h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I know this will be a deeply unpopular opinion round here, but I'm getting mighty annoyed with Firefox these days and am fast considering returning to I.E.

All it ever seems to do is shout 'me, me me, look at me!' Hardly a day goes by when there isn't some update which stops the browser from loading in its tracks; when I hit my browser icon and come back from making a cup of tea, I expect Google to be sitting there waiting for me, not a bloody "Firefox verson 17562.212134 is availble for download" "we've found 18 new downloads for your side-toolbar"... Now i've wasted minutes of your life loading up a new version of something you'll never notice has changed, here's a page telling you how much faster I am now!"

Of course as I have fairly low memory on both my PC's all these upgades ever do is slow my machines down even more. More bloat - great

And, i thought Firefox was supposed to be stable? It crashes far more often than I ever remember IE doing. Granted it does allow you to resume where you left off before crashing, but still ...

As for speed? Takes an age to load and an age to close. At least IE only takes an age to load. And if i try to open it again too soon after closing it doesn't like it. "Firefox is still running..."

Feck off and leave me alone- just be a nice quiet background browser that I don't notice. I don't care how great you think you are, just do your job and leave me alone!

Tsk, don't you realise that only Microsoft make poo software?

Shame on you

*agrees with the constant update thing but doesn't find crashing a problem*

Aye- you've got to wonder how great a piece of software really is when it requires fixing, sorry 'updating' every few days. Time was when software houses considered it an embarrassment, and the likes of Microsoft were lambasted for needing to send out 'updates'. Now it's fashionable and people consider it fine-tuning rather than fixing. Pretty much means the developers can get away with unleashing any old s**te upon us.

Eureka! I've found the options to switch off checking for updates. Maybe now it'll give me a little peace. I'll manually do an update every few months at a time when I've got a few hours to spare...

It bugs me that firefox doesn't load google maps properly - it takes ages, and then it only shows you the map, not the aerial, and street view doesn't work at all.

It still displays odd signs instead of the ones that are there.

On the plus side: it has the spell check add-on.

I dont have those problems, myself... But then I refused all the toolbar options. I have a google search bar on my browser, and I have it set up to open on my three favourite tabs. Other than that, it leaves me well alone... Very occasional updates, but nothing very often...



Isn't chrome supposed to be rather more quiet and simple?

Google maps works fine on my verion.

I think this highlights the problem that Firefox still has lots of compatibility issues with many websites (though not had Googlemaps problems myself- streetview OK). And this despite having a 20% market share.
The spellcheck is very good though- I do like that

At least Firefox doesn't suggest to update itself to a version which is not supported on your OS.

That's weird. I ahve to open IE for google maps and streetview. Current firefox version is 3.0.8

>>Eureka! I've found the options to switch off checking for updates.

Ooh! Do tell.

I like the Ad Blocker.

Tools-options-'Advanced' tab -untick boxes

Firefox occasionally crashes for me when I have fifty tabs open. Other than that it's fairly stable.

Have you tried Opera?

TRiG.

Actually...the thing FF does for me is that sometimes it stays running in the background after I think it's closed. Or, at least...it thinks it does. It doesn't show up in my Task Manager, but if I try to fire up another instance, Ff tells me it can't.

No... I try not to be too about computers though i do have some knowledge that i've picked up over the years. PC's really are just tools and I try not to get caught up in trying new browsers and operating systems more than a few times per lifetime! I just want the one i'm using (on the advice of so many) to work well.

That said, many other people have recommended Opera, so I might give it a go one day when I really, really don't have anything better to do than to learn a new browser and get frustrated over re-learning how to surf the internet.

Firefox crashes quite a lot for me (every 10-20 hours of use roughly) though it is usually quick(ish) and painless to recover when it does. I do use multiple tabs, but only 2-4 usually... It's probably just some combination of running programs that Firefox doesn't expect. I do have rather a lot of programs installed ...

"Actually...the thing FF does for me is that sometimes it stays running in the background after I think it's closed. Or, at least...it thinks it does. It doesn't show up in my Task Manager, but if I try to fire up another instance, Ff tells me it can't."

Yup, does that for me too. Annoying.

The settings you want to reduce your annoyance are in Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Update.

Often when Firefox gets slow or unstable the problem is add-ons. Making your program extensible by third parties to a useful extent is a fundamentally difficult problem, which gets harder as you have more (and sometimes badly written) extensions interacting. If you have a lot of these and experience problems then you might want to consider junking some.

If you do decide to go back to Internet Explorer, then I would urge you to use version 8, as it is relatively standards compliant. Consider it a favour to all those nice people who make websites.

But the only add-ons I have are Firefox's own 'all-in-one sidebar' and the spellchecker .. oh well

Well it was just a suggestion of the most likely cause. 2 add-ons probably means it's not the case, so maybe something else.

Ah. I have a few more than that.