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Firefox GripesFirefox is a free web browser for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and other OSs |
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April 10, 2007 Top 10 Firefox extensions to avoid in ComputerWorld. By Peter Smith. Just because an extension is popular doesn't mean it belongs in your Web browser.
January 15, 2008.
Gregg wrote to remind me of another long-standing Firefox gripe - it can be "unresponsive while downloading any and all
content including the web page itself, MP3s, scripts, etc., but the stop button doesn't work during this period.
The result is that the only way to cancel (or recover in a reasonable time in the case of an unresponsive server) seems to be to a) wait a potentially long time, b) kill the app." I briefly watched Firefox with Process Explorer and it is, to
some extent at least, multi-threaded. My guess is there is a coding bug that prevents taking control away from one
tab and giving it to another.
December 7, 2007.
This has bugged me for a long time - why so many numbers in the version number? This version of Firefox should be
2.11 rather than 2.0.0.11. The next one, after all, is version 3.
This too has bugged me for a long time. When printing, I often don't print an entire web page, rather I first do Print Preview and then pick and chose the pages I want to print. Printing anything other than the entire page requires manually typing in page numbers. At times, I would rather do it just with the mouse. There needs to be a mouse way to change the page numbers being printed.
July 25, 2007. Windows XP. I have been using Firefox on the same computer for many hours for many months. Shortly after upgrading to this release it did something it had never done before - twice. It just disappeared. It has crashed before, but Windows caught the crash, told me about it and asked if I wanted to submit data about the crash to Microsoft. No more clean crash. Now it is there one second and gone the next. And no error is generated on the any of three system logs.
July 25, 2007. Windows XP. Firefox can not print the news articles at arstechnica.com. The problem has something to do with frames - it seems unable to print a frame on multiple pages. If the frame does not fit on a single page, Firefox does not print the bottom part. IE6 prints these pages badly, but at least it does print them in their entirety.
May 16, 2007. Not freeing ram. I was using a single instance of Firefox for a long time and had viewed many pages with it and had many tabs open. When done, I was displaying a single web page and Firefox was using 90MB of ram (Working Set as reported by Process Explorer). I shut down Firefox, restarted it and brought up the same page. This time, Firefox was using 30MB of ram.
March 20, 2007. I went to remove the cookies for one web site but instead I clicked on the Remove All Cookies button and it did it, without asking for confirmaton. This is too easy a mistake to make, Firefox should ask for confirmation before removing all cookies.
March 16, 2007. Another old gripe has to do with the download folder. Some instances of Firefox display the folder where files are downloaded to in the download window at the bottom. Other copies of Firefox, such as the one on my main computer, do not show the name of the download folder.
March 2, 2007. Printing still stinks. This is a classic Firefox gripe that just hit home. I started a new blog at blogger.com and Firefox is incapable of printing it. When printing a single, long posting, the page heading is alone on the first page and the beginning of the posting is on the second page. The end of the posting doesn't print at all. IE version 6 prints the blog just fine.
March 2, 2007. Firefox was unresponsive while downloading an MP3 file. I couldn't type characters into the address bar. As soon as the download finished, Firefox was back to normal.
February 27, 2007. While running version 2.0.0.1, I was notified that there was a new version a few times over the last few days and each time opted to ignore the update. After a few days, I said yes and restarted Firefox to get version 2.0.0.2 installed. Fine. Except that this cycle repeated again, after version 2.0.0.2 had already been installed.
January 31, 2007. I keep a shortcut to Firefox in the Windows XP Quick Launch toolbar on the taskbar. This lets me both open it with a single click instead of two and force it to open in a full size window (using the Run Maximized option of the shortcut). With version 2.0.0.1, Firefox no longer opens maximized.
January 13, 2007. Way back, I had griped that when viewing the source code
Firefox uses a read-only application. I prefer IE which uses Notepad because I
can make updates to the source right there. A reader of this page said that it
is possible to have Firefox use Notepad for source code viewing. First, enter
"About:config" in the address bar. Then change these configuration
options:
view_source.editor.external set to True
view_source.editor.path set to c:\winnt\notepad.exe
December 6, 2006. The circle of circles in the top right corner is no longer
a live link to Mozilla.
