Firefox Has Turned Into An Unusable POS

Because it's cool and rebellious to shun Microsoft products.

I tried testing out this whole 'firefox has a memory dump!' theory and left my computer on for 3 straight days, with at least one window of firefox open at all times. I got online this morning just fine, I still haven't had to close anything down, I even ran WoW no problem, and I'm running Windows XP. I think I'm doing something right!

Although this is true, IE does actually suck.

Park it on a Flash laden site like hulu for three days and see how well it does.

Also, make sure you install at least 5 egg timer extensions.

It's important!

Unlike some of the young'uns here who came onboard after Firefox hit the big-time, I was there when it was still called Phoenix. Then when it was called Firebird (makes the mail client of Thunderbird make a lot more sense, eh?). And then when it was called Firefox.

Back then, the extension ecosystem was pretty sparse. It was deluged with things like egg timers and tea timers to help you make the perfect egg or cup of tea. Additionally, there were things like changing the word 'Cookies' in the preferences to 'Delicious Delicacies', or adding a marijuana leaf in the status bar whenever it was 4:20.

And a good deal of them were exceptionally poorly written. It's become a lot better over the years, but still, first step if you're having problems with Firefox is to disable extensions to see if that alleviates the issues.

One thing about Oprah: I don't know if I'm unwittingly triggering some key combination or it's a bug, or it is some other application like Java, but sometimes when I'm typing in a window like this and I fill up the window it won't scroll down. And then I have to click "Preview" or "Go Advanced" or something to jog it out of its rut.

I'm running Firefox 1.5 on Windows 98.

I just thought you all ought to know that, so you can point and laugh.

I need a bearing to point at, so I can laugh.

One other quirk I've noticed with Oprah: If you click an action, say, a voting button or a "skip ad", and then back out, it hangs up on the action. And of course there is no drop down for the back button, so you have to step back through everything one thing at a time.

I briefly reverted to FF2.0, but was having problems with Facebook afterwards, so I moved up to 3.0 before switching to Oprah. Which is odd, because I see my Eee is running FF2.(...actually I'm not sure. 2.x at any rate) and it works fine.

IE 6 against the contemporary version of FF was like putting up a dump truck against a Formula 1 racer. By comparison FF was screaming fast and tabbed browsing was an incredible revelation. Everyone has preferences, but someone starting from scratch would be hard pressed to come up with a significant performance issue between the two. I really like the Chrome style system of putting the search window and address bar together, but that's a preference not everyone will share. As usual it took longer for Microsquash to get with the program, but I have to admit IE 8 is good.

IE 8 is pretty good, but still full of vulnerabilities. I just had a friend over and I was helping him clean out a nasty piece of malware he got on a drive by install. Spybot and Malwarebytes seemed to stop it. The browser he was using? IE8. After that, I helped him install Opera.

I did phrase that wrong, huh?

80 would be fairly close, but you'll also have to aim a good 40 degrees down into the ground.

I'll let you know if I feel any effects.

(BTW, don't let anyone see you doing this, or they might have cause to question your sanity...)

Well fuck you too Opera.

I kept getting 'connection closed by remote server' messages.

I'm using Chrome now.

I've got 1.5 too, but alas, on Win XP.


Got a few Greasemonkey scripts and other extension-type things, but no spell-checker bloat.

I switched back to FF 3.0.13. I just wasn't getting used to some of the quirks of Opera and liked some of the bugs even less. Firefox seems to be running passibly fast as long as I don't have the latest version.

Here's how to make it useable: http://blog.skdev.net/2009/02/12/how-to-fix-firefox-memory-leak-problem/

I have some greasemonkey apps we've writtento use at work, so we have to use FF... but changing this stuff has helped.

So Scorp, you gone back to FF? or should I try Opera?

^ Give it a try. It really is quite good. There are times I have to revert back to teh foxfire to do a few things, but overall, I am pretty pleased with Opera. I might play around with Apostle's memory leak fix he posted if I have the time, but for now, I've switched over completely and am pleased.

Ok, now Opera has become an unusable POS. I finally switched to Google Chrome this week. Opera just took way too long to load pages.

For example, I'd click on a link in Wordforge. Wait....wait....wait. Then I'd copy and paste the same link into Chrome. Bam! It's there. Meanwhile Opera is still thinking about it, and then a few seconds later, it finally loads.

Google Chrome seems alright. You can put your bookmarks into little folders at the top, then just click and select. Very useful, as I have a folder set up for my two email accounts + Facebook, then a folder for online shops (eBay, Amazon, Memory Express, etc) and a folder for the 5 or so different forums I visit.

Loads really quick so far.

I do have a few problems with Chrome - maybe you folks can help me fix them.
I don't like that I have no way to get to tools - I like to occasionally remove the history from the cache, and right now I can't. Also I can't update the bookmarks that I've made on Firefox since I downloaded and installed Chrome as I can with IE8 (shut up! I need it to get to my work email) and Firefox.
What do I upload/install/hack to do these two things?

Well, the History one, I can kinda answer. There should be a little wrench icon on the right side of Chrome. Either that or go Control-h. You can choose which days to delete history from.

If you want to delete the entire history or cache, go to the little wrench icon and choose 'Options'. Click the 'Under the Hood' tab and under Privacy (which should be at the top) click 'Clear Browsing Data'. That should do it.

The bookmarks question I will have to try and figure out.

Ok, I found out about the bookmarks thing for Chrome.

Go to the little wrench icon and choose 'Options'.

Go to the 'Personal Stuff' tab.

Under 'Browsing Data' which should be near the bottom, click the 'Import Data from another Browser' button.

It will then let you import bookmarks from another browser.

Like I said, I'm back on an earlier release of Firefox. My Eee is running 2.x, works fine, and doesn't nag me to do constant upgrades. I wound up having to run 3.x on the desktop because I think maybe some Javascript and other related upgrades were having heartburn with 2.x. Only real problem seems to be the occasional nag to upgrade.

I don't like IE because the N00Bs use it. because I don't use it, I'm am unfamiliar with it. Now I don't have to deal with crap, like, " can ya show me how??????" Mouse cheese dead.

it may LET me but it ain't doing it.

eh, i only downloaded it because an online game had problems and the only browser that would let anyone play was chrome. might dump it now that they got the problem fixed.

That's odd: I'm sure you would have noticed the biggest annoyance about Oprah. You can't set the home page to anything but her book club.