up but then when it is lost it is twice as frustrating. Please no flaming here, just facts as you have observed them. :thumbsup: What is working for you? What is not working for you? What pleases you? What disappoints you? Has your opinion changed? Why?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 88
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • Gary

    19

  • teacher

    15

  • RandomBox

    8

  • zlim

    7

Top Posters In This Topic

I don't know what's going on with cookies. Supposedly the third party blocking was removed from the UI because it doesn't work in all cases and people were getting a false sense of security. I guess the only way to handle them is to either block all cookies and then whitelist sites that you want them from, or find an extension that helps manage cookies (there are quite a few). Supposedly the only way to fix it "the right way" would break legitimate uses of cookies, so they didn't. The setting (network.cookie.cookieBehavior) should have persisted from earlier Firefox installs, that's why yours was already set to 1, which is supposed to accept cookies from the originating site only.With your crashes, when are they happening? You're entering test questions to some online software? Maybe there is a conflict there. A crash is much more serious than a memory leak.Personally I haven't noticed any problems with this version.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think we read the same thing about cookies. I do not want to go through and whitelist cookies nor do I want to have to click each time. I want it to simply go with the originating site only.The online software worked fine before I updated. It is simple tables in reality using a little javascript. Each question is a glorified table with a 1x2 box for the question and then two columns underneath for the answer box and the answer sample. Examples of some of my tests are at http://www.quia.com/pages/ahscompaps1.html It locks everything up to where it either closes or it will no longer recognize any command. I consider that a crash. It may happen while I am in the middle of a question or when I go back to enter additional questions. You would have to register at quia.com and create a quiz under a trial account to see the entry software.I must say I have also had problems with other sites just browsing but those are not as serious as losing a lot of work in a site like this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The closes thing I have come to (in terms of browser problems) was that I had to leave the browser alone for about 3 minutes (on dial up) while it sucked all my bandwidth. Since then, it has been running smooth as butter. I don't know what it was doing, but it only did it once. I presume it had something to do with updates.Adam

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have never had a problem/crash with Fx 2.0If you are actually going to give it up, try Opera. It is faster than than Firefox.

Edited by Gary
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the reminder Gary. I was going to mention that I planned to go back and look at that. It would be nice to be able to use the same program at work and home (XP and Mac). I need to dig into IE7 more at work when I have some free time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest LilBambi

I use Firefox, Opera and very occasionally IE in Win2K.I use Firefox, Opera and occasionally Konq in Linux.There are just some things that one browser does better or easier than others, or more securely... I just go with what does the best job at a given task or what I feel like playing with today.I am all over the radar with browsers :hysterical:I love Firefox and I love Opera for different reasons. But I even use and like IE for certain things, although very little these days.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have been all over the map over the years. It was very easy in Opera to set it to allow cookies for the first pagre only. I am finding some easy ad blocking as well. Then again, I really liked the option in Firefox to have a site do the blocking for me on most of them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have been all over the map over the years. It was very easy in Opera to set it to allow cookies for the first pagre only. I am finding some easy ad blocking as well. Then again, I really liked the option in Firefox to have a site do the blocking for me on most of them.
Have you ever tried Flock?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Flock was a nightmare......
That is about the way I see it. A poor ripoff of Firefox. I have been using Firefox since it was called Phoenix, and I would find it hard adjusting to another Browser. I have Opera but you can't really make it the way you want as in Firefox? Opera 9.10 will officially be out soon. It is already on Majorgeeks.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I couldn' agree more. 1.5x is working just fine for me. :thumbsup:
ONE member has had a problem with Fx 2 and your all now hesitate to upgrade to Fx 2. How can anyone be sure that the problems that Julia had were not with an extension or some other factor. Someone mentioned memory leaks? Fx 1.5 X X was full of them. As is an ext called IE tab.Fx 2 is more secure than 1.5 and is all around better. There will be an upgrade from 1.5.0.7 to 1.5.0.8 but that will be it.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Gary, just because you MUST be on the freakin' bleeding edge of software does not mean that you must continually hound us "slower" users about upgrades. While you are a good source of knowledge about OS's and browsers, please realize that your continual insistence that "I don't have any problems" doesn't automatically make everyone want to dive in.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

V.T. Eric Layton

I don't need to be right up-to-the-minute with software. It's a tool to me. If the tool works well, there's no reason to exchange it for one that might not work as well. Besides, I'm running 1.5x in Linux. I'm not too worried about the security issues that Windows users might be concerned about.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Gary, just because you MUST be on the freakin' bleeding edge of software does not mean that you must continually hound us "slower" users about upgrades. While you are a good source of knowledge about OS's and browsers, please realize that your continual insistence that "I don't have any problems" doesn't automatically make everyone want to dive in.
I am not hounding anyone. I even recommended Opera to Julia. I just can't see why everyone is ready to give up on Fx just because of one user here having a problem. I am just stating facts. I never have had a crash with Fx 2. Fx 1.5 does have a known memory leak problem.I don't personally care what browser you use. Look at all of the problems associated with IE and yes there are still those that use it.There are no Known memory leaks in Fx 2. There are in Fx 1.5 as I have stated. I believe that Mozilla went to Fx 2 for a reason and part of that reason is security. I personally use Fx, Opera IE 6 and IE 7. I can tell you without hesitation that I have had crashes with IE 6.0 which not only crashed the browser but my machine as well. So I am the bad guy here due to the fact that I did not have a problem with Fx 2. FWIW , I am not on the "Freaken" Bleeding edge of Software. Yes I use Vista as it is free and I am testing it. When it becomes unusable in June, I will NOT upgrade to it. I do not own stock in Mozilla, I have no vested interest in recommending it. :teehee:
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2.0 has fixed a number of leaks that result in increased memory usage. However as I type this, I have 3 tabs open, and firefox is using 270MB of memory. I'd say the developers have a way to go before they can say the memory issue is fully resolved.I have read various stories claiming that there is not just one giant leak, but many small ones, resulting in a large problem that has many small causes.