Update: January 13, 2007. A reader of this page mentioned the Throbber
Button extension that lets you make this "activity indicator" a
live link to the website of your choice.
Still no Print Preview button. Is it so much to
ask?
Update: January 13, 2007. A reader of this page mentioned the Print
Preview extension that adds a Print Preview button.
December 6, 2006. Windows XP SP2. I'm finally moving up to version 2 of Firefox, so I go to uninstall version 1.5.0.8. But I can't. It is not in the Windows Add/Remove programs applet in the Control Panel. Mozilla Thunderbird is there. I checked the list again and again. It's no there, but Firefox has been running just fine. The install of version 2 ran fine. Perhaps this problem was somehow related to the fact that I manually un-installed all my extensions first?
September 11, 2006. Many releases back I griped about the small amount of data shown by Firefox when you hover over an HTML element with a long Title tag. This is still true, and I really noticed it today at Yahoo Sports when hovering over the Top Headlines. For example, below is an HTML snippet from a baseball story at Yahoo:
| <a href="/mlb/xxxxxxxx" title="Derek Jeter keeps hitting, and the New York Yankees continue to win. It's no coincidence. Jeter extended his career-high hitting streak to 20 games, going 2-for-4 with a homer and four RBIs to lead New York over the Baltimore Orioles 9-4 Sunday. Jeter hit a double in the first inning and gave the Yankees a 5-0 lead with a two-run homer in the third.">Jeter's hit streak reaches 20, Yanks win</a> |
When hovering over this link, the last word Firefox displays is
"coincidence".
Update: This is a known bug: Long tooltips should wrap instead of being cropped
(multiline tooltips). Also, there is an extension that can help with this
problem. Popup ALT Attributes
displays ALT tags as pop-ups and shows full, multi-line tooltips. Thanks, David.
I have not used this extension. October 12, 2006.
August 31, 2006. As has been true seemingly forever, the status bar is not in synch with the current window when there are multiple tabs/pages open.
August 31, 2006. After downloading a file, I always leave the download window open (you can see it any time with Tools -> Downloads). A long standing gripe was that to open the folder where the newly downloaded file resides, you had to know the secret handshake (right click on the line for the file and select Open Containing Folder. From the start this should have been visible, not hidden. I use Firefox on many different computers. On some machines, there is a link to open the default download folder at the bottom of the window (to the left of the Clean Up button). Other copies of Firefox however, don't have this link. I don't know what causes this.
July 30, 2006. Firefox has a number of rules/restrictions you can put on cookies (Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> Cookies tab). One option is to allow cookies "for the originating site only". This does not work. On a new installation of Firefox I turned this option on, then went to a web site with many ads. Cookies were placed on the computer by many advertising web sites which I did not visit. I tested this a few times. The companion option "unless I have removed cookies set by the site" seems to work.
July 19, 2006. Firefox can not print this article in Information Week magazine by Fred Langa. It is a long article, but Print Preview says it will print only two pages and the second page is blank. At first, Print Preview in IE is also wrong (it shows scrollbars), however, IE has an option to print only the selected frame and this works fine.
July 6, 2006. Firefox can automatically check for new versions of your installed extensions. Fine. My gripe however is that it doesn't tell you when there is a new version. If you remember to do Tools -> Extensions then it will tell you. There should be some indicator on the toolbar that an update is available without my having to remember to check.
June 23, 2006. Every now and then a web page will not scroll. That is, it fails to respond to PageUp/PageDown or the cursor up and down key.
June 11, 2006. I installed a new HP 1320 printer on my XP SP2 computer. Now Firefox can't print.
