I am getting really irritated at some persistent bugs and just weird behavior in Firefox. I’m tempted to give up on using Firefox and go back to IE or just try Opera instead. Unfortunately I’ve got all my bookmarks in Firefox and a system for organizing them that relies on Firefox (I have lots of bookmarks in addition to my big list of unicycling related bookmarks). A changeover might not be so easy.
Big problem right now is that I cannot type a “/” character in a forum message using Firefox right now. I’m using IE to type this in otherwise I would not have been able to type in the “/” character. When I type the “/” character in Firefox it brings up the find toolbar. All well and good. The “/” key is supposed to bring up the find toolbar, but it’s not supposed to do it when you are in an edit control. Unfortunately Firefox sometimes gets confused and can’t figure out when you’re in an edit control or not. I could probably get it working properly again by closing all the Firefox windows and restarting Firefox, but why does it get out of sync like that to begin with?
I also have big problems with using ctrl-c and ctrl-v to copy and paste things from and to Firefox. Sometimes ctrl-c just plain doesn’t copy what is selected. It is a Firefox bug. It has been a bug for a long time. It is very irritating. You select something, copy it, go to paste it and find that the clipboard is empty. Grrrrr! This one really really bugs me. Why hasn’t it been fixed yet (it is a well known bug)?
Firefox also has a habit of using an obscene amount of memory. It’s just a browser damnit. It’s not the primary application that I run on the computer. It should behave well as a background application. But nooooo. Firefox likes to gobble up 256MB or more of RAM. If you’re on a computer with only 512MB or RAM to begin with, well, it’s just very bad form for the browser to gobble up more than half of it. That causes excess swapping and decreases the performance of other applications that are running.
Firefox sucks more and more. It’s to the point that I’d rather use IE even though IE does not currently have tabs. Once IE 7 is out I can’t see myself using Firefox.
I’ve never had any of these problems with Firefox - maybe you could do with a fresh install? You can export your bookmarks and add them again after the install. Never, ever, go back to IE.
I do have a fresh install of Firefox on both computers (Windows 2K and Windows XP). Both suffer from the same bugs and annoyances.
I’m getting really anxious for IE 7 to be released. I could also try Opera, but last time I tried Opera 8.5 it was not an easy transition (Opera does things differently). Maybe Opera 9 will be better.
I found OPERA somewhat bothersome to use. I’m using Netscape 7 (don’t know enough people who have tried 8 yet to get reliable reports) and have very little trouble with it. I understand your aversion to IE. I thought that bookmarks, address books, and all sorts of stuff move easily between Firefox and Netscape. I mean, Firefox used to BE Netscape, didn’t it?
I have never cared for tabs, I like all my windows to be shown in my toolbar at the bottom of the screen, as long as they dont get bunched together so where its like, internet explorer x8, but i set it not to do that, so it looks like this.
I have also never had the need for any of the extra features that firefox or some other browsers come with, all i really need is the address bar and im good.
I have my find set to ctrl-f. Why must you use / ? I like / for vi editor, but find is always ctrl-f in windows. It’s all your fault for changing things around. Don’t you know that Bill knows what is best for you?
I’ve been having that exact same problem lately. I’ve also had some problems when typing in windows like this one, and I couldn’t quite figure out why. At least now I know that there is a problem with firefox and I’m not just going crazy.
Also, firefox likes to update itself sometimes. It gives me a popup window with something to the effect of “Would you like to upgrade to the new version of firefox?” If I select no or try to close it with the “X” in the corner, it gives me another message that says: “The new version of firefox will be installed next time you run the program! HAHA SUCKER!!!*” Has this happened to anyone else?
It doesn’t really say HAHA SUCKER, but it seems to be implied.
Wow… your computer appears to be messed up… you must be using windows. Go figure. No problems on my mac or ubuntu boxes, but then again they both have plenty of ram to not have any problem with memory issues.
The rant was prompted when I tried replying to Dustin’s NEW world hour record thread. I tried to type in “km/h” and couldn’t. I tried to copy and paste the answer from Google Calculator for the conversion from 16 mph to km/h and couldn’t. Everything was going wrong. I couldn’t type in my reply because Firefox was borked again. Grrr…
Problems like that happen all too frequently when using Firefox.
The copy/paste problem affects all operating systems that the Mozilla project supports. That means Linux and Mac are affected by that bug just like Windows. It is a random bug and doesn’t affect everyone. Consider yourself lucky if you have never experienced it.
A Google search will find many many more posts about the same bug. It is a very well known bug and has been well known for several years with no fix. I thought open source was supposed to magically fix bugs like this? Certainly four years is enough time for Mozilla to figure out what is wrong with all of their software (it affects all Mozilla products).
Yes, that is the default behavior now for Firefox. You can change that behavior in Tools>>Options>>Advanced>>Update. Change it from automatically download and install to ask me what to do.
you could have asked me, I would have showed you how to fix it
I use mozilla suite instead of FF, for several reasons…first, I don’t use tabs, which seems to be the main thing FF offers. Also I despise animated gifs, such as spudman’s cute avatar that he uses on the robotics forum, riding a uni around inside a box…FF does not allow you to turn them off that I know of, but Mozilla does. Also I use composer to do quick web page updates, and FF does not have composer.
I wonder if I can type in a slash? ////// yeah, no problem. how about copy and paste? how about copy and paste? yup, that works.
spudman has mozilla on his computer, maybe he should start using it.
Go Opera- I love it. I find Firefox can make some websites look funny with words on top of each other. I had major problems with the Laos Unitour website looking scrambled on firefox.
Well, I have installed Opera 8.5 on my new computer. I’ll be giving it another try. I’ll have to hunt around to find out how to do spell checking and some of the other goodies that I like and need.
Firefox is evil because it gets you addicted to extensions. Once you’re addicted it makes it hard to give them up. And the way the Google toolbar does spell checking…
what about the AOL explorer … it seems to take up very little memory and it has tabs, but it has a bug so that if a new tab is opened in a email window you cannot access one of the tabs ///// i don’t have a problem w/ that … i never even knew that there was a find thingy on here, but is there a way to change the keyboard shortcuts??
