Is Firefox 1.0 Less Stable than Firefox PR1.0? 758
An anonymous reader wonders: "I had Firefox 1.0PR running smoothly on three different machines and it hardly ever crashed. After upgrading to 1.0, I seem to have at least one annoying crash a day. On one of the machines, using the 'self update' feature caused Firefox to crash in middle of the upgrade and left it in a completely unusable state. Eventually, I had to uninstall it and resort to using IE to download the full installer, again. Is it just me, or are other heavy Firefox users noticing this sort of behavior?"
/. is not tech support (Score:5, Informative)
Basic Human Nature (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Basic Human Nature (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Basic Human Nature (Score:5, Funny)
-------- "lol i had sex w/ ur mom" - George W. Bush
...said the man with the "yer mom" joke for a sig.
Re:Basic Human Nature (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Basic Human Nature (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Basic Human Nature (Score:3, Informative)
I think all computers should have at least two nipples
There are two keyboard nipples. That's what the little bumps on the "F" and "J" keys are. They are there so you can position your fingers on the keyboard for typing without looking. I think the grandparent poster was referring to a trackpoint [wikipedia.org] mistakenly as a keyboard nipple.
Re:Basic Human Nature (Score:5, Informative)
A really really good implementation of a raw-mode synaptics driver is available for MacOS as SideTrack [ragingmenace.com]. It used to be free while it was in beta. Now it is $15 and a heck of a good deal. It fixes the powerbooks' problem of lacking a right mousebutton and scroll wheel while giving all sorts of extra enhancements that really make that one button mouse a lot more usable.
Re:Basic Human Nature (Score:3, Informative)
I've never understood why the bumps on the F and J are referred to as nipples. They're so much smaller.
Re:Basic Human Nature (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.hardgrok.org/blog/item/slashfix-firefo
Isn't open source great?!
Re:Basic Human Nature (Score:3, Informative)
Most likely FF is hanging on pageloads or something - are you actuall
Re:Basic Human Nature (Score:5, Informative)
Some of the errors are:
Line 8, column 14: there is no attribute "TYPE"
Line 38, column 11: there is no attribute "TOPMARGIN"
Line 38, column 26: there is no attribute "LEFTMARGIN"
Line 39, column 13: there is no attribute "MARGINWIDTH"
Line 39, column 30: there is no attribute "MARGINHEIGHT"
Line 43, column 8: there is no attribute "BGCOLOR"
It goes on...
Re:/. is not tech support (Score:5, Funny)
I expect intelligent and thought provoking replies on this page....
Re:/. is not tech support (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't regularly read the Mozilla.org forums. Do you? The article on /. interested me because I was thinking about whether or not I should update Firefox to the new release.
Suggestion anyway (Score:5, Informative)
Backup your profile... (Score:3, Interesting)
On Windows machines you can use a utility to backup your profile called, MozBackup [jasnapaka.com]. Test it out a few times and then try upgrading.
Saves your backup to another file and can import that backup into another installation. Let's you take your passwords and all that with you.
Re:solving the problem, slashdot style (Score:5, Interesting)
2) Are you proposing that Microsoft has a "black ops" department, whose sole purpose is to cause Windows to behave incorrectly when 3rd party software is run? Additionally, this department is exceptionally good at keeping a secret. So good, in fact, that the only way to detect their work is by running open source (patently bug-free) software on their OS, to uncover these flaws? Given that open source software is bug-free, wouldn't such a department fear discovery when performing such an act?
I'm not saying that there aren't reasons to dislike Microsoft, but goodness, this is
I'll tell you the single source of all of your Microsoft woes... the market. If the market will pump billions of dollars into a company, they have little right to complain about that company's software. There is competition. There was a lot more of it before all of you gave them all of your money. If you dislike Microsoft's product line, then download a Linux or BSD ISO, and install it. If you vote with your pocketbook, the company will listen. Hit companies that break the law with the law, and if you dislike the lack of competition, then purchase a competing product, or compete with them.