This happens on every web site. Other applications such as Notepad, Word and Internet Explorer print just fine. The page margins in Firefox are the same ones by IE. At first they were smaller. In addition, clicking on the Properties button in the Print dialog does nothing. No properties pop-up and no error message. The printer is an HP 1320 using a PCL version 6 driver. The printer is connected on a "DOT4" type port. I found a drastic solution by Googling: totally wipe out all traces of Firefox and start again. That fixed the problem. Specifically:
This fixed the problem but was a bit drastic as I lost my toolbar customizations, saved passwords, extensions, bookmarks and download history. I copied bookmarks back, they are all in a single file called bookmarks.html. I don't know how to copy saved passwords. June 24, 2006. On the same computer Thunderbird would also not print, spitting out the same unknown error message. Irfanview would also not print, in fact the initial print dialog never appeared. Printing a test page works just fine. IE and Word and Notepad have worked fine all along. |
April 25, 2006. I have a lot of Bookmarks. With prior versions of Firefox it took a good few seconds for
them to load after clicking on "Bookmarks". IE never had this
problem, even with huge amounts of Favorites. Starting with version
1.5.0.2 there are times when my Bookmarks never load and I have to click on
"Bookmarks" a second time. It's not just that they load slower,
they fail to load at all.
Update: May 17, 2006. This problem has disappeared with version
1.5.0.3.
Update: June 1, 2006. With version 1.5.0.4 my bookmarks continue to
appear instantaneously. :-)
Firefox bookmarks are stored in a file called bookmarks.html
in
C:\Documents and Settings\userid\Application
Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxx.default
On my computer, this file is 582K. Opening it in a text editor shows
that graphics files are embedded inside it.
April 16, 2006. The firewall rules have changed. After the upgrade from 1.5.0.1 to 1.5.0.2 Firefox started requesting access to real IP addresses when it was started, despite the fact that my copy of Firefox starts with a blank page. Previously Firefox only needed outbound access to 127.0.0.1, which is always the computer it is running on. Today it wanted to access 192.185.2.106 for DNS (port 53) and if I told ZoneAlarm not to allow it, then Firefox could not access any web sites (this was not a networking problem, IE was running fine). From the research I did, this doesn't seem to be a valid public IP address.
The pattern continues, but it seems that each time Firefox starts it is trying to access a different IP address. Every time, the access is for DNS and the IP addresses are not that of the DNS server(s) of my ISP. A sampling of the IP addresses it has tried to connect to in order to display the initial blank page.
I haven't discerned a pattern, but it may be trying to access the last web site visited. Maybe it's an extension? The upgrade to 1.5.0.2 installed the Talkback extension without asking me or telling me. I uninstalled it, but the pattern continues. Next I un-installed the DOM Inspector, but again, the pattern continues. Turns out the SiteAdvisor extension was the problem. For whatever reason, it tries to access the Internet even when Firefox starts up with a blank page.
April 7, 2006.
When there are multiple tabs open, Firefox has no built-in function to move from
one tab to another. There is no "Next Tab" choice on the Go menu and,
what I really miss, no keyboard combination to move around between tabs.
Update: April 10, 2006. A reader of this page wrote to say that are, in
fact, two keyboard shortcuts to navigate within tabs. Ctrl-Tab moves to the next
tab to the right. In addition, Ctrl-PageUp and Ctrl-PageDown also move from tab
to tab, but in, what seems to me at least, to be the wrong order. Ctrl-PageUp
moves to the next tab to the left, while Ctrl-PageDown moves to the next tab on
the right. The gripe then is simply one of documentation, that neither the Go or
File menu items say anything about this.
Update: April 19, 2006. Another reader pointed out that Ctrl-Tab moves
to the next tab, while Ctrl-Shift-Tab moves to the previous tab.
March 7, 2006. I often have multiple tabs in use. Switching between tabs is not possible while a page is loading in any tab. I had suspected this for a long time but since I typically use a broadband connection pages load fairly quickly, so I wasn't sure. Today, at BlogLines.com it took a long time load an RSS feed and the whole time I could not switch tabs or even create a new tab. This has been true for a long time, it is not just with version 1.5.
February 22, 2006. Printing problems continue. I did Print Preview on a web page and then opted to print only page 2 of 3. The page that actually printed was not the one shown to be page 2.
