WTF, Firefox?

[naomikritzer]

Dear Firefox:

You worked just fine before you upgraded yourself. Now you constantly quit working on me: all right-click attempts fail, all attempts to select from drop-down menus (either on the page, or up at the top of my window) fail, and you have to be forced to quit with the task manager. Also, you no longer play nicely with Gmail.

I am starting to really dislike you. You'd better be planning a fixer upgrade soon, or I'm going to find myself a new browser.

Comments

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Suggestion: downgrade to an older version. filehippo.com makes it easy to find older versions.

[springbok1.livejournal.com]

Are you certain that the upgraded version supports your current OS? I had an issue with a Firefox upgrade once and that was the problem (my OS was about 5 years out of date).

[naomikritzer]

My OS is allowed to upgrade itself (and does so regularly), so I don't think that's the problem.

[springbok1.livejournal.com]

I'm not talking about those little automatic updates, I'm talking about upgrading the entire OS, like from Windows XP to Windows 7. (Last I knew I think you were running XP, is that still the case?) At some point, Firefox stops supporting older OS's. Last I knew you were running a version of XP, is that still correct? If so, that shouldn't be the problem. Per their website, the current version of Firefox (3.6.3) supports back to Windows 2000, so one OS release before XP.

[naomikritzer]

I am running XP, which I still expect companies to support (given that Windows Vista was overwhelmingly rejected by nearly everyone).

The problem was apparently one of AVG's add-ons -- either safe search, or the toolbar. It's worked fine since I turned those off.

[swords-and-pens.livejournal.com]

You may also consider un-installing and re-installing it. Sometimes a clean install will fix an upgrade issue.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_contingent_/]

I would recommend against downgrading. The last few upgrades have been for security flaws which are being exploited in the wild, some of which only require you to surf across a "site" to be attacked. Remember that a "site" might be an ad or other embedded content.

Aside from reinstalling, you may also want to try updating or disabling any plug-ins or extensions you have running. Some ad-blockers, etc, are very complex and sometimes don't function well after Firefox updates.

[naomikritzer]

Yeah, I don't want to downgrade.

I only have a few plug-ins. I disabled Adblock Plus and PDF Download and thought maybe that had done it, but it did not. I reluctantly disabled AVG SafeSearch and AVG Security Toolbar; I won't know if that worked for a while yet. The only remaining plug-in is NoScript, and I am very very very reluctant to disable that one.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_contingent_/]

If you have NoScript, and you're conservative with it, it's worth more than all the rest of that list combined. Also, I run NoScript (and it's much less friendly cousin RequestPolicy) and am not having this problem.

[naomikritzer]

What do you mean by conservative?

I run NoScript even though it annoys the hell out of me on a regular basis; I figure it's less annoying than a serious malware infestation would be. I allow scripting from most legitimate corporate entities, if I need to. I allow LJ, which is maybe a bit dodgy; they've done some dumb stuff in the past. I get really, really irritated when political candidates have sites that won't load properly if you're not allowing scripts, because I don't entirely trust random political volunteers to keep malware off of sites. I usually temporarily allow it in the end, though, if I really want to see what their shtick is.

I have not run into problems since I disabled AVG SafeSearch and AVG Security Toolbar. I'm not missing the Toolbar but I do feel a little weird about not having SafeSearch. Even though I do kind of figure SafeSearch ought to be redundant if I've got NoScript running.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting. I was convinced the problem was with my computer.

[naomikritzer]

Well, _contingent_ suggests it's an add-on or plug-in. I have very few add-ons; I disabled adblock plus and PDF download, and that didn't fix it, so then I disabled AVG SafeSearch and AVG Toolbar. The only one left is NoScript. Are any of these things that you also run?

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I'm not currently running any add-ons or plug-ins, but I just installed the latest update and removed the old version from my toolbar. So far, so good.

[naomikritzer]

The latest update of what?

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

FireFox.

[cpolk.livejournal.com]

yeah i've been hating how slow, how clunky, and how unresponsive firefox is. i switched to it because it didn't suck, and now it's starting to suck.