Firefox on Macs giving people fits

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8606487@N03/523648...
Brand new core duo 24" iMac right here. Our newest hire is on it daily. Zero problems with Firefox. Works just like on Linux. Safari on the other hand is a pain with JS and RTE's.

Robert, I have yet encounter some of the problems you and many others have despite my habit of having at least 15 tabs at any given time. I am currently using v2.0.0.3.

When the problems start cropping up? did you install any plugins/extensions prior to the problems? in any case, try deleting the plist file located in ~/Library/Preferences/org.mozilla.firefox.plist and see if the issues go away.

Just in the last few days Firefox on Mac has become very flaky for me. I've disabled all but two plugins, and that helped. But that was a couple of weeks ago.

One thing could be Google Reader. I've noticed that after I have Reader up with a lot of unread items that I need to reboot Firefox to get it to be responsive again.

Yes, constant problems with FireFox on macbook. Switched to Camino.

I am having the biggest problems when I am visiting sites with flash. I have had it acting strange though and not as crisp since I loaded on 2.0.0.4

I do most of my browsing in Camino. Works just great. And to get my Online Banking to let it in (Camino's basically Gecko with a true Cocoa UI), I just change the Browser User Agent to Firefox and voila.

If there were Greasemonkey setup for Camino, I'd happily AppZap Firefox, because right now, Firefox for Mac blows. On Windows, I love it. Just not on a Mac.

I have had problems...similar to what you are talking about. It is like if I have had it open for log periods of time (which is very common) it is like it stops caching anything...and it stops showing style sheets and the like and stops opening pages.

I have to force a quit and then .. all is ok for a while. I will add that it does take a while for it to start acting up.

I've definitely had issues with FireFox on Mac.
I'm on a MacBook, Core Duo 2Ghz w/ 2GB RAM
Some of them have been:
- Watching video (YouTube for example) puts the CPU to 100%
- Text entry / tab switching is sometimes unresponsive for a couple seconds (in fact I see delays as I write this comment)

I haven't really experienced partial page loads or anything like that.
This is all on 2.0.0.4.

Not just Macs.

I've recently given up on Firefox on Vista, and grudgingly swapped back to IE7. I was just too damn flakey. I would regularly (like clockwork) freeze up for 20 seconds or so about 10 seconds after loading a new instance. So: open a new window, start browsing, FREEZE, wait wait, ok.

This is after fresh installs of Vista and Firefox. Same thing doesn't happen under XP, but in general I find the 2.0 branch of Firefox to have some nasty quirks.

When I bought a MacBook Pro in November, my first Mac in 10 years, I naturally started using Firefox for the continuity of switching my OS from Fedora. I tried Safari but the lack of plugins were a constraint. I mistakenly opened Safari two weeks ago and realized that it is 2x faster than Firefox for getting Gmail. I couldn't believe it. I spent a couple hours getting Safari functional by buying & learning Saft and Cocoa Suite, and I haven't looked back. I'm much happier with Safari using OSX. Faster, smoother, no detectable memory leaks and although I miss some plugins, I found ways to make do without them.

As I mentioned on Twitter, I don't believe it's Firefox at all; Apparently many people are having issues in 10.4.10 with Airport losing connectivity (as often as every 10 minutes intermittently), even when the Airport meter says it has a full connection:

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20070...

It may be a 10.4.10/ Airport/ WPA issue.

I am personally having this issue (Airport using WPA2), and I primarily use Safari, fwiw. No problems prior to the 10.4.10 update. I'm hoping there'll be an Airport update to fix this sooner rather than later.

I'm having problems as well. Just started a couple of updates ago (2.0.0.3 I believe) after several months without any issues. This is on a 1 year old MacBook Pro. At least once a day I'll open a new tab, type in a URL, and nothing happens. Going to other tabs and typing in a URL has the same problem. It's as if the enter key (or clicking on the arrow next to the URL) doesn't register at all. Restarting Firefox clears the problem. Occasionally the fonts don't seem to load correctly either. Again, restarting fixes the issue. This is with version 2.0.0.4.