Re:solving the problem, slashdot style (Score:5, Insightful)
Most closed source supporters don't even dispute this. Instead they claim that it only works in a very popular project and most projects arent. There is a counter argument to that but I won't go into it. The point is that firefox is an extremely popular project so that argument doesn't refute that the open source development model should yield the ideal result.
Microsoft probably has the worst reputation for stability in the software industry and it is one that is not lacking in actual merit by any account. So this is not exactly random piece of open source software versus random equivelent closed source software.
This is one of the best open source applications with repute for one of the cleanest designs, against the absolute worst repute closed source firm and further a product of theirs with a known terrible design.
"Are you proposing that Microsoft has a "black ops" department, whose sole purpose is to cause Windows to behave incorrectly when 3rd party software is run?"
You try to make it sound like he is mel gibson in a Conspiracy Theory. This isn't exactly that, this is a company with a PROVEN track record of doing just that, RECENTLY and doing so IN THE BROWSER MARKET specifically. Read up on the MSN website and the way it renders in Opera.
Further you speak as if your a developer on windows, that means if you've done anything non-trivial you know that windows does NOT behave as documented in NUMEROUS cases. Finding a system call which is only used by one competitor with a significant user base and making an intentional design change to break them is easy enough. If too many people report the problem you can claim it's a bug introduced by the update instead of an intentional change. This would be blatantly obvious if the relevant source were revealed, but it's not.
It's hardly a conspiracy theory at all to believe Microsoft would engage in any illegal anti-competative practices they can which they believe will ultimately preserve more market share than they will cost.
Particually after US CERT advisories to change browsers firefox has become a serious threat to their browser monopoly. I'd venture Microsoft would be willing to risk a substantial number of customers to discredit the stability of the first fully stable release of the first significant threat to their monopoly in almost a decade.
"If you vote with your pocketbook, the company will listen."
Well, either listen, or engage in anti-competitive practices to ensure you no longer have that option. After all, allowing you the option to choose a competitors product simply because it is superior or you don't them is a bad business strategy! First step is as simple as a minor api change that doesn't affect many applications but that firefox uses. This way you can make some customers feel firefox is unstable. That way you can buy time until you can get DRM'd which use encryption that is only compatible with windows. After all, you've already got the DMCA in place to ensure competition can't beat that simply because they figure out how the encryption works.
Then you don't have to worry about competiton on inexpensive x86 systems anymore.
Re:solving the problem, slashdot style (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of my argument was that it's absolutely annoying to no end to hear people claim that just because a piece of software is open source, it can't be that software's fault. Certainly at some point in ones life, they have to accept the things that they like as "good" without needing to consider it "flawless."
I am an open source advocate, but I feel that making laughable claims in support of open source software is no way to promote it. How about, before we go pointing fingers, we take a quick look at the problem, and then prove that it's Microsoft's fault.
If open source software were naturally bug-free, nobody would be running software to track those bugs. If everyone in open source were a developer, there would be many more developers here.
If everyone on
Re:solving the problem, slashdot style (Score:3, Insightful)
In their eyes yes. Perhaps the authors have a bit higher standards of "ready" than their competitors? Internet Explorer has been in development for how long? From the very first release of IE to the release of sp2 is how long it took Microsoft to develop a program of the stability, security, and function set IE has today. Version numbers, or the number of releases or whether th
Re:solving the problem, slashdot style (Score:3, Informative)
It's not just any OS updates. Mozilla and Firefox lockup quite regularly on my Linux system starting very recently. I doubt this particular problem is an M$ conspiracy since I don't do M$ updates to my linux box.
That said, I think the problem lies with the flash plugin more than Firefox. I updated today and the same links that loc
Re:My experiance (Score:4, Informative)
Re:/. is not tech support (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:/. is not tech support (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:/. is not tech support (Score:5, Informative)
It's ok to tell him that his experience doesn't match yours, but at least give him a FAQ item that might help him work around or report the crashes [squarefree.com] rather than attacking him.
yeah (Score:2, Interesting)
CNN will crash it (Score:5, Informative)
This is:
Linux 2.6, GNOME, 32-bit ppc, libswf installed,
multiple windows open, Debian-unstable, the tab
preferences extension installed so I can go back
to the old pre-tab Mozilla ways...
