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Is Firefox 3.5 crap?
July 7, 2009 | 1:16 pm
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By David Rothman
Already the bug reports are piling up. How’s Firefox 3.5 running on your system? Mine crashes almost as often as older Firefox versions do. The developers reportedly will be rushing out a fix.
I’m rooting for Firefox to add ePub capabilities and other e-book-related features. But If Firefox is to be a reliable e-book reader, suitable for nontechies, then the developers need to try a lot harder.
The scariest bug report—which I haven’t confirmed: “I’m also receiving frequent ‘Server Not Found’ errors messages when trying to load new pages. Worryingly there are reports that FF3.5 has corrupted XP, and impacts on other browsers installed due to the new DNS prefetching.” This is via an eWeek commenter.
Technorati Tags: Firefox 3.5,Firefox
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Comments:
It’s been working in a very stable and satisfying fashion on my computer with a Windows XP Pro OS. I’ve been very satisfied with it and I really like the bookmark integration with the “Awesome Bar”.
I’ve got it running on two Windows XP machines and a Macbook Pro with no problems yet.
(Well, other than a few extentions I love haven’t released new versions yet….)
I’m running Firefox 3.5 on a Mac and have only experienced one crash since upgrading (don’t think it crashed at all before). Hopefully a fix will be out soon!
On my Macbook, Macbook Pro and Asus Netbook it’s running just fine. However, I prefer Safari on the Mac because the color rendering is much better and I prefer Chrome on the Asus because it is so fast.
It’s running great on my Vista and XP machines. I did have a couple of Firefox (not PC) crashes, but it’s easy to restart it. And, so far, I find it to be much faster and pleasant to use.
Thanks, guys! I’d rather the news be good. Perhaps it’s the quirks of my particular system. May your good luck continue! David
I’ve had no problems with FF3.5 at all, and it runs the best part of 12 hours a day. That being said, the beloved NoScript and AdBlock extensions are cleaning-up my browsing experience tremendously, so I’m probably not hitting bugs that some other users do. The only reason why I restart FF is when an Add-On needs updating. I noticed a net performance improvement on some websites, and I love the new features. Oh, I’m on Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.7 by the way.
FF 3.5 is working just fine for me, too, on a Vista machine. I think it’s definitely a leap forward, other than a few extensions that haven’t been updated yet. This update has caused me to stop using Chrome completely, because now there’s really nothing Chrome does that FF doesn’t.
I run Firefox on all my computers, 3 XP and 1 Mac OS X. All run very stable and satisfactorily. No issue what so ever.
No problems with FF 3.5 on my two Intel Macs under 10.5.7 at all. I don’t think it’s crashed once so far. The 3.5 betas crashed occasionally when trying to print to PDF files, but that’s an old, old FF issue (which may have been fixed in the 3.5 GA version as I don’t recall it happening since I upgraded to it).
3.5 is much faster and seems like an excellent release so far.
I’ve had problems with it on Linux. The first time I ran it, it not only crashed it brought down the X server. Other times it takes forever loading a web page. It seems to get stuck on the “Looking for webpage ..” part. I’ve reverted to 3.0.11.
I have it running on all my Linux machines without a hitch, and have been doing since the early alpha releases. This release is rock solid, so it may be worth checking your hardware or OS for problems and issues.
There are loads of problems with FF 3.5 in Windows Vista 64 for me.
Not that it crashes a lot, but it has happened. I have had some problems with multiple FireFox.exe running when opening many FireFox windows (by dragging and dropping tabs out of the FireFox window, which is a new feature).
And sometimes it has slowed down to a crawl(which many also reports happening) where you almost can’t type anything in the address bar because of incredible slow action.
Google toolbar spell checking doesn’t work as it should, which is also known to happen for many people.
And loads of important plug-ins/add-ons doesn’t work.
The speed in genereal is much slower than 3.0.11, which was extremely snappy for me.
When uninstalling 3.5 and reinstalling 3.0.11 everything is just fine again. It is much, much snappier and faster in the older version and there are no bug problems for me.
So, what to do, now that all security patches will only apply to 3.5?
It will be extremely disappointing for me to be forced to go back to 3.5 for security reasons, now that I have felt the love from the 3.0.11 version once again!
The only thing I notice that is better with 3.5 is the new “open new tab” button for the tabs, which is no big thing.
I don’t know who to blame anymore – 10 months ago i got a dell laptop with vista home on it and ever since i got it it’s been crashing – first i blamed dell, then vista, and as the months went by it was crashing more and more. last week i installed firefox 3.5 and ever since it’s crashing about three times a day! and it crashes out the laptop too. when i reboot, i get a message from firefox “oops! this is embarassing. one of your tabs seems to be causing a problem” but my tabs are always different!
and i also get a more than usual amount of “server not found” errors.
this sucks
Crashing a lot on Vista 64. I am willing to suspend judgment; a lot of bugs are caused by pesky plugins.
FireFox has been crashing a lot since I updated to 3.5 on my Mac G5 running OS 10.4.11. I just updated to 3.5.1 so we’ll see if this is a fix.
I have the same system at work, but with an older 3.0.11 FireFox and I have no problems with crashing.
Yup. Since installing ff3.5, I get “server not found”, on an unscientific basis, I estimate about 25% of the time. My heart wants to say all the darn time, because the internet now feels like a pain in the but.
Umwhat? FF broke the internet? Wasn’t there an extensive beta to this?
And Windows 7 using magic to generate excessive heat even while at system idle – the future looks great for software!
yes!!! i just got the 3.5.1 update yesterday morning – i almost did a jig!
wishing all of us luck…
in response to chris’s comment, my system was also overheating with FF3.5 on vista – big surprise! but it was the FF application that was out of control according to taskmanager…
Firefox 3.5 will not load on my Vista 64 desktop. I saved an old copy of FF and it worked again. Windows Explorer works fine – naturally since it is Micro$oft. What the F is going on with Firefox??
I just installed 3.5, with the amazing success, that it doesn’t start up at all anymore. I can see the process in TM, but that’s it. multiple restarts don’t help either.
I am a developer, who needs the ff firebug and am ANGRY!!! delays my work for more than 3 hrs now.
vista 32Bit etc.
ff= the new explorer?
FF 3.0 crashed far more than earlier versions and FF 3.5 crashes 5-10 times per day. At the same time I use Opera and it has yet to crash… I do enjoy FF and it’s usability&functionality but I am worried we are seeing a relatively sad trend here.
Crashes 2-3 times a day although i am on it alot. seems to be with more than 3-4 tabs open. Getting annoying now because when you restart it you get the “this is embarrassing” message
lost all my bookmarks with regular upgrading to 3.5.1
not able to retrieve from the older version again
it crashes for no reason at all and “server not found” problems abound
will not use it again
“”The scariest bug report—which I haven’t confirmed: “I’m also receiving frequent ‘Server Not Found’ errors messages when trying to load new pages. Worryingly there are reports that FF3.5 has corrupted XP, and impacts on other browsers installed due to the new DNS prefetching.””
This is true !
will not use Firefox anymore