Chris: the problem with your thesis is that Safari works just fine. Firefox is giving me fits.

I have been using Firefox on my Mac mainly because of the last of an extension architecture in Safari. At first, the flash integration was an issue but now things seem smoother. Do you know if Apple has any plans to open up safari and let developers/companies build cool extensions?

dude!


scoble my firefox is freezing up like there no torrow and its pissing me off

Nope, I just use Safari, don't need that slow loading pig called Firefox, besides, I want to be in sync with the iPhone. Safari, Safari, Safari.
;-)

I get problems with Flash and JS heavy pages, like Google Reader and Gmail. For instance, clicking on an email in Gmail in order to read it takes 1 or so seconds on a 2GHz Macbook with 2Gb RAM. Having said that, it only happens on the first message, I can then navigate through the inbox and other messages and it's fine. Flash is another matter. If there is any significant amount of flash on a site one of the cores jumps to 100% and stays there until the page is closed. Safari is fine with the exact same page.

I have had similar problems but not that bad (on my Powerbook with lots of extensions). However, I prefer Safari and don't ever have problems with it, except that it needs to be restarted about once a week to keep it running smoothly.

My wife on the other hand prefers Firefox because she is a switcher (thank God). However, she has these problems constantly on a very clean 6-month old Macbook. I purposely keep her machine free of all the Firefox and Mac extensions to make sure she doesn't have any problems, however, Firefox constantly freezes for some unknown reason (and I can usually troubleshoot most Mac issues).

I was also surprised because I hadn't heard of these problems, and so many swear by Firefox (who seem to be the same people who have problems with Safari).

Anyway, I'm glad you posted this, because I'd love to find some answers as to what the deal is with Firefox on the Mac. It doesn't act like a Mac ap (nor does it look like one).

Have you tried Camino? it's stripped down and made for Mac. It is extremely reliable, though I only use it when I run into rare problems with Safari. But it's stripped nature keeps me from using it all the time. It's Mozilla code, so I don't understand why they didn't make it compatible with the Firefox extension base. But maybe that's the problem with Firefox. As far as I can tell, many Firefox extensions seem to be cross-platform.

Robert,

Firefox regularly locks up on my Mac Mini. And I mean, routinely, without much heavy pounding.

For example, I can come back and wake up the Mini from an overnight slumber by shaking the mouse and Firefox will sit there, locked up tight as a drum.

Clicking on the Firefox icon on the dock does ZIP and my only recourse is to 'force quit' Firefox.

Very annoying, to say the least.

Is this a new problem or an existing problem you've had with Firefox? I have a Core2 Duo iMac and am grudgingly using Firefox 2.0.0.4. As with most others, I started with Firefox on XP, which was fast, clean, and fantastic. Once I got a iMac, I just instinctively loaded Firefox on it. Since then, it's been a nightmare (e.g. slow as molasses, crashes periodically - and I've reduced myself to just a few plugins) and I can't find a suitable replacement:

Safari - even v3.0 beta lacks some of the tiny knick nacks that are core to my browsing (#1 - cmd+enter doesn't put a .com on the address!)

Camino - Definitely considered a viable option, but lack of plugins definitely leaves me the creek without an oar.

Opera - I need to spend more time learning this browser, but it's still pretty slow for me.

I have an issue with Google and Firefox. If I do a search under Google, there is some kind of javascript that that pegs the CPU (I'm double threaded so the computer isn't quite dead) and then finally times out. Under IE7 or Safari, no problem. I've tried the Javascript debugger, but whatever it is, it won't even let the debugger touch it. Gmail, Blogger and other Google properties aren't an issue. And it really only hits some of the time, but when that percentage is over 50, and it is, it's a pain. But when the javascript times out and I cancel, the page is fine.

