Problems in Firefox Paradise?

[Corrine]

I was really surprised to read in Scot's Newsletter (Special Edition, May 2005 - Vol. 5, Issue No. 68) about the reported "Problems in Firefox Paradise" that Scot has experienced.

I love Firefox, but ever since I installed 1.0.2 — and I've done that on six machines — every one of those machines has experienced frequent, obstructive Firefox problems. The most common and frustrating problem is the browser's refusal to load. There's no error message. Nothing happens when you double click the program icon.

I'll admit that I had browser stability problems back in the Firebird era and as a result used Mozilla. For me, those problems seemed to have been solved since 0.9 and beyond. I certainly have installed my share of extensions, some that even duplicate functions of other extensions, yet I haven't run into a problem.It seems that since Scot appears to be a bit distracted playing with Longhorn ( >_Scot's Newsletter?

[rbdietz]

I haven't experienced these problems, but a couple questions came to mind when I read the article.

1. Has Scot tried adding a new profile to see if the problem goes away while only using the new profile?If so, install extensions one at a time until the problem reappears.
2. When Firefox fails to launch, does Scot see firefox.exe on Task Manager's Processes tab?If so, is Firefox fully terminating each time Scot shuts it down?If firefox.exe is listed on the Processes tab when it ought not be, SysInternal's Process Explorer and Filemon utilities might possibly provide some clues as to the cause.

[Gary]

I have never had the problems that Scot has described. I do however use his method of updating Firefox.

[Rons]

I believe that Scot has already found the problem. Bad extensions.I'd make a list of the extensions installed, uninstall ALL extensions, and reinstall one at a time until the problem resurfaces.

[Neil P]

[*]When Firefox fails to launch, does Scot see firefox.exe on Task Manager's Processes tab?If so, is Firefox fully terminating each time Scot shuts it down?If firefox.exe is listed on the Processes tab when it ought not be, SysInternal's Process Explorer and Filemon utilities might possibly provide some clues as to the cause.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I believe he says in the Newsletter that sometimes it shows up and others it doesn't.Rons might have it though: since the extension set is the same everytime, it's quite possible a certain extension is the problem. That's a great idea, install them one at a time to see if that's the problem (or list them here at least)

[Keegan]

quote:"The thing is, in order to do well in the market place long-term, a Web browser has to work better than this. You can't roll out x.x.1 security patches and break people's installations. And if you're going to support third-party extensibility, I think you have to fully support it. If as I believe is probably the case, that an extension (or other customization) conflict proves to be the culprit, then Mozilla needs to think hard about integrating and fully testing the common functionality that the more popular extensions provide."from my point of view he is simply Critisizing Firefox for 2 things:1) updates breaks extensions, a big no no2) extensions could break Firefox, another big no noi guess this is not a good thing if you want to target the corporate segmentbut this is a though one, and this would probably limit extensions a lot and would we want that?

[Cholly]

I haven't experienced Firefox reload problems, but I have had problems when viewing PDF's under Firefox 1.0.2 and 1.0.3 -- when I attempt to close the PDF, Firefox stops responding. Attempting to close Firefox results in the close routine also not responding. Only by resorting to ending the tasks in Task Manager can I get back to my desktop. And, no, I don't send a problem report to Microsoft.

[Rons]

Interesting - now I know what Scot is talking about.I run very few extensions on my system. So today I installed Bandwidth Tester. Froze Firefox when I attempted to use it.

[Corrine]

Cholly, now that you mention it, PDF files are very slow to close on my system but at least they don't freeze up FF. (PDF files don't work all that well on IE either -- they're very slow to open.)(I haven't tried PDF Download yet since I really don't view that many PDF files.)

[Neil P]

With regard to Acrobat Reader, I follow the instructions on this post, which help quite a bit. Acrobat 7 is much better than previous versions.

[Guest LilBambi]

I had at one time installed the Proxy Extension and found it did the same problems Scot was talking about with 1.0.2.After I uninstalled the Proxy Extension, no more problems.And I do still use Sage extension. It is very well behaved. If it does not work with an update, it is disabled and then Firefox prompts you for the update when available and it works again. This only happened once.With the Chatzilla extension I ended up having to remove the extension and then physically download it and drop it on the browser to get it to install again on WinXP Pro. But once it did, it worked great.It does not seem as though these are Firefox problems. The appear to be extension problems. Some extensions work better than others.Since the Proxy extension is something I hadn't even used, it was no great loss.I keep my extensions to a minimum for this very reason.

[Guest LilBambi]

NOTE: I also download the latest extension updates before updating Firefox now too.

[rbdietz]

I tried Acrobat 7 and ended up reverting to 5.1, but I don't remember for sure why I didn't like 7. (Maybe - the plug-in process didn't terminate?)

[Guest LilBambi]

Acrobat Reader 7 is hoggy. And there is an update to Acrobat Reader 7 as well.The reason I keep Acrobat 7 is that there are security issues in prior versions.Of course, it only works for XP and maybe Win2K?Those with Win98 for sure need to use the Acrobat Reader 6.x with the latest patches....and hope for the best.

[havnblast]

I don't have problems with FF, but I don't use that many extensions either and I always uninstall and than reinstall for new updates. This needs to be worked out, but with any software it is best to uninstall and reinstall - less problems.I don't do much pdfing in browsers - always download them and than view em.

[Gus K]

I only use 4 extensions. I've been updating FF through it's own built in updater with no problems. No uninstalling/deleteing of the last one. The only thing is, in Add/remove I have all the previous versions still listed.