February 9, 2006. A step backwards. I copy text out of web pages all the time. Previous versions of Firefox always copied the text as plain text, ignoring any formatting/styles. I like this as it let me easily paste the text into a word processor or web page editor without the formatting coming along for the ride. Now it comes too. To stripe out the formatting, I paste into Notepad and then copy the plain text out of Notepad to its ultimate destination.
Update: February 16, 2006. A reader of this page was nice enough to tell me about the Copy Plain Text Extension by Jeremy Gillick which was released on January 12, 2006.
February 6, 2006. The text size on my copy of Firefox is now fouled up. Even View -> Text Size -> Normal does not return it to the norm that all previous versions of Firefox used. This happened because I changed the default font using Tools -> Options -> Content -> Default font and size. There is no option there to reset it back to the default default. Some web sites specify the font and font size specifically and they look the same. However, many web sites don't do this or they specify the font size as a percentage of normal. These sites never look quite right. Adjusting the fonts for one site just makes another one look wrong.
When viewing www.traders.com, Firefox consumes almost all the cpu on my computer even well after the page has finished loading. Viewing the page in IE requires no cpu.
February 3, 2006. Still no toolbar button for Print Preview.
FYI:
Scot Finnie has been documenting a number of gripes with v1.5:
January 9, 2006. Sometimes Firefox prints *very* small text. I haven't yet figured out the conditions that cause this. Also, When viewing your list of bookmarks, you can't right click on a bookmark and opt to delete it. In IE, you can.
Criticisms of Mozilla Firefox From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Last Updated January 1, 2006.
December 10, 2005. Windows XP SP2 and ZoneAlarm v6. Firefox 1.5 is set to use a blank home page. Despite this, when it first starts up, it access a BBC web site to, I assume, get headlines (Firefox is not accessing the home page of the BBC). Firefox is not even displaying the toolbar that includes the BBC headlines. HTTP is used to access the BBC web site, but when I tried the same IP address in a web browser, the result was an "unauthorized" error. Deleting the Live Bookmark for current news fixed this. Now, when Firefox starts with a blank page, it does not require Internet access according to ZoneAlarm.
There were 2 web sites authorized to install extensions that I didn't put there. One was mozilla.org, fine. The other was pryan.org a site that doesn't seem to install any extensions at all and that looks like it hasn't been updated in a long time. And who is behind the site? And why should have to figure this out? I removed pryan.org from the list of sites that can install extensions.
On another Windows XP system, I could not install any extensions, even after turning off the checkbox to warn me before installing software.
This same machine had an old version of the Adblock extension that would not un-install itself. Firefox 1.0.7 had been uninstalled before installing Firefox 1.5. This same version of the Adblock extension un-installs fine with version 1.0.7. A word to the wise, you may want to uninstall all your extensions before upgrading to v1.5.
Firefox 1/5 drops old extensions by Donald French December 2, 2005. The gripe is that this happens without warning.
December 4, 2005. Bug preventing cookies. The previous (1.0.7) version of Firefox let you easily populate the list of web sites that are not allowed to place cookies on your computer. When viewing the list of cookies, there was a checkbox at the bottom of the Stored Cookies window for "Don't allow sites that set removed cookies to set future cookies". Turning this on, resulted in Firefox populating the list of Exception web sites any time you removed a cookie. It was simple, clear and convenient.
In v1.5 it is not as clear and, it doesn't work. The self-explanatory checkbox is no longer at the bottom of the window that displays all the cookies. Instead, it now part of the cookie configuration section where it is easily overlooked while reviewing and removing cookies. Also, the text changed and the explanation of what it does is not longer simple and clear. The bug is that with this option on, when you remove a cookie, the web site that placed the cookie is not added to the list of exceptions as a prohibited web site.
Another annoyance: When viewing the list of cookies, every web site that placed a cookie is prefixed by a plus sign requiring an extra click to get the cookie details, even when it placed only a single cookie.
Firefox's big menus by Jeremy Wagstaff. November 16, 2005.
December 12, 2005. Windows 2000 SP4, up to date on patches.
I uninstalled an old version of the Adblock extension.
