Firefox 4 Pop-Ups

[Exapno Mapcase]

I just downloaded Firefox 4.

Now every time I mouseover a thread, I don't get the box with the opening lines, I'm told that a pop-up was blocked. And hitting every button generates a blocked message. And mousing over New Thread does. And probably a million other things.

How do I make it stop?

[enalzi]

I would try adding the boards to your pop-up exceptions. Go to options -> content -> and click "exceptions" next to where it says "block pop-ups." Then add "boards.straightdope.com"

[Exapno Mapcase]

Neither putting in straightdope.com as an exception or turning off block pop-ups makes any difference.

I have Pop-Up Stopper free edition. Turning it off make the Dope work right again, but it's obviously a Firefox 4 issue since this never happened in previous versions of Firefox and doesn't happen in any version of IE.

[cochrane]

Yeah, I'd disable Pop-Up Stopper. Even if it worked perfectly with firefox 3.6 and below, there's no guarantee it would work with Firefox 4. Many older extensions haven't been updated to work with it. I just use the popup blocker built into Firefox myself, and I never get popups.

[Cheshire Human]

This is why I never upgrade to a new browser version until all the extensions I use are upgraded, too, or something new and equivalent is developed. I'm sticking to 3.6 for a few more months. You bleeding edgers can find all the bugs in 4, first, thank you.

[Canadjun]

FF4 works for me, although I don't have popup stopper; I just use the builtin popup blocker.

[boomerwang]

I downloaded FF 4 yesterday, and have had no problems with AdBlock Plus. I just wish I could put a decent skin on it

[BigT]

Originally Posted by Cheshire Human

This is why I never upgrade to a new browser version until all the extensions I use are upgraded, too, or something new and equivalent is developed. I'm sticking to 3.6 for a few more months. You bleeding edgers can find all the bugs in 4, first, thank you.

If they haven't been upgraded by now, they probably aren't going to be. They've had almost an entire year. It's not like Firefox 4 is hidden until it comes out.

What extensions do you use that you can't replace? FFvB is not going to be replaced, annoyingly enough.

[Cheshire Human]

Originally Posted by BigT

If they haven't been upgraded by now, they probably aren't going to be. They've had almost an entire year. It's not like Firefox 4 is hidden until it comes out.

What extensions do you use that you can't replace? FFvB is not going to be replaced, annoyingly enough.

Don't know, haven't looked yet. Still, the fact that people are finding problems indicates, for me, anyway, that it's not yet time to upgrade. I don't do the bleeding edge bit. I wait until complaints die down. Then I look for extensions that do what I need.

[A Monkey With a Gun]

Firefox 4 made me go to Chrome.

I know that doesn't help, but I have found a shitload of annoying problems with it.

[BigT]

Originally Posted by A Monkey With a Gun

Firefox 4 made me go to Chrome.

I know that doesn't help, but I have found a shitload of annoying problems with it.

And as a lover of Firefox who does what little he can to help the Firefox devs, I'd love to know what the annoying problems were. Almost everything that was changed seems to be to try to be more like Chrome.

I am quite interested in actual problems, even if you don't want me to bother you with solutions (although I will mention them to see if, had you known about them, you still would have thought they sucked.)

[A Monkey With a Gun]

I used to love Firefox, but it's slower and crashes all the time. I'm having issues when it comes across Adobe Flash, but that's not even the main annoyance. If I close it and try to reopen it a bit later without restarting the whole machine I frequently get a message that says "Firefox is still running. Please close Firefox". It's not running! It just won't open unless I do a full restart.

[Rattlehead02]

Originally Posted by A Monkey With a Gun

I used to love Firefox, but it's slower and crashes all the time. I'm having issues when it comes across Adobe Flash, but that's not even the main annoyance. If I close it and try to reopen it a bit later without restarting the whole machine I frequently get a message that says "Firefox is still running. Please close Firefox". It's not running! It just won't open unless I do a full restart.

Instead of restarting, assuming you are running Windows XP/Vista/7, hit CTRL-ALT-DELETE, click Task Manager, click the Processes tab, click the Image Name header to sort by Image Name, find Firefox.exe, right click it and click End Process, click Yes on the warning that pops up. If you see Firefox.exe in there more than once do the same for each instance. You should now be able to open Firefox like normal.

[rowrrbazzle]

Originally Posted by A Monkey With a Gun

If I close it and try to reopen it a bit later without restarting the whole machine I frequently get a message that says "Firefox is still running. Please close Firefox". It's not running!

I've noticed that after FF has been running for a few hours and becomes sluggish, it takes a couple of minutes after I shut it down to finally end.

Gilded Lily is right. Either use "end process" in Task Manager or wait for it to end by itself.

[BigT]

While the above will work, it's a good idea to get to the bottom of the problem. There are two possiblities that I am aware of:

Your profile is corrupted. Make a new one.
You have low memory and are opening to many tabs. Despite what they say, you really need about 1GB of memory to run the program if you use more than a few tabs. If you don't have that, then unused tabs wind up having their memory written to disk, and Firefox has to swap it back in before closing.

The sluggish thing is a bug, but it's caused by the same phenomenon. Firefox is leaking memory, and that memory is getting sent to disk.

I've been pushing the devs to make the shutdown not have to swap memory back in, but apparently that's complicated and not enough people are complaining to make it worth it. The fact that people are willing to force shut down Firefox means they are okay with losing a little bit of data just to be able to run Firefox again.

[Ken001]

Software problems are inevitable from time to time. I'm using FF4 with no problems.

I particularly like "mouseover" and recall that I lost it for a week at one time. Lost the spellcheck too. But then it returned. Not much help to you admittedly but I'm sure the problem can be solved.

[BigT]

Originally Posted by Ken001

Software problems are inevitable from time to time. I'm using FF4 with no problems.

I particularly like "mouseover" and recall that I lost it for a week at one time. Lost the spellcheck too. But then it returned. Not much help to you admittedly but I'm sure the problem can be solved.

Unfortunately, intermittant and spontaneously correcting problems are the absolute hardest to troubleshoot. We had one that was actually due to a bug in Windows XP, and it was only fixed when something else went wrong. We had another one for PPC Macs, which was why they moved to Intel only. But then the bug got fixed when fixing something else, and now there is a PPC version, even if it isn't official.

[A Monkey With a Gun]

Originally Posted by GildedLily

Instead of restarting, assuming you are running Windows XP/Vista/7, hit CTRL-ALT-DELETE, click Task Manager, click the Processes tab, click the Image Name header to sort by Image Name, find Firefox.exe, right click it and click End Process, click Yes on the warning that pops up. If you see Firefox.exe in there more than once do the same for each instance. You should now be able to open Firefox like normal.

I've tried that, but it doesn't seem to show up. I haven't the slightest clue as to why not, but it just ain't there. I must admit that I haven't messed with it that much though. My solution has been to say to myself "huh?" and then just open Chrome and use that instead. <<shrug>>.

Thanks for the suggestion, though.