This really, really, sucks. I was one of those
people that would keep a browser running for
several weeks at a time. I'd let it sit on one
virtual desktop with two dozen windows open.
Re:CNN will crash it (Score:5, Informative)
I have an idea on why your browser is crashing.
You're trying to open flashMX movies in a flash3 library that was abandoned over 5 years ago.
Try removing libswf and I bet CNN won't crash at all.
Stability Issues...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stability Issues...? (Score:4, Informative)
I've done several upgrades of Phoenix, Firebird and now Firefox on different machines, and I have grown accustomed to letting the new version create a new profile and then copy the stuff you still want back into it. I normally delete "C:\Docs and Settings\MYNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox", then copy the old bookmarks.html into my profile again.
Did so with PR1 -> 1.0, and have had no issues on several machines.
I had opposite results (Score:5, Informative)
Some things to consider:
1. How did you install 1.0? Did you do an overwrite? If so, do a clean install.
2. What extensions are you using? Have you disabled the extension version check?
>On one of the machines, using the 'self update' feature caused Firefox to crash in middle of the upgrade
When was this? Do you have DNS/network/firewall issues which could be causing this?
Lastly, to get some real answers from the experts people should asking here. [mozillazine.org]
Re:I had opposite results (Score:5, Insightful)
Call me old fashioned, but DNS/network/firewall issues should never cause a web browser to crash and enter into an unusable state.
cookies? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:cookies? (Score:5, Funny)
mod story -1 off-topic (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:mod story -1 off-topic (Score:5, Informative)
Probs before PR (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Probs before PR (Score:2)
Re:Probs before PR (Score:2)
Applications can trigger a hardware, driver or OS problem that locks up the system -- but the app itself is not crashing your box.
Re:Probs before PR (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Probs before PR (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm currently using FireFox PR1.0, it's been open for about 5 days straight, running on Win2KPro. It's using 104MB of RAM. Why I don't know... I only have 4 tabs open at the moment and no flash or java running, and no third party plugins... but it's using 104MB or memory right now. It probably would have locked up if I didn't have a gig of RAM in this machine...
Went up to 108MB when I hit preview, and it's not going down...
=Smidge=
Re:Probs before PR (Score:5, Informative)
What this comes down to is: the figure you generally see for memory use of an app is not physical RAM use. It might not even reflect the actual amount of physical+disk memory in use! Finally, memory usage might be overstated due to transient external allocations (e.g. win32 API dialog boxes) that deceivingly appear as memory used by an application.
What you have to look for is how that memory usage figure changes over time. In most cases, it grows until it hits a ceiling - even at that point, it is way overstated (a conservative measure, so to speak). What is bad is if it regularly grows by 50 MB per day, without limit. Then there is a leak
Re:Probs before PR (Score:5, Informative)
Even worse, there's this System Idle process that's taking up 99% of my CPU time!
Sheesh. It's called memory caching. That's why TOP differentiates between RSIZE, VSIZE and RSHRD.
RSIZE is the amount of ram being actively used by a process. I doubt RSIZE is 104megs.
Re:Probs before PR (Score:3, Interesting)
"Mem Usage" is the only one on by default, thus most likely to be read by someone who doesn't know anything. (Unless they use something other than Task Manager, which would surprise me.) It corresponds to the application's Working Set, aka how much physical memory it is actively using. (not necess
Re:Probs before PR (Score:3, Informative)
VSIZE (also displayed as "virt" and "VSZ") is the virtual size of the process. File mappings, video mappings, disk cache, swapped-to-disk ram is all included in this. For example, under Linux, X11 has a very large vsize because all of your videoram is included in this VSIZE.