I ran into this with Greasemonkey some time ago. It was nice, but when pages where taking 10s of seconds to load with a bunch of CPU taken up, I decided to uninstall it, and things went back to snappy for me.

But I've installed it on other computers, and they never have the problems that I've seen.

YMMV

PC here BTW. Knew I forgot something.

It's a new problem. Just started in the past week.

I loved Firefox on my old PC, but it doesn't work quite the same on my new Macbook (can't get toolbar bookmarks to show up on the actual toolbar, for instance). I started using Safari and really liked it. But Safari doesn't properly support some of the websites I use (Wordpress.com, my web mail, etc.). I looked at Opera and didn't much like it, haven't tried Camino yet. Perhaps Firefox 3 will work better when it comes out.

I haven't had any problems with my MacBook Pro - maybe I'm one of the lucky ones...

The problems don't just exist on the Mac. Firefox has problems loading sites that use Analytics, and I am running Windows XP.

Also for some reason the 2.0.0.4 upgrade doesn't seem to get installed. I have noticed the upgrade dialog quite a few times in the past couple of weeks, but the upgrade has always failed up to this point.

My new MacBook Pro has hung up 20 times at least in the past few days on Firefox 2.0.0.4. It's driving me NUTS! Glad I'm among good company.

Yes, my firefox always hangs to the point that i have to hard shut down my computer. Gawd I thought it was just me...

Fix it mozilla!

I had recently put down the instability on PC & MAC down to the add-ons I used (firebug, Google Sync) but this shows that Firefox itself is unstable, for last couple of weeks I have had it lock up my Macbook at least once a day.

For something that is meant to replace IE its not good.

I ran into the same problem

http://terrychay.com/blog/article/back-to-safar...

I talked to Dru Nelson on it and he seems to think that there is something that cropped up in Firefox 2 or a patch release that causes the event loop to hang for a bit on Macs. Basically after a while, you click on a link and you just sit there with a beach ball for 6 seconds before it unlocks and loads a page.

http://www.xxeo.com/archives/2007/06/08/whats-u...

On windows, Firefox seems to leak a lot and then crash. So I guess it’s choose your poison.

Ha ha, I better not show your post to my wife since I was giving her a hard time about locking up my MacBook Pro with Firefox while I was at work. I often troubleshoot her Windows PC problems remotely while I am at the office and I am trying to wean her onto a Mac. Firefox has been throwing fits for her, but I haven't seen it myself yet so I just thought it was another episode of her and the computer not getting along :)

I better go apologize and tell her it wasn't her fault and then go try Camino or something else out now.

Yep, after it's been open for a while FF has been refusing to load stylesheets - most noticeable on flickr pages. When this happens it won't quit without a 'Force Quit'.

hmm... I haven't experienced the same frustration you had with FF on Mac, been working fine.

but I sure was glad that I wasn't on Safari when the keyboard shortcut didn't work for a few days
http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Labs-Read...

"you want me to do what? use the mouse to go to the next article?"

Yeah, I also have problems with Firefox on my mac. A couple times a day it acts as though it were disconnected from the network and refuses to load pages. I use google browser sync, and the google sync connection indicator suggests that it cannot connect.

I use Camino for almost all of my browsing because of this, and only use firefox when I need to use firebug. As soon as it's fixed I'd gladly go back to using FF since I love the plugins.

Interesting. Looks like you've lit up a firestorm here Robert. No pun intended.

Caleb (and Robert): using the Google Browser Sync extension on the Mac is a recipe for disaster. A friend and I both had it installed for months and had to frequently restart our browsers when it would refuse to render pages. We both removed the extension eventually and it solved most of the issues we both had with the browser.

Hope this helps.

Me too. This started happening AFTER I moved to 10.4.10 in OSX. Not before that.

I never really had many problems with Firefox on the Mac apart from it being a little sluggish. My main problem with FF on the Mac is the lack of Keychain integration. That's why I switched to Camino.