The new
version, (0.5.2.056) however would not install. Even after shutting
down Firefox, task manager shows that its process is still running. Kill
the process, start Firefox again and Tools -> Extensions does nothing - no
extensions window pops up.
Next, I try Firefox in safe mode where Tools -> Extensions shows that Adblock v 0.5.2.039 is installed.
I say to uninstall it, close Firefox and re-start it.
Tools -> extensions still does nothing. Tools -> Themes works fine all the
while. Every time I try something with extensions, the Firefox process remains
running after I shut down the browser. Firefox in safe mode now also does
nothing responding to Tools -> Extensions.
This is going to require manual overide, so I look at the files in the Firefox
Profile folder. The prefs.js file has a number of entries for Adblock:
user_pref("adblock.enabled", false);
user_pref("adblock.fastcollapse", false);
user_pref("adblock.frameobjects", true);
user_pref("adblock.hide", false);
user_pref("adblock.linkcheck", false);
user_pref("adblock.listsort", true);
user_pref("adblock.pageblock", true);
There is no user.js file. The components.ini and defaults.ini file are both:
[Extra Files]
Count=0
In the "chrome" folder there is a subfolder called "adblock-temp"
that contains a single binary file called "XUL.mfl-uninstalled". The Extensions.rdf
file has no reference to Adblock. A file called "installed-extensions.txt"
in the "extensions" folder points to a folder with a long GUID. In
this folder, file install.rdf has no reference to Adblock.
I try to manually un-install Adblock as per Uninstalling extensions. Specifically, I edit prefs.js and take out all references to Adblock. This does nothing. Tools -> extensions still does not open a new window. I added "releases.mozilla.org" to list of sites that can install extensions and then try install Adblock version v 0.5.2.056. The install starts running and then nothing. Shutdown Firefox and the process remains running.
I try the Plus version of Adblock. Installing it downloads an XPI file to my computer. That's it. No instructions about what to do with the XPI file. I look around the Forum for installation instructions - nothing. Guessing, I try to open the file with Firefox. The extension starts to install and then nothing.
Next I read Moving your profile folder which suggested deleting the "chrome" and "extensions" subfolders in your profile folder. I first deleted the adblock-temp folder from chrome folder, but this did nothing. Then I deleted the "extensions" folder. Bingo.
In safe mode the extensions window now opens in response to Tools -> Extensions. Same thing in regular mode. To install Adblock, I open the previously downloaded file "adblock-0.5.2.056-fx+fl+mz+ns.xpi" in Firefox and it works - the extension is installed. All my filtering rules were lost, but the tradeoff seems worth it.
Final gripe: the file name for the Adblock extension says it is version 0.5.2.056 but when I run it, the extension says it is version 0.5.2.055.
January 12, 2006. Print Preview on this multi-page article internetweek.cmp.com/shared/article/printablePipelineArticle.jhtml?articleId=175007058 shows that Firefox will display a single page consisting of nothing but the page heading.
November 2, 2005. My computer had version 7.someething of the Flash player installed. I tried to install version 8 of the Flash player which downloads a file to your computer. When I run the file, nothing happens. No messages at all. Tried it both with FF running and with it shutdown. Now Firefox does not even have a working copy of the Flash player version 7. The problem was due to the Adblock extension version 0.5 d2. When it was turned off, Flash version 8 worked fine.
July 26, 2005. When I use Firefox with a very high resolution monitor, I like to force the text to be larger than normal. You can do this with Tools -> Options -> Fonts and Colors button -> Minimum font size. The problem is when the page is printed, the printed text is also very large. You should be able to control the screen font size and the print font size independently.
July 17, 2005. Windows 2000 with the Sun JVM version 1.4.2_06. The home page of java.com still causes Firefox to loop, burning cpu forever. However, after upgrading to the latest version of Java (1.5.0_04), the problem went away.
July 14, 2005. Sometimes View -> Text Size -> Increase | Decrease does nothing. Haven't pinned down exactly when.
July 1, 2005. I went to java.com/en/index.jsp and Firefox hung (Windows 2000). It was using all the cpu on the computer and had to be put out of its misery with Task Manager.
