I have a Dell at home with Vista Ultimate. We use Firefox 2.0.11 and for the most part it seems to work good. However there are a few sites that give me a white screen that locks up Firefox and the only way to close the program is through Task Manager under Processes, trying to end under Applications will not work.
What happens is I go to a web site, the loading symbol will come up, a few seconds later Firefox gets this milky white look to it and that’s it. I’ve tried googling the problem, but from what I gather most people have this problem with the SSL, or when going to sites that start with https. I don’t have this problem, but I do have a problem with the Gary Moore home page, and a few others that happen every time I go there.
Has anyone else had this problem, or know what might be causing it? It’s annoying to not be able to go to certain sites while I’m at home.
I’ve had that issue also, with Vista Home Premium. It is really annoying, and you must kill the process, not the application.
The point about Java makes sense - I’ve had a Java Updater nag thingie in my systray for some weeks now (very little free time to babysit a PITA install), I’ll try to update this evening and see if I can’t recreate that error with the Gary Moore site.
Gary Moore’s website didn’t work for me in Firefox. It worked just fine in IE. I have Vista Business.
I’ve had similar issues where a site will not work in Firefox, but will work in IE. I think it’s a combination of Firefox not quite being up to snuff with Vista, at least in terms of Java/Flash plugins, and site developers not taking Firefox into account while designing sites.
Like the others, I’ve had issues with some Flash- and Java-intensive sites and Firefox. I don’t often have to kill the process; usually, it’ll go away on its own.
It’s not so much that it doesn’t work, it’s that some sites just lock up the program. I don’t think it’s a Firefox thing either as I use it at work, under XP Pro, and it works fine on the same sites.
I will try the Java updates when I get home tonight.
The web site is poorly constructed. It is not standards-compliant. A substandard web site will render in a variety of ways, or not at all, depending upon the browser (and version) used, and the computer’s O/S. Since we have a defective site in the first place, pretty much all bets are off.
At the same time, Internet Explorer, the prostitute of web browsers, works on just about any poorly constructed web site. It is good at hiding a multitude of sins, either from web sites or its own internal failings. Conversely, a non-IE web browser that pays significant attention to standards-compliance might very well lock up. Does Opera suffer with this site running on Vista?
Firefox seems to work fine using a Win2000 or WinXP system. That it fails with Vista opens up another can of worms. Would Bill Gates go so far as to cripple non-IE browsers when used with Vista? I don’t know, although the MS web site has a history of doing just that with non-IE visitors.
XP, Firefox here. I can access the Gary Moore site fine, but I have had a problem with some similarities to this one.
There is a daily free cryptic crossword that uses Java at htt p://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/puzzles/cryptic.html (I’ve broken the link). I had had intermittent problems with it, but one day it started freezing Firefox every time I tried to view that page. This continued to happen even after I re-installed Java. (IE just displays the little error placeholder in the top left of the area where the crossword should have appeared.) I resorted to looking at Java’s trace and it said there was an authorization problem when accessing certain files.
Well it’s a Java problem as I’ve disabled it and can make it to the site. However, there are a couple of sites that must out right use some strange Java and even disabling it I can’t go further then the front page because of a button.
Is there a way to re-install Java to see if that will fix it?
I have problems with Firefox 2.0.0.11 on a variety of sites, with both XP and Vista. Some cursory investigation leads me to believe that it might actually be the plug-ins I have running, since pretty much all of my machines have slightly different collections. FWIW, my Vista machine is halfway between my two [usual] XP machines in terms of Firefox reliability.
This may be it. Ever since Microsoft lost the lawsuit with Sun over Sun Java and licensing, Microsoft may still be using an older version of Sun Java embedded within its O/S and/or its Java clone isn’t as compatible to real Java. In either case, if you add in a poorly structured web site (possibly using a poorly written Java applet), you then may have compatibility issues with non-IE web browsers running on a Microsoft O/S.