Yes, I've been having problems with Firefox freezing a lot lately. I'm usually running it on a MacBook Pro and often have 20+ tabs open at a time, which may be the crux of the problem. When I only have a few tabs open, it doesn't freeze as often. Also, I tend to be on a lot of sites with video and streaming audio, which adds to the frequency of the freeze. As a backup, I run Safari, which usually works well—I wish it had the same easy tab system and extensions that Firefox has, in which case I would use Safari as my primary browser.

~Cathyrn Hrudicka, Chief Imagination Officer
Creative Sage(tm)

I think Opera is damn fast, though it has a weird UI. May be quite good when you get used to it. But I've never taken the time.

This DAMN SLOW thing is the reason, why I use Firefox, not Opera, for Google Reader. It seems that Google applications is specially optimized for Gecko engine.

No troubles here with FF or with 10.4.10. I'm using the Intel-optimized 2.0.0.3 build from here.

http://www.beatnikpad.com/archives/2007/03/29/f...

Maybe it's something with 2.0.0.4?

Interesting. I'm on Vista, using FF 2.0.0.4, and it's literally the only application that gives me trouble.

Once every day or two Firefox seems to lock up or crash spontaneously.

Yeah, I've been having the same issue on my Mac (actually both of them) since installing 2.0.0.4. I wish Safari was as extensible as Firefox as it would quickly become my primary browser. Hopefully the Mozilla folk take note of this conversation and the ones on their forums and fixes it in 0.0.5

FF is spiking 95-100% of CPU usage on my Mac Mini. This just starting this week w/the application of 10.4.10. I haven't made any other adjustments to my system (e.g., no FF updates/add-ons/etc).

I'm 99% sure the issue is 10.4.10.

I have also been having all kinds of problems with Firefox on OS X. Maybe Safari 3 is coming at a good time once its more secure. :)

This page:

http://weather.unisys.com/satellite/sat_wv_east...

Always gives my Powerbook fits. Firefox under Linux handles it better, but I notice a lot of CPU going on while it does so.

There is a very longstanding performance bug/issue having to do with GIF handling, although I think it can extend to other file formats involving 8-bit color palets or something... I reported the problem years ago (when it was still Mozilla) and I still get an update on it every now and then. This seems to be an example of code that can only be fixed in one area by breaking something in another.

I also noticed that after the last update from Apple my Powerbook stopped playing certain WMA files... but then two days and a few boots later they started working again. I'd say something funny is going on with rendering in general on Apple machines (possibly exacerbated by Firefox issues).

Maybe we've reached one of those points where all the ace coders are rushing to get the next release out leaving all the maintenance issues to the apprentices. I kinda wish I'd held off on that last update, now that I've thought of that.

I can't believe I'm gonna say this about Suckfari...

Safari 3 is blazing fast. I live on Google Reader all day long and it's smoking fast. I've left Firefox 2 behind because it's just too slow and painful on my Macs these days. Seems like it recently slowed to a crawl, but rather than debug it, I fell in love with Safari 3 Beta.

*hides head in shame*

Yes, I've had FF crash at least once a day on my Mac Pro. It seems worse the past month. I'd attributed it to my recent heavy use of Google tools: Mail, Documents, Reader, Browser Sync, Notebook, etc. Having 2 G-mail windows open simultaneously seems to be a good way to hang FF for me. I should systematically test my extensions, but I rely on them heavily for my work, so I put up with it. Both Browser Sync and FF recover my sessions easily enough, but it would be nice if it didn't splat so often.

I'm having trouble with FireFox on my MacBook as well and I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one either. It's become pretty painfully lately. It crashes when quitting a fair amount of the time. Every once in awhile it stops responding to refresh requests and new page requests. Not leaving GMail open seems to have helped with the problem of other pages not loading, luckily I looked into the new Google Notifier for Mac and it now supports Premier accounts.

Anyhow, like I said, glad I'm not the only one experiencing this.

I have problems with Camino not loading the Reader interface properly. Not sure what's up with that...

