Is Firefox Three Getting in Your Way of Getting Things Done?
July 17th, 2008 Oliver StarrCategories | Getting Things Done | Software
I’ve been a loyal Firefox user for almost as long as Firefox has been available to the technology community. I’ve used it on Macs and PCs and even a Linux box or two and for the most part it has been pretty good to me. The fact that it is so extensively customizable, that it had tabs before any other browser that I’m aware of and the fact that it was a product made by someone other than the “Evil Empire” all contributed to my choice to use it instead of Explorer.
Certainly it wasn’t perfect with the primary problem from my perspective being a rather persistent issue with memory leaks that ultimately forced you to restart your computer at times that perhaps you would have preferred not to, or else locked you up completely if you were a little bit unlucky. However, aside from that issue I would have to say that up until this most recent release it has been one of the best pieces of software I’ve used.
FF Three on the other hand has been making me pretty miserable ever since I made the mistake of installing it. I don’t know if it’s just me or if other people are having a similar bad time but after the success I had with the prior two major releases, I’ve been very surprised at how many bugs seem to still exist within this program. In fact, there are enough problems with it that I find myself uncomfortable using any kind of web-based application as a trusted system and will probably continue to feel that way at least until an update appears to have solved the majority of the problems that I’m having.
So what are these issues you ask?
Well, I had hoped that the memory leak issue would be the major improvement with this release. In fact, that is the principal reason why I upgraded (?) to Three in the first place. Sadly, the leak seems to be a regular fixture that has not been “fixed”. Perhaps I get a bit more runtime before needing to restart but when I look at my activity monitor on my Mac or check out what tasks are demanding the most memory on my PC I invariably see that Firefox is by far the one requiring the most resources.
Beyond this bug, however, are a number of other issues that vary from annoying to critical. On the annoying side is an issue I am having with the vertical height of the tabs. Since a picture is worth at least a couple dozen words check this out:
(You’ll probably have to click the image to see the full sized version to really see what I’m talking about here) This is Firefox the way it is supposed to look. Check the height of the individual tabs.
Now the above image shows what is happening to my installed version of Firefox Three on both my PC and my Mac after I open up enough tabs that they would occupy more than a single row. As you can see the tab height has increased. The more tabs you open the thicker the tabs become taking up more and more screen real estate as they do - which, since I use a laptop is particularly annoying.
What’s especially frustrating about this is that even when you close enough tabs that they would no longer occupy more than one row you don’t get the real estate back, the tabs stay fat. This problem doesn’t seem to be theme specific either. I have tried the default theme and four or five other themes besides but the problem seems to persist regardless of which theme I am using.
A variation of this problem also occurs with certain images. When you click an image to see a larger version of it, sometimes the height of the tabs increases to fill more than half the screen. They are so large in fact that you can’t even view the image you were looking at because the tabs obscure it. Frustrating and weird. At least when this happens closing the offending image does restore the tabs to their normal size, at least so far.
Now the last bug that I’m going to mention is the one that is the most problematic. Here, again, a picture will help explain what’s going on:
This error seems to occur any time that Firefox spawns a new window - when you click “help” while using GoDaddy for example, or any other website for that matter. You can eventually get rid of the message and continue working by clicking okay about a dozen or more times but if you keep the small window open the error will continue to pop up and interrupt your work until you finally close the window to put a stop to the irritation.
This last problem is more than just inconvenient however because about one in three times the problem seems to completely crash the browser which means that if you are using any kind of browser based application whatever it is you were working on is probably hosed unless you were smart enough to save often or lucky enough that your application saved it for you automatically.
I am wondering if I am the only one having these issues or if other people using Firefox Three are being similarly inconvenienced and paying the price by getting less done as a result. Please share your experience in the comments.
I’d be interested to know what extensions you are using. I’ve been using FF3 since it was released, and have generally been happier with it than I was with FF2.
My extensions:
Adblock Filterset.G Updater 0.3.1.3
Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5
Download Statusbar 0.9.6.3
DownThemAll!
Firebug 1.2.0b4
Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer 2.0.47.4
Google Gears 0.3.24.0
NoScript 1.7.4
Tab Mix Plus 0.3.6.1.080416
Tamper Data 10.0.4
Web Developer 1.1.6
YSlow 0.9.5b2
Ooh, look, updates!
To be fair, I still have to restart once in a while, but the symptoms that cause me to do so are much easier to handle. Instead of locking up or just crashing without warning, FF3 consumes 100% of a CPU (not as big an issue where I’m on a multi-core system). This is noticeable because the fans in my Macbook Pro spin up like it’s going to take off.
