Jane, lead writer at Jane Talks Tech! is a self-taught photographer and blogger enthusiastic about computer software & whatever else catches her ire or fancy. Follow her on Twitter @janetalkstech or subscribe to Jane Talks Tech!
Okay, here's a rant: I'm thisclose to switching to Google Chrome from Mozilla Firefox. As a matter of fact, I would switch if not for the fact that Chrome was responsible for me having to reformat my computer several weeks ago (seriously), I would. However, I'm writing this post because I think I may have the culprit. Caveat: Umm, I know zilch about the innards about web applications, but I can, at least, run unscientific 'tests' to narrow down the source of such crashes. Here are the various issues:
- When Bitdefender Internet Security 2009 received an update, the antiphishing toolbar for Mozilla Firefox caused Firefox to crash and it even triggered Windows Data Execution Prevention (DEP). So, the solution to this after scouring message boards & Google was to disable the antiphishing toolbar as quickly as I could before DEP kicked in.
- Now, my latest firefox issue is sometimes when I simply open Firefox, it crashes instantly. This actually reminds me of Hunter Cressel's rant about macs where he talks about how it's really easy to shut down? Yes, that's exactly my experience with Firefox 3.0.4 these days. I think I need to make a movie titled: "A day in the life of Firefox 3.0.4". Well, the point (sort of) of this post/rant was to identify (maybe) a culprit in my Firefox crashes: Facebook.
- Yes, Facebook. I never put two and two together before, but my latest crash was the last straw. For a while now, I haven't been able to use the "Take a Photo" or "Make a Video" feature of Facebook and that was a minor inconvenience. Now, sometimes, merely opening the login page for Facebook causes Firefox to instantly shut down. Am I alone in this phenomenon of having Facebook crash my Firefox installation?
Well, I'm putting the last crash report I submitted to Mozilla thanks to the Crash reporting feature built into firefox. Quick tip: You can see all the reported crashes in Firefox by typing "about:crashes" into the address toolbar!
| Details | |
| Signature | @0x6e63fe39 |
| UUID | 5f195df8-f87f-4c18-9b95-b84e02081121 |
| Time | 11/21/2008 18:10 |
| Uptime | 80 |
| Last Crash | 113884 seconds before submission |
| Product | Firefox |
| Version | 3.0.4 |
| Build ID | 2008102920 |
| Branch | 1.9 |
| OS | Windows NT |
| OS Version | 6.0.6001 Service Pack 1 |
| CPU | x86 |
| CPU Info | GenuineIntel family 6 model 23 stepping 6 |
| Crash Reason | EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION |
| Crash Address | 0x6e63fe39 |
1
marinus
Bang on! I switched from Opera because they're in denial about their wretchedly inadequate widgets. Well, instability is Mozilla's equivalent.
I disliked Opera's lack of Adblock Plus, Downthemall etc. etc. [etc!], but it never crashed. Never, as in 5 years of weekly use.
Firefox crashes like a amnesiac epileptic who can't remember to take his/her meds. By "crash" i include opening it only to discover that it has lost all my bookmarks, some extensions, and scrambled settings generally. Currently it's doing one of those at least once a week.
I'd love FF to add Opera's Zoom-to-Fit and lovely hideable scrollbars, but even more i'd love them to put a moratorium on new features, so they can focus on stabilizing its core. But....
Posted at December 9, 2008 on 11:15am