June 19, 2005. A reader of this page pointed out that when you right click a link in IE, there is an option to print the target web page. Firefox does not have such an option.
Firefox Users Sound Off: Fix Those Bugs! by Mitch Wagner in Internet Week June 8, 2005. Even ardent Firefox fans can experience problems with their favorite browser. What are these bugs, and what can you do about them?
May 12, 2005. Printing does not seem to be a Firefox strong point. When it printed this Wall Street Journal article, it put the log on the first page all by itself and the title of the article was on the second page.
May 9, 2005. New bugs in Firefox 1.0.3. Exploit code chases two Firefox flaws from CNET News.com. Also, I tried to install QuickTime v6.5.1 into Firefox 1.0.3 and it failed, offering instead a manual install.
May 6, 2005. This is a gripe with the Mozilla web site. I was upgrading an old copy of Firefox, version 1.0PR, on someone's computer. To get to the Firefox home page, I clicked on the Mozilla icon in the top right corner of the Firefox window - the circle of dots. Instead of taking me to a Firefox or Mozilla web page, I got a Not Found error on this page: addons.update.mozilla.org/critical/firefox/2004-10-01.html
April 22, 2205. On the Dell web site, if you enter an expired coupon during checkout, you are notified that the coupon expired with a pop-up window. Firefox blocks this pop-up window, so it appears that nothing happens at all when you enter an expired coupon.
April 19, 2005. Top ten Firefox browser annoyances As seen by a Mozilla Suite user by Fernando Cassia in The Inquirer. Among the gripes is the delay in producing the Spanish version of Firefox, which is still at version 1.0.2 days after 1.0.3 was released in English.
Problems in Firefox Paradise? by Scot Finnie. May 1, 2005. Click on the Firefox icon and the browser does not run.
April 18, 2005. I was using Firefox 1.0.2 on a computer with a lot of other software also running concurrently. A small window popped up in the system tray that said new updates were available. It was not obvious which of the running programs put out this message (it was Firefox 1.0.2). The message said to Click Here for more, but the window went away in a couple seconds, before I had a chance to click on it.
April 6, 2005. Cookies. I tell Firefox to only allow cookies for the originating web site (Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> Cookies -> For the Originating web site only). Despite this, I end up with many cookies from advertising web sites that I never visited. I suspect this has to do with IFRAMEs but haven't investigated in detail.
March 29, 2005. I always want Firefox to ask me where to save a file when downloading. Sometimes it does not ask.
March 24, 2005. A day after installing v1.0.2 Firefox was still indicating that an update was available. That is, the red circle with the white tree inside was still visible (see March 7th comments below). Clicking on the red circle made Firefox check for updates, find none and turn off the red circle.
March 23, 2005. Firefox just came out with version 1.0.2. It did not notify me of this, instead I read about it at the web site of a computer magazine. When I went to Firefox Central using the circular dotted icon at the end of the Firefox toolbar, it said nothing about the new release at all.
March 15, 2005. When I click on an M3U file, Real Player opens to play the file and it does not work. For the life of me, I can't figure out how to tell Firefox to use Windows Media Player to M3U files. Tools -> Options -> Downloads does not have an entry for M3U files at all and I can't figure out how to add an entry for it.
March 8, 2005. Firefox Is Heading Toward Trouble by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols in eWeek. Gripes from someone who, like me, loves Firefox. There needs to be more server bandwidth to handle new releases. The "updates" are really total re-installs. A number of programmers behind Firefox are AWOL. And more.
March 8, 2005. If you view a page with the Print Preview feature and then go back to a normal view, you can no longer select text on the page to copy to the Windows clipboard. You have to re-load the web page to again be able to select text.
|
|
 This,
in turn, invokes the Firefox Update, shown here at the right. My
first gripe was that there was no other feedback during the update
process. Turns out this was because the update process never started.
After waiting and waiting I checked the Firefox process and it was not
using any cpu and not doing any I/Os. I used Task Manager to kill
it.