I’m currently sitting at 6 windows and ~40 tabs, too, more than a handful of which are running some web application.
As luck would have it, a new version was released yesterday. Hope it solves your problems! http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0.1/releasenotes/
Also, can’t see your pics.
Yep, can’t see the pics. Stopped reading your article at realizing you’re talking about the pics but we can’t see them
Using FF3 to, but haven’t noticed any probs with it to be honest. And I know for a fact that it adheres to the HTML standard where other browsers, *cough* IE *cough*, do not.
James, do you mean to say that you cannot see images at all in this post or that when you click an image it fails to give you the larger version?
I ask because I have checked and rechecked the images from my own machine and they appear to be fine…
Thanks,
Oliver Starr, Editor
GTDtimes.com
I think James in in the same situation I’m in — can’t see the smaller images or the larger ones.
Is everyone but me unable to see the images in this post? They are jpeg images of the firefox browser tab bar…
Editor
yep ff 3 was crashing constantly for me making it impossible to use web based apps. javacript and ajax heavy pages caused the most issues, which meant gmail users were SOL.
I think that your system is somehow screwed up. I adopted FF3 in early beta and followed it till release. It had some show stoppers in the betas, the final release was pretty stable though.
For me FF3 came with a huge productivity boost. I found the most useful thing the “awesome bar”. See http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2007/11/firefox-3-location-bar-just-became-almighty/
Regarding the image problem on your post:
The images appear as a textual link in your post.
In fact, the link renders as an image showing the filename, i.e. firefox_three.jpg. Clicking on this “image” leads to a new image containing the full path of the supposed image, i.e. http://www.gtdtimes.com/files/2008/07/firefox_three.jpg
I guess this is the fallback for broken images of your content management system…
Definitely no images - in IE you’ve got the dreaded red cross - in FF you’ve got the file name for the image
Tim, I would agree except that I am experiencing the same issues on not one but four different machines running both the OSX and WinXP operating systems.
While I would think that these issues on just a single machine would point to the machine, the fact that the problems are manifesting across multiple machines and multiple operating systems would seem to rule that out as a possibility.
Editor
FF 3 has been locking up multiple times each day. It is very frustrating. I have never had this happen before FF 3. This is really getting in the way of getting things done.
I use Safari as my primary browser, so it has taken me longer to notice than I might otherwise. Now that you mention it, though, it does seem like this version of FF is bumpier than the last. I get more hangs than I used to and today one time the back arrow for navigation ended up at this weird 10:00 angle. Anyone notice any improvement with the last update?
Oliver I think your observations make sense with multiple machines. Feels like I’ve been noticing more and more software coming out that is not ready for prime time. They just keep shoving out the door. I was just posting about that over on 43Folders.
Try RAMBack to get rid of the memory leak “feature.” It’s worked like a charm for me!
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5972
Oliver,
This is definitely an extension issue. I seem to remember an add in or script that had to do with tab multi-line wrapping causing your tab issue.
I know that FF uses a good amount of memory, but in addition to RamBack there is another extension called Cache Status that is similar to RamBack but is much more configurable. You can set limits to have it gain back your ram, etc. I think you’d be pleased with it.
I have not experienced the other issues that you stated in this post. Hopefully the pointers that I gave will help
Feel free to holler at me if you have any questions!
FF3 has frozen up on me repeatedly. I tried to let them know, but even that feature seemed to freak out and crash. I am back to using tried and true Camino for most of my web browsing, with some omniweb thrown in when I need two different systems going at the same time. Something is wrong with FF3. I can’t adjust even the size comfortably. It is a big time waste.
Lynn
I’m definitely getting more done since FF 3. Firefox will always use a lot of memory generally, but the “memory leak” issue was, I think, that the usage kept increasing far too quickly over the length of time the browser was open. FF 3 has been far better than 2.
I’d suggest disabling all your extensions and using the default theme to see if the problem disappears then. All visual weirdness that I’ve experienced in the past has been add-on or theme related. Sometimes it’s not just one that causes the problem, but a combination.
“Freezing” issues with Firefox have always been Flash related for me; I recently updated my Flash player (not from within FF, but by going to Adobe’s website)and I haven’t had any freezing since.
I live in webapps–especially Gmail. Running WinXP and Vista, FF3 repeatedly froze–like every 15 minutes. After a week I finally pulled it off and went back to FF2. My opinion: this was a botched release. You’re not alone Oliver!
I see the images just fine