[Neil P]

I only use 4 extensions.  I've been updating FF through it's own built in updater with no problems.  No uninstalling/deleteing of the last one.  The only thing is, in Add/remove I have all the previous versions still listed.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That is Bug 247884, and was fixed for Firefox 1.0.3. If you're running 1.0.3, I don't know why they're still showing. Removing them shouldn't be a problem, though.

[Scot]

Just a note to everyone here ... it appears that the User Agent Switcher extension *may* have been the cause of my problems. Some extension conflict was definitely the cause of the problem. User Agent Switcher was updated recently too.However, my colleague, Mitch Wagner, doesn't use User Agent Switcher, and he had the exact same experience with Firefox 1.0.2 and 1.0.3 I did, apparently from a different cause.Since I wrote the article in the newsletter, I have over 200 messages from newsletter readers reporting their problems with Firefox. Mozilla has a serious problem -- especially with the launching problem I reported on. There are many variations on the theme. Letter after letter to me reports "I have the exact same problem, the only difference is ..." and it's some very minor variation.Folks, I love Firefox. I've meant every kind word I've written about it. But I am growing increasingly concerned that Mozilla has a quality problem and that it doesn't have a large enough organization to truly test and support this browser in the real world. I want the organization to succeed. I want Firefox to be the alternative to IE that makes it a two-horse race. But it's important that we don't give Mozilla a free pass in order to meet that goal. The only way they will improve the product is if they know what's wrong with it. We are doing Mozilla and ourselves no favor by supporting a browser that runs into this level of problem as commonly as apparently it does because of extension conflicts.I also don't think that not running extensions is such a great thing either. If you're not running extensions that you would like to run, because of your fear that it will mess up your Firefox installation, that's a form of co-dependency that I don't think you should practice. I know that's a strong statement, and I feel sure many of you -- especially in this forum -- will disagree with. So be it. I think it is the right call. The only way Firefox will become the browser it has to be to truly take on IE is if we use the **** out of it -- the way we want to use it -- and demand that it improve. My original review of Firefox 1.0 called for Mozilla to add more standard features into the browser. The popularity of some extensions is clear proof to me that Mozilla lacks some features it needs. But by leaving it to extension makers to complete the UI of your browser, you are opening the door to serious quality problems. You're doing something else too: You're asking for security issues because users are going to become more and more reluctant to install security patches if doing so causes problems with the browser because extensions need to be updated to support every x.x.1 release. That model doesn't scale in the real world. It won't work.-- Scot

[Neil P]

Hi Scot,You're surely not alone on your view. There are people that will simply not update versions if it means their extension will break--Jesse Ruderman talks about how to prevent this.This is a very tough issue. On the one hand, how is it mozilla.org's fault if an extension breaks/isn't updated for a new release. Surely they don't have the manpower to fix extensions that are broken.On the other hand, extensibility is a huge feature of Firefox--users have a right to expect it to work, that's for sure.However, I would argue that out of the box, Firefox is powerful enough for everyday use. I only install one extension now when I do an install--Gmail Notifier. And as I've talked about in other places, Firefox 1.1 will have some features that were previously extensions. 1.1 will also have a better update system--an option for binary patches, which hopefully won't require extensions to be updated with each security update.Ben Goodger has a few posts on his "Inside Firefox" blog recently that deal with these two issues. The mozilla.org wiki has a page about software updates, as well.I agree with you mostly, Scot, and things are looking better for the future. We might have another update soon, 1.0.4, and we'll have to see how that goes, too.Neil

[patio]

I agree alot with what Scott has illustrated. I've used FFox and TBird for a few years. Prior to that i had used an older version of Netscape (4.2 i believe was the last unbloated ver.) but trying to figure which extension is breaking the app is a pain.I'm at a minimum of extensions i've dumped GMail notify and set it up in TBird.The real stage fright comes when a new ver. is released...Then it's 3 days of trying to get both apps to use an existing Profile. I've tried all the Moz forum suggestions; i've tried MozBack and i've done my own experimenting...simply stated it doesn't work.So overall they have some work to do.p.s. chatzilla has added a new toolbar, empty of course under my Bookmarks Toolbar ...aaarrrgggggghhhhhhhhh.patio.

[ian]

I am a recent convert to Firefox. Now using it exclusively on WXP and Linux. Well, I occasionaly use IE6 on WXP when I go to a site which must have ActiveX.I read Scot's original reviews on Firefox and they were a really good read.But, I wanted/needed stable browsers.Decided to install any plugin that Firefox said I needed WHEN FF said I needed it, and to install any auto-update. Also decided to avoid extensions unless they were needed to fix a problem I was having with the default user interface.It has been a great experience. eg. On the system I am typing this on, I have 6 instances of FF running with with an average of 4 tabs per instance. The primary instance has 7 tabs open with the sites that I go to most frequently. One of them is here, another is gmail. You don't need gmail notifier if you have gmail open and positioned to inbox. The tab changes immediately when new mail arrives and refreshes automatically.Auto update works, at least for me, on WXP. Linux is a different story. But I just live with cleaning up FF as a weekend chore.I consider the last month to have been a beta of the Firefox environment. The huge increase in the user base and the download statistic tracking at Mozilla should have built a valid profile of the 5% of add-in features that 95% of users want/need. I hope, and expect, those features to be more rigorously tested and possibly automatically bundled with FF. I dont want to see a huge feature bloat in the default install. But adding features that have a demonstrated user base makes a lot of sense.My 2cents.