Oops re: my earlier comment about Google Reader in Camino, it was more user error then anything, I hadn't updated in awhile. Just installed the new version and it's going nicely...

Same slow down and refusal to respond after web pages have been open for hours on my Mac Book Pro Core duo. The only good thing I can say about Firefox presently is that the restore function works well after it finally crashes or I force quit it. Safari is behaving much better.

You may want to try out Safari 3 beta, I've been using it for a awhile now and it seems quite a bit faster than 2, on the mac side that at least.

http://www.apple.com/safari/download/

Robert: I'd be curious to know if you've found any patterns (particular sites, usage patterns, etc) that cause problems in Firefox.

A little collaboration to find the common element makes finding the bug (and a fix) 1000X better.

May also want to try "Minefield" aka Firefox 3.0 alpha and see if you encounter the same problem. While still alpha quality (be careful) it may give you an idea if the problem has already been fixed in the next release.

Firefox is not the issue on Macs.

Macs are the problem

Apple=shit

Hey Scoble... I have noticed it slow too... so since then I have been using Webkit and it is a lot faster... I even had a problem using the email feature and I submitted a bug and they fixed it in the next release.. Any way if you are interested check it out.. http://webkit.org/

FF 2.0.0.4 on an 800MHz iMac G4 and an 1,67 PowerBook G4.

FF starts up slower than Safari and Camino but otherwise I can't recognise any of the problems discussed.

An Intel-issue (wonders the chip-analphabet)?

(I can tell you some curious stories about the Finder and iTunes on the iMac - both have become seriously slo-o-o-o-ow after 10.4.9 but the endless kernel panics the machine experienced for almost a year disappeared without a trace - but that's another story)

BonEcho/optimized Firefox/whatever you want to call it - http://www.beatnikpad.com/archives/2007/03/29/f... is the reason I still use Firefox on my Mac. I don't know how anyone can use the non-custom builds and enjoy FF on a Mac. Greatest thing since sliced bread.

Robert, I'm having the exact same problem on my old powerbook titanium G4. It developed two nights ago and it just started happening. It's not like I ran an update. Before Firefox, I tried Camino and had nothing but problems with it, frequent crashes. I'm talking like twice a day. Now I'm back to Safari (not 3.0) which actually seems to be okay. No google reader problems but I don't have nearly as many feeds as you.

Robert
is the post title correct? did you switch to a Mac?

My Mac isn't here yet (still waiting) but I can tell you that under Vista Firefox is a constant battle, some days its fine, other days it will freeze up constantly. I've even gone as far as having Task Manager open all the time so I can deal with it immediately; and thank god for session restore :-)

I love Firefox but seriously, every new version gets worse and worse. Eventually someone out there is going to build a FF alternative that natively supports FF plugins and millions will make the switch because of these issues; most ppl only stick to FF because of the addons (in my experience anyway).

I'm on XP, a 1 1/2 year old PC. I have the latest XP patches, latest Firefox update and only one plug-in (Firebug). I have no such problem, everything is smooth and I use it heavily.

I generally don't have problems with either browser on my MacBook Pro. I've probably had more problems with Safari, but Firefox can by clunky at times. I usually switch between the two browsers depending on the task at hand.

If I need to open 5 tabs with important data and ensure I won't accidentally close it and can get back to it if I do, I use Firefox. I hate it when Safari "unexpectedly quits" and takes 30 minutes of web research with it. If I run anything with flash or javascript, Firefox has proved more reliable for me. Safari, on the other hand, blasts past Firefox on Google Reader and everyday surfing. I've never experienced the DAMN SLOWNESS of which you speak ;-).

I used to have problems with FF, Camino and Safari on Google Reader all the time. I usually have Reader running as one of 3 table that I use all day and I never shut my MacBook Pro down, just put it to sleep as I go back and forth between place. I just figured that having it open forever was causing the issue and would just close the Reader tab, reopen it, and I'd be good for a couple more days. I tried the Safari Beta and have not seen this at all and have had pretty much nothing but positive things to say about the beta, so I now use the Webkit nightlies and life has been pretty sweet.