RSIZE (aka "res" and "RSS") is the amount of physical ram your process, and your process alone, is using. This is the best indicator of ram usag
Re:Probs before PR (Score:5, Informative)
I'm going to guess that over the five days, you have opened and closed a whole bunch of tabs (probably dozens). It's a known issue in Firefox that when you close tabs, it doesnt release the memory.
See the bugzilla: bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=131456
I've had FF running for a week straight and using upwards of 200MB and only one tab open :). The only remedy is to restart FF. This has been an issue for over two years now. Dont expect it change anytime soon though, if it was a simple fix, I supppose it would have been done by now.
zerg (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, you are reporting the crash data back to the developers, right?
Re:zerg (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know if 1.0 is less stable than 1.0PR, but it's definitely not 'stable,' for me, and that's across three machines, one of which is a newly built machine.
And yeah, I've got it set to report crash data back to the developers. Hope that works. Firefox is still leagues better than IE, of course, in both features as well as stability. And speed. And beauty. Oh nevermind, this could get embara
Re:zerg (Score:4, Funny)
Re:zerg (Score:2, Insightful)
A 1.0 release is supposed to be ready for primetime, not another in the seemingly endless testing releases common to open source.
Re:zerg (Score:5, Insightful)
Are there really a bunch of people who have problems with Firefox? Without even looking at Mozilla's tech support forums, I can tell you, unequivocally, YES. When you distribute a program to millions of users, some people are going to run into problems, that's a given. But how do we know that this fella's problem is really with Firefox, and not with, say, a memory chip he installed last week? Or maybe he has some spyware installed that is screwing it up?
The REAL question that Slashdot ought to be concerned with is, Does the number of people having problems with Firefox 1.0 appear to be statistically significant? If it's not, then this whole story grossly exaggerates the problems and gives Firefox a lot of unnecessarily bad PR.
Me, I just recently reformatted my hard drive, installed Win XP and Firefox 1.0, and have not had any problems with it.
Re:zerg (Score:3, Insightful)
So, as far as I'm concerned, questions about Slashdot's responsibilities are off target.
If
No - it's you (Score:5, Funny)
Running smoothly (Score:2, Informative)
Under linux also, there are no issues, exept maybe with the mplayer-embedded plugin, but that is the plugins fault actually, experiencing the same problem with epiphany, konqueror and opera. So no, from my point of view firefox is as good as it gets!
Good as gold: XP, 2k, ME, 98SE, OS X, Mandrake (Score:2)
Presuming he's running it under MS-Windows, why should anyone be surprised? Move along, folks, nothing new to see.
Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Technically referred to as....... (Score:2)
It must be a slack day for the slashdot editors.
Really tho, this sort of thing is better reported to Mozilla.org and then they can diagnose any supposed problem.
*Then* when we know what (any given) problem is, it can be posted to the front-page of Slashdot and *that* is news
Let's just say I'm looking for patches now... (Score:2)
Re:Let's just say I'm looking for patches now... (Score:2)
Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
However, with the full 1.0 I haven't had a single crash yet, and I've been using it a lot since the first day it was available.
Nein (Score:3, Informative)
other heavy Firefox users (Score:2, Funny)
Uninstall first! (Score:5, Informative)
Cheesey Creezey!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Just what in the F*CK is going on with Slashdot???
Is there any justification what so freakin' ever this is a frontpage story? As far as anyone can tell this is about as informative and useful as 85% of the Usenet.
The quality of frontpage postings has gone down dramatically. After weeks of every story just being a heavily editorialiazed piece of crap, we now have, "Hey, does anyone elses FF 1.0 crash?".
Editors, Taco, Cowboy Neal?!? Is anyone awake here? Have we totally lost our standards?
Cripes.
Re:Cheesey Creezey!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Supposing they're not, is there any interest in the community to possibly fork Slashcode and start a new Slash-based website with the same intent but better editors?
Re:Cheesey Creezey!! (Score:3, Funny)
Like kuro5hin?
