I am disgusted with Firefox, and thinking of dumping it. A few days ago I downloaded Firefox 4, and ever since, it has been a nightmare of constant freezes and endless glitches.
“Support” says that Google is making it freeze. Others say Firefox needs to be uninstalled and redownloaded and reinstalled. (I did the latter and it made very little difference). I don’t really care what the experts say; I just want Internet. What the hell is going on? You would almost think there was a conspiracy to make the Internet harder. I don’t have time for all this crap. Endless freezes, endless popups, endless waiting for the damn unwanted ad sites to load, with the result being speeds as slow as the dialup I used to hate back in the 90s.
It is obvious that the once valuable Firefox has gotten too big for its britches, and become like the Internet Explorer to which it was once an alternative.
Any ideas about which Internet browser is best?
MORE: Firefox 4 is a disaster.
Comments
26 responses to “Nothing lasts forever”
I don’t know what you’re talking about. Install the Adblock Plus addon and most of that goes away.
It’s not Firefox that’s the problem, it’s the 30 or so ad servers that every page wants to load that are causing the hangups.
I’ve had zero problems with FF, but I’ve never done anything without Adblock.
Until Opera, IE, or some other browser gets the ability to block the virus-infested overloaded ad servers, I’m sticking with FF.
Your’re whining tonight, eric.
It’s not attractive.
Try the adblock first – Brian may be right (my anti-virus does ad blocking so I don’t know).
Or uninstall it and re-download 3.6.17 and re-install that.
I’d advise backing up your bookmarks and other settings first, just in case.
I have Firefox and have refused to upgrade. I use Opera as my main browser.
I’m not an early adopter. New stuff mostly breaks old stuff.
The comments show that Fire Fox is the problem. One should not have to jump through all the recommended hoops just to make Fire Fox run.
I run it on Mac, and it is unstable. It crashes about once a day when I click on a new tab. I’ve gotten so sick of it that I often run Safari, although my impression is that Safari is slower.
This morning I’m giving Fire Fox one last chance. If it crashes again, I will delete it from my computer.
Try Google Chrome. I’ve been very happy with it so far.
I use FireFox 4.0 on a Win 7 Box and have had zero problems – other than bookmarking all tabs (I like to run with 50 or 80 open). But there is a fix for that.
I don’t use AdBlocker.
I do like to set the cache for 500 MB and empty it when it gets around 200 to 300 MB.
One other trick: disable auto refresh. It fills the cache.
What happened to “previous entry” and “next entry” buttons?
And the commenting software changes me from M. Simon to Simon. I wonder if it is aware of the rest of my aliases?
Very interesting… I upgraded to Firefox 4.0, and it runs faster and smoother for me. Then again, I’m also still using XP on my desktop machine. Sorry to hear you’re experiencing problems!
brian “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Install the Adblock Plus addon and most of that goes away.”
WTF do you mean? If the only thing that’s changed is the version of Firefox that he’s using, then clearly there is something wrong with Firefox.
Yes, interesting. I upped to FF 4 on XP Pro, and it seems fine. No faster than before, but it no longer just vanishes like my last vsn 3 did repeatedly.
Buyer: Dear Ford, there is something terribly wrong with the 2011 Ford Exploder. The windshield breaks every time an insect hits it. I’ve had to replace the radiator three times due to perforations from gravel. And I’ve been robbed twice because the door locks can be picked by any fool with a bit of wire.
Ford: Silly consumer, there’s nothing wrong with the car. It’s just as excellent as the previous years’ models–better, even. You just need to buy the Ace Windshield Protector, and the Handy-Dandy Underbody Shield. And keep a doberman in your car to prevent theft. See? You really have nothing to complain about.
I know software engineers who are disgusted with Firefox 4.0, which is why I’m still on 3.x.
March was hell month for me. Trojans, re-directs, viruses, if they made it, I had received it.
Most of the problems were generated through my continued reliance upon programs that were obsolete, but still worked. An old Mozilla for web browsing and e-mail. An old version of JAVA.
Since then I’ve updated SP3, uninstalled JAVA and re-installed JAVA, dumped Opera and Mozilla, and am currently running Firefox 4 and Thunderbird. I tried Chrome, had immediate re-direct issues, uninstalled it and never looked back.
Happy Motoring!
.
I just installed the adblock tool and it’s Awesome, I usually load 5 tabs at a time
and boy was it quick, try it before you toss FF,
Bob
I installed based on the comments here 🙂
The “Ford Exploder”? Is that another name for the Pinto?
You could give Pale Moon a try.
Yes, Google Chrome. Small footprint on the screen, fast operation, simple interface.
I use AdBlock with Firefox . I have not had problems.
[…] since that debacle, I’ve been leery of Version 4 of anything, and that includes Firefox. Eric Scheie says there’s a very good reason for that particular aversion: A few days ago I downloaded Firefox 4, and ever since, it has been a nightmare of constant freezes […]
stop trying to be cooler-than-thou. i use IE9 and it works just fine.
Opera. Hands down. Never had a single issue except a few sites that are written to IE standards as if nothing better existed.
Give it a try. They invented tabbed browsing. Easy two-click changing of the main privacy settings. Nobody is as easy as Opera.
Added bonus: Nobody bothers writing exploits.
I was experiencing frequent lock ups and crashes with FF 3.6 a while back. I rebuilt my Firefox profile and the problems went away. Being using FF 4 on Win7 x86 and haven’t had a single problem so far.
It’s a common problem and you can google for ‘Rebuild firefox profile’ to get numerous instructions on where and which files to copy over from your corrupt FF user profile to the new one.
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