I think Apple finally nailed it.

I use FF 1.07 on my Mac G4 Mini about 80% of the time and it's great; Safari the rest of the time. I "upgraded" my wife's Intel MacBook to FF 2and it was AWFUL . Super slow. I had to downgrade her.

I wonder if all the f***ing Flash ads everywhere might be part of the problem. FF 2 for XP "sticks" pretty often when you try to leave a tab with flash content running.

I think Safari for Windows may prove to a Good Idea, after all-- but I'd still like to FF fixed up.

Hey Robert,

You've likely gotten a truckload of comments -- I'll add mine here. I'm a Google Reader fanatic and a browser snob (of a sort). Very particular about what I use.

Firefox leaks memory like no tomorrow. I'm off of it on the Mac, though I love it on the PC.

For the Mac, I use the latest nightly build of WebKit for my general browsing and use Camino for Gmail, Docs, Calendar and Reader. The Google Metaverse.

I've found WebKit to be VERY fast running JavaScript -- almost as fast as Camino, which beats every other browser insofar as performance for JavaScript-based "Web 2.0" apps on the Mac.

Use Camino for your Google apps -- you'll be VERY happy. Gmail takes a bit to load the first message composition window, but thereafter is quick.

While Safari/WebKit 3.0 seemed to be fast with Google Apps, and GReader in particular, there are a number of quirks which make it unusable for me. One is that if you keep using "N" to move down through your posts, once you get to a post beyond the visual range of your window (vertically), Safari won't start scrolling the main GReader window. BAD.

Oh, and if using Safari, be sure to download Inquisitor. The ability to do previews of searches and search shortcuts is AMAZING. A must have for performance.

Another thumbs up for Camino. There are still a few features I miss from Firefox (see http://www.digitalhobbit.com/archives/2007/06/1...), but the 1.5 version has come a long way. I use it as my standard browser on the Mac now and almost wish there was a Camino version for Linux, where I've had serious stability issues with Firefox recently...

Yes, I agree, Firefox could do a better job. I have similar problems on my Gentoo-Linux with Firefox 2.0.0.4

I must be a freak. I use the latest FF 2.0.x on my iMac (Core2duo) and surf lots and lots o sites. It's very stable, and leaks less memory than FF 2 on XP. I've observed (though not scientifically) that the FF 2 memory leak is less of a problem on Vista than on XP? Anyway, bottom line, FF 2 on Mac OS X 10.4.x has been rock-solid for me.

Gone off Firefox in the last few weeks on my Mac, but I still use it on my PC. I use Camino on the Mac, and it's very fast and stable. Started to mess about with Safari recently as well after not using it at all since I got my Mac (Jan) and it's not as bad as I thought it was initially. In fact I'd say it's almost as quick as Camino.

Yeah, FF leaks memory all over the place and slows down massively. I recently switched to Safari 3 Beta + Saft + Inquisitor and I'm mostly happy (I miss the Stylish and Firebug extensions, but it's not a huge thing). I have to say, I find Safari much faster for GReader than FF even though they broke keyboard shortcuts under Safari for about a week recently. Maybe you should try Safari 3?

Robert, on behalf of Opera Software I'd like to formally invite you to try the Opera browser on your Mac. :)

Daniel
Opera Software

For me FF on Win is a memory hog... with 4 tabs open, it shoot up to 1GB+. Also, once in a while it spikes up the CPU to near 100%. Thats when I have hit the kill switch.

Perhaps it's just a feeling - but It certainly seems like FF has been resource hog. Sometimes I will be blogging with several tabs open - and wordpress just doggs in it. I kind of have the funny balance of Safari and FF at the same time. FF runs most web 2.0 stuff better - but safari can have a bunch of tabs open without jamming the system.