Then I restarted Firefox and tried it again. This time I watched my Internet traffic to see if the download at least starts. It does not, Firefox never started to download anything. Again I had to use Task Manager to kill Firefox. This time I downloaded version 1.0.1 manually, un-installed version 1.0 using the Control Panel Add/Remove Programs, then installed version 1.0.1 without any problem. However, the first time I ran version 1.0.1 the red circle with the
white tree in it was still there. I clicked on it and Firefox said it
could not find any available updates. Eventually, the red circle
disappeared. |
Continued: To keep the size of this page
reasonable, my gripes with Firefox version 0.9 and earlier are
on another page.
50 Best Firefox Extensions for Power Surfing at QuickOnlineTips.com (added June 2006)
If you find that
Firefox v1.5 is using a lot of memory, this may help: Browser.sessionhistory.max total viewers
(added March 2006)
Recovering Your Firefox Bookmarks by Jeremy Wagstaff November 24, 2005
My favorite Firefox extensions by Ed Bott November 5, 2005
Hacking Firefox: Speed Up Your Browser by Mel Reyes August 30, 2005. This is an excerpt from the ExtremeTech book, Hacking Firefox: More Than 150 Hacks, Mods, and Customizations. This chapter shows you how to speed up page rendering, tune Firefox to your CPU, optimize memory and caching, and more.
Firefox and design choices gripes at the ExtremeTech forum. June 7, 2005.
The Mozilla Security Center documents the bugs in Firefox and Thunderbird.
March 11, 2005. In Upgrading to Firefox 1.0.1 by Brian Livingston the author offers advice on the safest way to upgrade an old version of Firefox to a new one.
How to Install and Tweak Firefox from the San Francisco Bay Guardian System's Department includes a tip on speeding up the loading of Firefox in Windows XP.
A list of security announcements (bugs) for Firefox from the Mozilla foundation.
Run Firefox? Have broadband? Here's Speed Tips from the W2Knews Newsletter from Sunbelt software. February 7, 2005.
The Fox Is in Microsoft's Henhouse (and Salivating) by Randall Stross in the New York Times December 19, 2004. An article about Firefox that includes a few IE and Microsoft gripes.
Scot Finnie reviewed Firefox in his newsletter in November 2004 and liked it. Firing Up Mozilla's Firefox 1.0. The review however, included quite a few gripes. Scott also has an article on Customizing Firefox which (as of January 9, 2005) was last updated January 3, 2005.
Note: In Can Your Site Survive Firefox? By Brian Livingston in Datamation July 19, 2004, I am described as " one of Firefox's harshest critics". This is not true, I like Firefox, I use it often and think everyone should. Mr. Livingston also said that I "reserve the lowest circle of Hell for corporate sites that don't work when viewed with Firefox." Nothing about this web site is angry. The site is more from the perspective of a QA person, not from someone ranting or venting.
Unofficial Firefox 1.0 changelog In other words, what's new in version 1.0. From the Burning Edge. November 9, 2004.
August 12, 2004 (updated January 8, 2005). On a new install of Firefox, these are the changes I always make. Except for the toolbar, the options are set with Tools -> Options... This is just one person's opinion.
Fred Langa mentioned this web page in his newsletter, the Langa List, on July 22, 2004. He still uses IE. :-(
AI RoboForm works with Firefox, but only if you install an "adapter". (thanks Robert). Meryl Evans reports (below) that RoboForm only worked once in Firefox 0.9x and never again. She initially had no problems using it with Mozilla, but when she upgraded from Mozilla 1.71 to 1.72 RoboForm didn't work. She had to download the adapter and install it again. This happens every time she upgrades Mozilla.
MozBackup is a free utility for creating backups of Firefox, Mozilla, Thunderbird and Netscape profiles. It allows you to backup mail, favorites, contacts, etc.
Many other gripes on this site have a section devoted to "Other Gripers". There have been almost no disparaging comments on Firefox in the media. However, Oliver Rist did note that Firefox "blocks executable downloads by default -- which can be a pain until you figure out how to change it". See You know you've got a browser problem when … in Info World July 9, 2004.