Memory leaks can cause Firefox not to release memory that it is no longer using, especially with older versions. There has been a lot of effort to reduce the leaks in recent versions, and Mozilla developers have have created tools to detect them. [4] [5] To minimize leaks, you should upgrade to the most recent version. The most common memory leaks appear to be fixed in Firefox 2.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Memory_LeakThere are still others.... BugsAdam
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So far I only have FF 2 on one computer. I want to kick the tires and get used to it before I install it on the others. As far as cookies, I have always used the extension Cookie Culler. http://cookieculler.mozdev.org/I can see the cookies, delete the ones I don't want and protect the ones I do want. I have checked the option to delete the unwanted cookies on startup - so I don't have to clear any cookies off during a session - if I don't want to.But I'm with you; if something continually crashes then it is not the browser I'm going to use.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've got FF2.0 installed in one computer, mainly to see how it goes, given it is a .0 release. It's definitely a memory pig and it has issues when it crashes of not releasing the memory. I have to kill the process manually in XP. I haven't tried it in any Linux distro yet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow, this is just like the 1.5.0 release. Most people had no problems, but some people had BIG problems.I have to say that for me, running on six different computers (including two Macs, Julia), Firefox 2.0 is the best Firefox yet. It's faster, more usable, and I just plain like it.I agree that it hasn't drastically improved memory usage, but I'm having no reliability problems at all. Best of all, Firefox did away with 5 or 6 extensions I was using before because it included their functionality right in the browser.I'm surprised at Julia's and Peachy's experiences, but I take them at their word. My newsletter (next one this week) is going to say that Firefox works great for me. But maybe I'll hear from people it's not working great for them.One last point, Julia, Firefox 2 on the Mac is much better than Firefox 1.5.x. It used to take forever for FF to load on the Mac. I mean, you could go make coffee while you waited for that browser to launch the first time in the session. Now it's zippy. They did a lot of work on the cross-platform coding. I'm not sure whether it's optimized for Intel or using Rosetta or whatever. All I know is that its fast.I don't worry about cookies, btw. I mean, 98% of them are about advertising. Cookies are not very powerful, and can't do all that much. Combine them with a spyware program, and yes, they can track you and capture the information. Lots of companies do that. ****, it used to be an OK thing to do. Windows even had a basic ad tracker for a while (not that it should have). But my point is, cookies are not all that scary. Anti-spyware companies used cookie-removal as a marketing tool for a long time.Tired, going to sleep, before I stop making sense. -- Scot

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not worried about cookies either and you can't do much e-commerce without them. Scot, overall I like version 2, but there are some problems on this machine and Firefox. It only has 1GB of RAM (only, he says!) and I think it would be okay on a machine with 2GB. It's a small annoyance to be told by Firefox that it can't start because another instance of it is still running in memory. But, killing the process fixes that. But, really, it should be happening. I think during last week after I installed it I would see this crop up 2 or 3 times a day. It has been stable over the weekend though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I find this topic a surprise also cause I am find the exact opposite results over 1.5. 1.5 was way more unstable for me but 2.0 is performing much better. I have installed it on all the computers I use. It has restored my faith in FF cause I had switched to Opera with the 1.5 series.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree that Firefox 2.0 could've done with a little more love before going gold. Nonetheless, I've seen many fixes planned for 2.0.0.1. It's just like with Windows, don't buy it until SP1. :Dteacher, I'm not going to try to persuade you. However, if you feel brave and want to give FF another chance, I recommend trying trunk builds. All fixes go into this trunk immediately when submitted and it just runs remarkably for me. But with any alpha software, you need to brace yourself should things go wrong. So far, nothing's gone wrong for me yet.Also, the reason the cookies option was removed was that it was broken and could be circumvented easily. I'm sure that, once a new implementation is made by someone, the option will be restored.For anyone that wants to try a nightly trunk build: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/fir...y/latest-trunk/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

271 bugs. Look at how many are UNCO or New. As far as memory leaks many are found in problematic extensions. I would like to see the list for IE 7.0 :teehee: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Problematic_extensions.I do find it strange that Mozilla released Fx 2 and is still going to release Fx 1.5.0.8 later this month. Another thing that concerns me is their association with Google. Did Mozilla jump the gun on Fx 2? One thing I should mention is that all of my usage and results are from using Fx 2 in Vista. I use Vista almost exclusively and only use Fx in Xp to get the upgrades. And like Rons and Myself said in another thread that Firefox seems to be faster in Vista.Is Vista the reason I don't experience problems?? Could be....?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


×
×
  • Create New...