Wow what a grumpy old coot...

hey i have a question. how do you change the header picture to your own with out cropping it.

Beware Camino; it crashed on me on a regular basis (system 10.3.9 here). FF on my Mac works like a dream most of the time. I agree about Safari; it makes me feel like I'm on dial-up, and I have DSL. It also caches everything so you have to constantly refresh if you visit pages which change regularly, like blogs or messageboards.

Setup: iMac DV SE 400Mhz, 1 gig RAM, Tiger 10.4.10. I had Firefox 1.5, liked it, fast, reliable. Went to 2.0.0.4 and MY GOD, what a slow dog FF turned into (I have dialup, can't get hi-speed, which REALLY compounded my frustration). Thought about going back to 1.5, but, after research, installed Camino. UNBELIEVABLE. Faster than a speeding bullet! No crashes! Camino, I love you. Don't do whatever Firefox did. Stay lean. Stay mean. Stay fast! I'm telling all my friends.

Ditto. FF is much slower than it used to be. Tends to go belly up if I open more than a few tabs. Something changed.

Right! After several sessions of multiple pages/multiple tabs, FF slow down to an unbearable drag. Right-clicking, I had to wait and wait for the context menu, then after clicking a selection, had to wait and wait for the menu to close, then wait for the command to execute. Sometimes twice a day I'd had to quit FF then relaunch. FF would go back to being fairly fast, for a very short while.

So, so long, Firefox!! A sad end to what started out as a passionate love affair...

FYI: All this with a plain-jane 2.0.0.4--no extensions, no themes added.

Safari Beta 3 all the way. Keyboard navigation is fixed for Google Reader and the scrolling is so much faster then Firefox. The flash video still escapes the browsing area on Google Reader but it is a minor annoyance.

Oh, and about the fonts in Firefox 2.0? Safari generates much more readable web pages!

If you try the latest WebKit nightly, you'll see that even the Flash clipping problems in Google Reader have been fixed.

@Chris Kelly: AHA! I thought I was going nuts myself, with my MBP recently having really dodgy wireless networking. I gave my poor IT admins a hard time as well ;)

I have a year old MBP17 and from day one, Safari has been blazing - noticeably faster than freshly installed Firefox. I know most people love Firefox for the extensions but I don't have much use for them and if you get a bit carried away it *really* slows down the browser. Anyway, Safari has been my browser of choice on OS X for the last year with the only complaint being that if I accidentally miss the "w" and land on "q" with the Apple button down, it makes my blood boil for about 30 seconds. Apparently this will be "resolved" in Safari 3, at which point I will have to say it is near perfect. Safari == f a s t browsing.

I've been using Firefox trouble free until the last upgrade. Now It hangs
forever on certain pages like an e-commerce site I regularly update.
I have to use Safari for this now. I'm not sure what's causing this.

I'm using an Macpro Quad 2.6 Machine running OS X 10.4.10.


Jan

Robert,

I'm not sure why you're experiencing slowness with Safari. On my PowerBook G4 (no MacBook here yet), Google Reader flat-out screams in Safari. The only reasons Safari isn't MY browser of preference is that are still some sites it won't load or at least load properly that Firefox handles fine and there are two plugins I rely on in Firefox for site development that have no equivalent in Safari.

For everyday browsing experience, Safari seems faster and superior in many other ways to Firefox.

(BTW, anecdotal evidence suggests that when Firefox starts misbehaving, restarting it will often recover. I suspect they've got one or more nasty memory leaks in that sucker.)

Dan

The official FF2.0.0.4 sucks. It has well documented HORRENDOUS memory issues. The thing to do is look at the private builds and find one optimised for your system: http://www.furbism.com/firefoxmac/ is a good starting point.

Addendum: I should mention that Safari is the better bet, not least because it renders text properly, unlike FF, which is abysmal in this regard. But I'm a webbie and can't do without the Dev Toolbar, Firebug, Tidy etc.

