Libertine: On the Prowl

Vidi, vici, veni -- I saw, I conquered, I came. _______________________________________________________________

Firefox Woes

03:25, 2008-Jul-26 .. Posted in rants .. 5 comments .. Link

I've been a Firefox user for quite some time now, using it through several updated versions. Most people I know who use it rave about it, while simultaneously trashing Internet Explorer.

At first, I agreed with such people, but I've been having several quirky problems with Firefox that have lasted through several of the most recent updates. I also bought a new computer last year with the latest version of IE included, and I've not had any problems with that.

The problems I'm having with Firefox appear and disappear unexpectedly for no apparent rhyme nor reason. The most common problems are:

I'm on dialup, and if I happen to get tossed offline while viewing pages in Firefox, I must close the browser and re-open it again in order to be able to continue using the pages I was viewing. If I try to make comments, refresh, or click on another page, it won't respond, and I'll see "Stopped" at the left bottom corner of the page. This doesn't happen in IE -- I can just pick up where I left off without closing and re-opening the browser.

A recurring problem happens on message boards, where Firefox will not recognize text editing buttons in message board response boxes. That is, the bold, underline, italic, quote, and other buttons will not work when I click on them, but I have to add the code manually. This doesn't happen all the time, but it happens enough, and without warning, to be annoying.

When I get the above problem on message boards, Firefox will also not recognize paragraph breaks and it will render several paragraphs as one unbroken block of text. These two problems are so annoying, that I just use IE when I want to make comments on message boards.

Another on-again, off-again problem is that on every single one of the blog systems I use (Blog City, Blogger, Vox, and EFX2) Firefox will either not display the text editing features in the text boxes or they will be unclickable, thus unusable. Again, I'm composing in IE more and more.

Yet another on-again, off-again problem is with Gmail. Though I can sometimes view Gmail normally with Firefox, more often than not, I have to view it in "Basic HTML", which does not allow the user to use all of Gmail's features. More recently, I'm getting errors more often when using Gmail in Firefox.

These are the most common, ongoing annoyances I've had in the last year or so using Firefox. Note that none of these problems occur when using Internet Explorer.

I'd be curious to hear if other Firefox users are having the same problems that I'm having and if they're turning back to IE more and more.

Leave a Comment

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03:42, 2008-Jul-26 .. Posted by mandaj
i've had no problems...did you download firefox 3? i haven't downloaded that yet and am not having any problems with 2.0.

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09:52, 2008-Jul-26 .. Posted by littleMissConfused
Most of that just flew over my head!

I have firefox (I think...it says Mozilla Firefox at the top of my computer)

Sometimes when I am on a website and click on something, I just get a white screen, if I have two or more screens open, one will lock up and the only way to fix it, is to close down my browser and open another one, then get back to the site I was at and hope this time when I click on something I get to where I am trying to go.

Most of the time I have EFX open, so I just thought it was that, not Firefox.

Did any of that make any sense?

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03:01, 2008-Jul-27 .. Posted by logis
Not using firefox but my brother is and i have never heard him complain about it.

Since i know little to nothing of computers my suggestion will be silly but did you check your java is on? Or in settings of firefox that everything is clicked on allow?

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07:36, 2008-Jul-27 .. Posted by mothman
I use Firefox almost exclusively, and haven't had issues with it. o_O

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10:31, 2008-Jul-28 .. Posted by Chandramoon
How strange - I downloaded the most recent ones and had no probs (mind you I'm on a Mac) so who knows on a PC!