Update happened last night 8 pm EDT. Since then virtually nothing is functional, including this web site (There! Are! Five! Lights!).
FF has been giving me some issues for awhile now as it is. So I finally broke down and am migrating to MS Edge. FF has a memory leak, which for the hobby work that I do is bad because after having Google Maps open for an hour all my memory has been sucked dry.
But perhaps you all could recommend another browser, since historically I haven’t had much love for MS Explorer? Edge gives me no issues per se, just would like to hear some thoughts on the best browser for W11.
I switched from FF to Brave several years ago.
(I can’t remember why ! I think it was something to do with FF not being
very flexible with new tabs customization …)
Brave has a built in ad blocker.
If you’re running an ad blocker, try disabling it and see if that makes a difference on the sites you’re having trouble with. If that helps just uninstall that blocker and switch out for a different one. Could be your Firefox update doesn’t gel with your current blocker.
Another possible fix would be to try a new Profile.
Opera could be an alternative. Or Brave (as mentioned in above post). Or Waterfox, but that’s basically a more secure version of Firefox. Or I suppose there’s always Chrome if you don’t care about privacy.
I think there’s a Firefox forum on Reddit where you could probably get more help.
Chrome is as much a resource hog as FF. Don’t know about Edge, but since it’s built on the same engine as Chrome, I don’t expect better memory management.
Maybe I’m too cynical, but I think it doesn’t make a big difference anymore. Google, Apple, MS, Facebook, Amazon, they all hoard your data, if not directly through the browser then at the OS level.
Same here. It looks as if it is something to do with the adblocker. I have adblock ultimate installed, and when I turn that off, websites that were giving problems start working again.
I suspect they have made some change to the adblocker API.
I’m going to report the problem to AdBlock ultimate, see if they respond, and if no solution appears soon, try switching to a different adblocker.
Firefox 116.0.1 works fine for me. In general, these sorts of problems are not due to the browser itself, but something that got corrupted during the update, or some incompatibility.
One thing you can try is to restart Firefox in Troubleshoot Mode. Click the three-line button, then Help, then Troubleshoot Mode, then Click Restart. Don’t Refresh Firefox when prompted. This will disable all addons and special settings temporarily. If everything works now, then you’ll know those are the problem.
To disable Troubleshoot Mode, you go to Help > Disable Troubleshoot Mode. You can then go through and try disabling anything that you think might be causing problems.
Or, if you don’t have many extensions and customizations, you could also try Refreshing Firefox. Follow the directions above for Troubleshoot Mode, but do click “Refresh Firefox” when prompted. This will recreate a new profile, but will keep your bookmarks, history, and many settings. But you’ll have to reinstall any addons, and possibly any advanced tweaks you made.
All of this is assuming that other browser still work. If not, then then problem probably isn’t with Firefox. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to do a malware scan.
In a discussion in a different thread, several knowledgeable posters recommended Edge over Firefox. Right now, I’m torn. I’m on Windows 7 where Firefox support ended with version 115.0, which generally works OK but has bugs where certain actions (rarely) will cause it to hang, requiring you to close it and restart it – which is no big deal since it retains all the previous tabs. It also has a problem properly displaying one useful website I go to sometimes – realclimate.org – where for some reason it feels that all the text should be grayed out.
Edge doesn’t have those issues. It seems to work properly, where unfortunately “properly” means conforming to whatever protocols causes it to display obnoxiously loud ads preceding the videos on the CNN site. Firefox somehow bypasses these loud video ads. And it has nothing to do with ad blockers – believe me, I’ve tried. So now I alternate between the two browsers. I’ve never tried Brave, but looking at their website, it looks attractive.
Another option is to go back to the previous version of your browser and freeze it at that version. The way I do this is to take a backup disk image of my C: drive every night and restore from a backup when I have a problem such as the OP described. This happened to me a few months ago with Firefox so I am currently stuck at the 109.0.1 version.
I think ublock origin is the best ad blocker for Firefox.
I am a supporter of the idea that you should always have an alternative browser available–mine is MS Edge.
I’d been having the same problem with Firefox for several days, on both the SDMB (wouldn’t even open) and on Facebook (would open only to my Home page and wouldn’t navigate anywhere else on the site).
Thanks to this thread I removed AdBlocker Ultimate as well as uBlock Origin. Problem solved! After a couple of reboots to make sure everything was settled, I reinstalled AdBlocker and still have no problems, so in my case either uBlock was the culprit, or it was the two extensions in tandem.
I’ve been using Edge since it came out and have no issues. I think it’s a damn fine browser. Granted, I was using Windows 10 when it came out and recently upgraded both my physical machine and my OS (Windows 11) so depending on the age of your machine and your OS, YMMV.