I have a PC not a Mac but oddly enough, just these last couple of weeks, Firefox has been hanging on me too. And it's not only pages within Fox - my ENTIRE PC has been slowed down. Everything freezes for a minute or two at a time, I can move the mouse but nothing happens on clicking, can't use the keyboard, occasionally it beeps at me, i.e. the classic freeze really.

I disabled all my extensions, still got the same problem. Firefox subjects everything on my PC to the occasional (but far too frequent) freeze when it's open - except if it's open on a blank page and nothing else, which is no good is it. When I shut down Fox, or close all pages on it but leave it open, everything else on my PC starts working again.

It's been driving me nuts. If I can get my fave Greasemonkey scripts to work on Opera (I can't yet), I'm giving up and switching to Opera. I've already had enough of unresponsive script problems, and increasing dom.max_script_run_time didn't help (I think I narrowed it down to a recent extension).

Point is, once upon a time Fox was a speedy, useful tool. Now...?

[... People tend to talk about how crappy Microsoft's products are but I don't see much of talking about Firefox being such a crappy thing on a Mac as it is (well at least Scoble made it public), but sadly as it is Safari is even worst so we are sticked to it... or how pathetic the tab management is... Firefox is just a good browser as IE used to be, with IE7 Microsoft tried to get its act a bit together but there is still lots of room for improvement ...]

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@Improbulus - I second all of that. FF2 slows down my whole system, and although BonEcho (a developer build of FF2.0.0.5) is slightly better, and has about half the official FF2 memory footprint, it's still pretty poor. I'm just waiting for Opera to catch up on the extensions side and then I'll switch.

@Aljuk - I think it's definitely down to something up with Firefox 2.0.0.4 lately (or more likely its interaction with some other commonly used software).

The good news is that, on my XP system at least, I've found that reverting to version 2.0.0.2 has done the trick, see http://www.consumingexperience.com/2007/07/fire..., so I'm now sticking to that despite the security issues. I'd be interested to know if Mac users who try reverting to 2.0.0.2 also find relief.

I may try 2.0.0.5 when it's officially released to see if it's better, but as you say it now seems to be a question of waiting for Opera to catch up on extensions.

I never took to Opera fully because the cookie control wasn't as good or as easy as I'd like - if they'd sorted that out early on I might never have tried Fox. Opera's improved on the cookie front since, but I'd still want to be able to batch delete selected cookies e.g. through checkboxes or even Shift or Ctrl-clicking to select them (it's too painful doing it individually), before I'd be willing to fully switch to Opera.

If only Firefox can reverse what now appears to be a slow but increasing slide towards IEdom.. (shudder).

Sorry the link I posted had a stray comma at the end which stopped it working - it's http://www.consumingexperience.com/2007/07/fire...

i have a powerbook G4 and when i close the lid with firefox actively running, the computer is frozen when i wake it up again. the mouse moves, but i can't get out of firefox. not even with force quit.

i've removed the firefox folders from application support. the problem still happens. any thoughts on what i can do to stop it?

thanks.

I've been doing a lot more research and experimentation in the past couple of weeks. I stuck with the BonEcho FF2 builds for a while, but to be honest they're not much better than the official app, and their support for embedded media is flaky to say the least, with lots of crashes and hangs. I've also tried out the FF3 alpha and the developer nightly builds of it, and it's just as slow as FF2, although the text render is a LOT better. Safari 3 is just as slow. But then someone reminded me of Camino, which I haven't used for ages. What a result. It boots in a couple of seconds, uses only a percentage of the RAM and CPU of FF and is WAY quicker. It's a breeze to import your FF bookmarks too. I'm sticking with it for now, but it doesn't support del.icio.us extension, nor StumbleUpon, and there's no developer's toolbar of course... However, it does support 1PassWd. I hope FF improves to the point of being usable again, but if my experience of FF3 so far is anything to go by, I think I may have a long wait ahead.

@Mara - maybe try hiding or minimising it first?