Why you SHOULD be using Firefox

mrochester · 15 Oct 2020 at 16:15

This is a really interesting topic and we have exactly the same issue in the mobile operating system space. Funnily enough it’s google who are responsible there too! They just really hate competition or anything that threatens their ability to control the strategic direction of our digital lives.

Google has to be the single most anti-competitive company we’ve ever seen in existence. That god for Firefox, Apple, and any other company who doesn’t rely on technology developed, influenced or controlled by google.

DXP55 · 17 Oct 2020 at 20:01

I thought I had cured the drop outs but no.
It seems to happen when I log in to bank and hit the next button - all gone - another time is clicking links in a email - - other time is drops out and the box says restore so click it and it's back to what I wanted.
I have absolutely no idea why and I don't know enough to even think about working out why.
I might try uninstalling FF and putting it back on again. -nothing to lose

opethdisciple · 19 Oct 2020 at 23:37

DXP55 said:
I thought I had cured the drop outs but no.
It seems to happen when I log in to bank and hit the next button - all gone - another time is clicking links in a email - - other time is drops out and the box says restore so click it and it's back to what I wanted.
I have absolutely no idea why and I don't know enough to even think about working out why.
I might try uninstalling FF and putting it back on again. -nothing to lose

Try a clean profile.

arknor · 20 Oct 2020 at 08:04

I hate firefox absolutely hate it!!!!

only use it cos my profile has all my passwords and I'm too lazy to export the ones I need or whatever.

every few weeks this peice of junk will update it self the shortcut on my taskbar suddenly stops working,
I'f im lucky I will find the taskbar shortcut nolonger worker after an update and the whole firtefox peice of absolute garbage has disappeared from my drive leaving only profiles behind.

then I have to mess around with the peice of crap profile that's bloated as hell now around 1.36gb in size copying over the new stupid profile firefox decixed to make WTF!!!!!!!!!!¬!!1

seriously this crap makes me rage so hard WHY WHY WHY!!!!!!!! how can you software update be so god damn buggy that firefox uninstalls it self instead of updating? literally turn off the pc last night to standby , wake up this morning with coffee and firefox is just gone.... NICE! well the icon was still there just the mozzilla folder only contains profiles and nothing else.

my windows install is less than a month old btw it's FIREFOX ITS GARBAGE CODING

been having this crap on and off for at least a year

darael · 20 Oct 2020 at 08:48

@arknor
Sounds as though your profile is corrupt. Is it just the passwords you want to keep? If so, I'm pretty sure that copying these two files into a fresh profile will do the trick:
key4.db
logins.json

Make a backup of your existing Firefox profile folder first. Completely uninstall Firefox, making sure to remove the Mozilla folders in these two locations:
C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local
C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming

Install Firefox again and let startup once. Then copy the above files with Firefox closed. That should keep your passwords for you and Firefox should update normally now it has a profile which isn't corrupt - if yours was even corrupt in the first place, of course.

arknor · 20 Oct 2020 at 09:19

I don't think its corrupt because it works fine even if I copy the whole profile folder contents to the new one.

seems more like the update process just fails completely, like the mozilla folders are just empty.

I turned auto updates off maybe that helps

Roadrunner_668 · 20 Oct 2020 at 12:07

have you removed it totally and re installed? delete temp files and everything like said above !

DXP55 · 20 Oct 2020 at 21:01

DXP55 said:
I thought I had cured the drop outs but no.
It seems to happen when I log in to bank and hit the next button - all gone - another time is clicking links in a email - - other time is drops out and the box says restore so click it and it's back to what I wanted.
I have absolutely no idea why and I don't know enough to even think about working out why.
I might try uninstalling FF and putting it back on again. -nothing to lose

I am now hoping I have fixed it - I have a few paid for Ashampoo prog - Photo comander -Snap 10 and burning studio all for less than a tenner and they offered me Registry cleaner free so loaded it - That has been the problem -uninstalled it and now seems fine.
Hopefully.
I have been using Vavaldi but can't seem to get into it.

