Firefox 3.03 randomly freezes - does this happen to you?

[Deja Q]

IE (32- or 64-bit) is stable, but FF3.03 will sometimes hang after clicking on a link; forcing FF to shut down and re-start.

Often happens when I'm on youtube, but happens on other sites I know don't include videos.

I've disabled both plugins (adblock, noscript) and the problem remains.

Vista 64-bit OS.

Has this freezing happened to you?

[CK_John]

1. I would check cache size in advance tabs, default is only like 50M. I use 400MB. n/t

[Deja Q]

10. Thx...

I upped it to 100MB, for now, and will see how things progress...

[trotsky]

2. Yes, I have had that happen.

32-bit Vista.

[RoyGBiv]

3. Current version is 3.04

Many crash bugs were fixed.

This could, however, be a problem with flash material, youtube or not. Not all flash content is video. In fact most of it isn't.

[charlie]

5. I'll second that

Flash has figured one way or another in every set of problems I've had with Firefox since... nearly forever. The two perennial problems are random CPU racing and socket commandeering.

With the current iterations of Firefox and Flash, the CPU racing will eventually abate, so now I can just wait it out. I couldn't always do that before.

As for the socket commandeering -- that's when pages other than the Flash page have their fetch cycles stretched into looong seconds or even minutes -- the weird solution is to switch to another page. In other words, when the loading page loses focus, it resumes full speed.

To make things worse, those problems can be compounded by different instantiations of Flash. For example, among video players, YouTube doesn't cause trouble beyond the two mentioned above. But, there are other video sites I won't even try to access -- like Break, 5-minute, or CNN -- because they're guaranteed misery. Whatever their developers are doing, my browser HATES it.

I think Flash is finishing that inevitable transition from lean and useful to unwieldy pig monster.

[RoyGBiv]

7. Agreed ...

It's enough to make me give Silverlight/Moonlight a chance < ... URP ... >

Sorry ... threw up in my mouth a little there.

Flash under Linux, especially 64 bit, is its own special kind of hell. It's fun to watch the CPU monitor peg out and the process list grow defunct processes that are nonetheless consuming CPU cycles.

The socket problem is what I most typically experience, FWIW.

[Jazzgirl]

11. LOL!!

Silverlight isn't that bad especially with your computer knowledge.

[RoyGBiv]

12. Eh ...

Silverlight doesn't bother me in and of itself. For the end-user, it's really no different than Flash.

What annoys me about it is the lock-out for non-Windows systems and how it's being used as a marketing device for Microsoft. I *really* don't want Microsoft in charge of all the multimedia content on the Internet. Of course, I'm not all that jazzed about Adobe having it either. Anyway ... it's not the software itself really.

Now, Moonlight, the opensource version ... what garbage this is ... and always will be given the nature of what Silverlight does. You can install a perfectly working version of Moonlight, but it has no multimedia support.

Let me say that again. Moonlight has no multimedia support.

And so the point is???

Seriously, you can compile it from source, and if you've installed the codecs on your system that provide the multimedia, it's fully functional. But, it's a pain in the ass. (Disclaimer: This may have changed lately. I dunno as I gave up on it since sites requiring Silverlight/Moonlight are few and far between. If I run across one I really want to see, e.g. NBC for the Olympics, I just load up Windows in a VirtualBox and go.)

For the sake of fairness, Flash is a pain in the ass too, just not to the same degree ... so far.

[Redneck Socialist]

4. Yeah, I'm having the same problem.

Running 3.0.4 here.

[Deja Q]

9. I upgraded to 3.0.4 --

problem still continues, but sometimes corrects itself after a delay.

[Jazzgirl]

6. Have you tried upgrading Flash?

n/t.

[Deja Q]

8. I had.

:(

As new versions come out I will be an early adopter...