Rhetorical question (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Cheesey Creezey!! (Score:5, Insightful)
To actually answer him, you can basically just say "I agree", "Doesn't seem so here" or "I don't use Firefox". I think the point with the article is to discuss Firefox 1.0 stability, but I can't see much fun in that. It's extremely system dependant too so someone having it crash numerous times a day may just be spyware infected and have it conflict, a bad driver, or whatever.
I, like some others, suggest this:
www.mozillazine.org.
Re:Cheesey Creezey!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but Slashdot never had any standards. I've been around Slashdot as long as you in another identity, and I simply do not recall the standards you are alluding to.
Re:Cheesey Creezey!! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cheesey Creezey!! (Score:3, Funny)
Please reevaluate your post and adjust accordingly.
kthx.
Re:Cheesey Creezey!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Read his post carefully -- he has more to say than that this article doesn't interest him.
Well.... (Score:2)
Long answer: yes, although the complete results were inconclusive.
Anyone else have their battery die? (Score:5, Funny)
No problems here (Score:2)
Firefox on Panther (Score:2)
Quicktime will randomly crash and take down the browser, but that's quicktime's fault.. it does the same thing in Safari, and has ever since Quicktime 6.4
I have the flash click-to-play extension (poor little Pismo already suffers on Panther, flash just makes it worse) and the web developer extension installed.
Where you should go with these problems... (Score:2, Informative)
If you believe you have found a bug, you should search if anyone has reported that bug, and if not report it here [mozilla.org].
Sorry, but its almost offensive to see this at slashdot.
Excactly the opposite.. (Score:2)
1.0 on the other hand runs stable as a rock for me. ( both installed it on my 2 linux computers)
WORKS FOR ME (Score:2)
I wouldn't know... (Score:2, Funny)
Couldn't resist
no fatal problems (Score:2)
(Disclaimer: this is my own build from CVS.)
Browing MapQuest... (Score:5, Interesting)
-Z
I notice the same thing as in 1.0 PR... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe you're a victim of some bug that's caused by something else in your system. It sounds strange otherwise, since under normal circumstances, I don't really think 1.0 shouldn't crash "often".
Is this news?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Next off, someone will post an article saying that they wish that their graphics card was faster for HL2. Purely subjective information, and not really worth repeating.
I'm running windows and linux builds and it's running flawlessly. Check your settings.
Perhaps in an age of blogging, there's a common tendency in thinking that every single thought that crosses one's mind is worthy of becoming an article. Unfortunately, this isn't the case.
No, but I have noticed it uses CPU time randomly (Score:4, Interesting)
maybe this explains your frame loss... (Score:5, Informative)
if that bothers you, you can always use the task manager to set the process's priority to either "below normal" or "low".
however, games are memory intensive. so as a browser, which uses memory caching to be fast. when real memory is used up, "thrashing" occurs (to swap some memory pages to the disk). even adjusting task priority won't help here, since thrashing is inherently slow. whenever a web page that you leave in the background refreshes itself, the OS has to swap out a few pages of game memory and swap in memory pages for the browser. as the game continues, it needs the memory back, and the OS has to juggle around memory pages again.
if you see a periodic frame loss, then self-refreshing web pages are definitely the culprit.
This may be extension related (Score:4, Insightful)
Jesus, quit bitching about this story, people (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't throw errors to report. I'm not savvy enough to know how to get debugging information out of it, and I don't have the time to spend on mozilla forums trying to get someone's attention and then working it out.
So I won't put in the time. I don't expect the firefox people to fix it for me, given that, of course. They've already given me plenty, and it's still a great browser.
But I have been having this problem, and if other people have, too, then I'm glad to see it being discussed. Beyond hoping the problem becomes well-characterized, I think it's worth having a discussion about this because it could have implications for how OSS is perceived by the mass culture. The Firefox campaign is the biggest, most successful open source push in recent memory. Let's not act like it's heresy to talk about it here instead of in a newsgroup somewhere.
My experience... (Score:3, Informative)
i heard about this other great browser... (Score:3, Informative)
had to do what? (Score:5, Funny)
"I had to uninstall it and resort to using IE to download the full installer, again."