Roadrunner_668 · 20 Oct 2020 at 21:09

oh no not registry cleaners

wheres my wooden crucifix

southy1978 · 21 Oct 2020 at 01:07

arc@css said:
Over the last week or so, when using Firefox I get random tab freezing/crashes, though it doesn't occur with Chrome.

Anyone else encountering the same problem?

Scans all come up clean.

Yes I’ve been getting tab freezes lately too! Really annoying.

V F · 21 Oct 2020 at 02:35

Roadrunner_668 said:
oh no not registry cleaners

wheres my wooden crucifix

They're pure evil.

opethdisciple · 21 Oct 2020 at 10:43

This sums up the situation. Hence why Google maybe forced to sell off Chrome!

Rainmaker · 21 Oct 2020 at 17:00

When Manifest V3 kicks in and effectively hobbles adblockers on Chrome/Chromium based browsers, Firefox will look a lot more attractive to the haters... Ray Hill has already indicated he's abandoning uBlock Origin for Chrome(ium) once that happens.

Most of the 'issues' sound like profile problems or similar. I run Firefox on everything from 15 year old machines to an almost new ThreadRipper 3960X and it's always flawless and fast, on FreeBSD, Linux, macOS and Windows 10. The only time I had issues a new profile sorted it, and that was only once. I've been using it since it was Netscape Naviagtor.

I do also run Ungoogled Chromium occasionally, but Firefox with uBO and a couple of other addons is no slower now that it's running on Quantum and WebRender.

Rainmaker · 21 Oct 2020 at 17:25

Cromulent said:
The only problem I have with Firefox is that it slows to a crawl on some websites. For instance, trying to scroll on Pinterest is god awful but that might be a problem with my Linux install and Firefox not using hardware acceleration properly. Either way, it is really annoying. The same problem exists on GOG.com as well. I'm using Firefox 78 ESR.

Do you have the option to use regular Firefox, or is this a work machine? I replaced ESR with regular Firefox on Debian, and (importantly) enabled WebRender. It's much better. I just scrolled through both the sites you listed, and they're buttery smooth. No issues at all. As long as you're not using an Nvidia card under Linux with proprietary drivers, you can set webrender.all to true in about:config and restart the browser. I think it will work in ESR v78 but it definitely works on the latest release.

Cromulent · 21 Oct 2020 at 18:42

Rainmaker said:
Do you have the option to use regular Firefox, or is this a work machine? I replaced ESR with regular Firefox on Debian, and (importantly) enabled WebRender. It's much better. I just scrolled through both the sites you listed, and they're buttery smooth. No issues at all. As long as you're not using an Nvidia card under Linux with proprietary drivers, you can set webrender.all to true in about:config and restart the browser. I think it will work in ESR v78 but it definitely works on the latest release.

That sorted it. Thanks. That was the only problem I was having. Strangely it seems to work fine on my Nvidia 1080Ti with the latest proprietary drivers.

Rainmaker · 21 Oct 2020 at 19:06

Cromulent said:
That sorted it. Thanks. That was the only problem I was having.

De nada. Enjoy!

jpaul · 21 Oct 2020 at 21:20

DXP55 said:
It seems to happen when I log in to bank and hit the next button

you've tried about

erformance to diagnose offending web-sites - I keep a seperate profile for accessing the bank, as a precaution against my regualr firefox session being compromised, minimal set of extensions too, just ublocko

For instance, trying to scroll on Pinterest is god awful

pinterest is just a bs site with infinite scrolling, with loads of crap loaded speculatively ... I never touch it.

Roadrunner_668 · 22 Oct 2020 at 01:03

V F said:
They're pure evil.

you have to be careful with them thats for sure ha ha

Roadrunner_668 · 22 Oct 2020 at 01:04

I am having issues with scrolling in firefox and lag and stuff as well but im not sure if its the browser, might have ot try another for a bit

DXP55 · 22 Oct 2020 at 19:59

Back to square one.
For some reason it never happens on OCUK - it's been good as gold - What I have noticed is it's happening on news sites - Ya Ya daily mail -Guardian - Yahoo news. So does anyone have any ideas.
Like others I have used FF for a decade - well for as long as I can remember and it's been fine till the last few months.

Scrolling on OCUK is fine