FireFox Fix-its Problems and annoyances running FireFox on several computers (July 3, 2004). By Meryl Evans. Experiences with a master password, the default browser and the search bar size. She also wrote FireFox after 5000 Miles (July 19, 2004) and Browser Switching Reports from the Field (August 7, 2004).
Mozilla Firefox 0.9.1 reviewed in PC Magazine July 9, 2004. Read this page with IE, it caused Firefox to constantly consume about 33% of the cpu on my machine.
Switching from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox from Mozilla.org, created July 7, 2004
If you enter "about:config" in the address bar you get a display of billions of Firefox configuration options. I don't know if or where there is documentation on this.
John Haller has created an 8 MB portable version of Firefox, one that you can run from a USB storage key/keychain storage/memory stick, etc. Alternate Link.
Java: On a pc without any prior instance of Mozilla or Firefox, there
was no Java. On a PC with Mozilla 1.5 already installed and using a recent copy
of Sun's Java, it used the same JVM as the Mozilla browser. If you are
interested in installing a recent version of Java for use with Firefox, see the Installing
Java page on my Java Tester web
site.
Update. August 31, 2004. Firefox does not, on its own, report anything at all
about the state of Java. IE and Mozilla do. You can turn Java on an off with
Tools -> Options -> Web Features, but nowhere does it show the version of
Java being used or if it is capable of using Java on your computer.
It has been pointed out to me that some of my Firefox gripes are actually gripes about the Gecko rendering engine, which Firefox uses.
The View Source function in IE produces editable HTML which I often use to
make quick and dirty changes to my web pages when editing them locally. The View
Source function in Firefox produces read-only HTML. Nicely formatted, but
read-only.
Update. July 14, 2004. A reader (thanks Glenn) of this page noted that there are many extensions that deal with this.
The only one presently compatible with Firefox 0.9x is Launchy
which enables you to open third-party applications from within Firefox. Launchy
should let you open the page source in Notepad, or any other editor (I have not
tried this). The other extensions that handle this are Mozedit,
Mozex and cuneAform.
Known Issues On Microsoft Windows for Mozilla and Firefox. From mozdev.org.
Any web browser you are considering should be run through the URL spoofing tests as described by Patrick Crispen: Internet Explorer URL Spoofing Vulnerability.
F11 works the same in Firefox as it does in IE, it toggles full screen mode on/off.
My Firefox gripes have generated the most intelligent feedback of any gripes on this web site.
December 1, 2005: Early versions of Firefox didn't work with PowerMarks from Kaylon Technologies. Firefox 1.0.7 works with PowerMarks 3.5 Build 376.
I am told that the forums at www.mozillazine.org are a good place to get answers to Firefox questions. I made two postings there and did not get a single reply. They have a forum devoted to Firefox bugs.
One of my web sites provides stats on browser
usage using a program called Wusage 8.0. For the last two weeks in June 2004 the stats were as follows (Note -
this assumes that Firefox is
Netscape version 5)
Internet Explorer6 72%
Netscape5 12% Internet Explorer5 9%
Internet Explorer6 74% Netscape5 10% Internet Explorer5
7%
This article is what peaked by interest in Firefox: Firefox fills the IE void By Jon Udell March 19, 2004
First Look at Mozilla.org's Firefox by Tom Spring, PC World February 19, 2004. Alternative browser shines with a clean interface, sophisticated functions, and many options. Quoting: "The revamped browser is slick, fast, lean, and versatile. It is the first browser release from the open source organization that is aimed at non-techies ...".
Firefox Browser Hijacking: May 25, 2004. There were stories of Firefox browser hijacking, but apparently they are not true.
See The Burning Edge Developments in nightly builds of Mozilla Firefox if you really want the latest on Firefox developments
See also: Web sites that Firefox does not display correctly| Page created: April 8, 2004 | Page last updated: January 15, 2008 |
| Prior updates: December 7, 2007 | July 25, 2007 | May 17, 2007 | April 11, 2007 | March 2,16,20 2007 | February 27, 2007 | |
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The
message is: Unknown error occurred while printing. 
March
7, 2005. Installing version 1.0.1 on Windows 2000 SP4.