What, you don't know how to ftp from the prompt?
Look at the timing of this "anonymous" coward... (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe this is just a poor attempt to generate some "bad" Firefox press.
I smell a rat. Or a troll. Or both.
[*] I don't get the NYT, and I won't accept their privacy policy (thphhht!) so I have no idea if it's already come out.
The Opera web browser. (Score:3, Insightful)
I would recommend Firefox only if you have a need for 100% free software with source code and the whole shebang. But every time I tried to install and use a Mozilla based browser, I was left disappointed. Opera is definitely worth paying for.
Disclaimer: I am NOT in any way affiliated with the cool folks who make either of these browsers.
Sheesh (Score:3, Funny)
Stability, GLibc and the road back to Mozilla (Score:3, Interesting)
Improvements:
- Auto-update
- Improved search
- Skin
- Download manager
Side-effects:
- Firefox is very unstable compared to Phoenix
- The development team has started linking Firefox against glibc 2.3
The improvements are of little to no benefit IMHO:
- Auto-update is too unreliable and impractical when you're not root. It's actually quicker to do it the old-fashioned way
- Being a slightly conservative bastard who can't appreciate eye candy if it isn't female, I've never used skins.
- The improved search is an exception. The colours are handy if you're visually scanning a large document and it eliminates the window blocking your view. It's actually a bit like vim's search.
- The download manager is not very practical. It gives clueless lusers a harder time infecting their PC's, but it's "hidden" into the browser and the actions surrounding a download take more time now than ever before.
The decay which has been accompanying all this development is quite severe:
- The stability issues cause two crashes on an average day for me. Some sites actually cause crashes whenever viewed. In most cases the sites contain buggy html and javacrypt, but that should not crash the browser. Notable examples include WebCT and requested popups.
- Although most modern distros use glibc 2.3, I'm not going to switch for a while.
I've tried setting up a chroot for it, but the latest version of gcc appears to be unable to compile [gnu.org]the latest glibc.
According to the gcc maintainers this is a bug [gnu.org] in glibc.
According to the glibc maintainers this is a bug in gcc.
blah rant rave curse slap stab blam, etc
Even though there's a hack to get it working, I'm staying with glibc 2.2 until both groups have stopped trying to break eachother's code.
But there's always PLAN B. And after three hours of compiling firefox 1.0, it turns out that the degradation curve since 0.8 has not changed course.
Some common sense inhibitor snaps in my skull and I ditch firefox. Alternatives:
Konqueror toy
Dillo incomplete
Links rules my console, but it has some
inherent disabilities
etcetcetc.
But there's always the "dead" Mozilla. It turns out that Mozilla is not as dead as commonly thought.
Mozilla has become much lighter nowadays. The e-mail, news and chat is seperated from the browser package now and doesn't swallow memory anymore and it's noticeably faster than before.
It can also use extensions, block popups and evil javascript code, and some other features we've started to like about Firefox. Among the differences are a more intuitive download manager and unfortunately the old text search. But the most important differences are its much greater stability and the fact that it is backwards compatible with glibc 2.2 and possibly even older versions.
So, contrary to the mainstream momentum, I've switched back to Mozilla. Getting it working took a few mouseclicks instead of a full compile and minutes instead of hours. I live happily ever after.
If you're having nervous breakdowns with firefox, consider this move.
Steven.
Re:Good here (Score:5, Funny)
Major Issues (Score:2)
To add, Firefox is more hyped than any product M$ has ever launched.
I'll use IE right now(Never h
Re:Yes. (Score:2)
Re:FireFox not what it used to be (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Firefox disappoints? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand that inquirer letter:
The fact is that Firefox only cuts the mustard as a modern browser because of its extensions (...
Without these missing extensions (for example one called autohide which facilitates kiosk browsing), Firefox is, in my opinion, a long way behind some of the IE-based browser
Is he saying Firefox doesn't have these "missing" extensions? Or that he doesn't know how to install them? Or is he saying "if I refuse to install any of the functionality of Firefox, it doesn't have much functionality"?