I Pit Firefox for updating itself twice a week

[Farmer_Jane]

I know; right?! I had the same issue. After 10,000 fixes and tweaks and installs and re-installs with Flash and Firefox, it works. Part of it was the Flash issue as well, I think, because after I was forced to update that, not even Chrome worked well. Still, when IE is running more smooth than Firefox, it’s time to write FF off.

I don’t even know how I “fixed” it, since none of their options seemed to be working. I think it was a combo of swearing and uninstalling and reinstalling crap. Also, flashblock is a lifesaver.

[BigT]

@Great_Antibob

I’m liking all the subjective experiences but based on some actual benchmarking, Firefox 7 (and now 8, which is slightly better) are not bad browsers. Actually, they’re doing pretty well with the last couple versions:

Web Browser Grand Prix 7: Firefox 7, Chrome 14, Opera 11.51 | Tom's Hardware

Also, displaying the passwords is NOT a “giantic security hole” and it’s pretty well known. You need physical access to your machine or remote access to your box to exploit this. The list is only as secure as your own box, and if that’s compromised, then a list of website passwords is rather the least of your worries. That, and at that point, the stored list of website passwords is recoverable from any browser, whether or not an ‘average’ user knows how to do it.

None of that has to do with the popularity of the browser and the horrible inability to handle updates correctly. That’s what matters. And they’re even talking about not supporting a downgrade if an automatic upgrade breaks things.

Oh, and for the first time, they are heavily considering removing a feature (live bookmarks) without porting it out, thus losing their place as the browser that cares about its users. I can’t figure out why the hell they are trying to match Chrome’s policies when Chrome is still doing worse.

They already broke live bookmarks in Firefox 7 and 8 and refuse to fix it because “it’ll be too much work.” I’m already stuck using version 6 on my laptop.

The only reason I’m not using Chrome is that their devs are worse: we’ve been clamoring for font scaling since version 4, at least, and they still dont’ care. They don’t even allow full zoom except at pretermined levels. And they intentionally break things so that you can’t go back to an earlier version if they fuck things up. The good point is that they do it less often.

Remember, Firefox 7 had to have all updates frozen because they didn’t bother to test how the update would effect addons that were in the progress of updating.

And who are these people who switched to Chrome because Firefox’s version number wasn’t high enough? Seriously?

[RaftPeople]

@Great_Antibob

…The list is only as secure as your own box, and if that’s compromised, then a list of website passwords is rather the least of your worries…

Not necessarily true.

All depends on which sites the passwords are for and who has access and for how long.

I can think of scenarios in which just getting the passwords to websites could be much worse than being physically at the box (e.g. online banking).

[Sinaptics]

@Great_Antibob

Also, displaying the passwords is NOT a “giantic security hole” and it’s pretty well known. You need physical access to your machine or remote access to your box to exploit this. The list is only as secure as your own box, and if that’s compromised, then a list of website passwords is rather the least of your worries. That, and at that point, the stored list of website passwords is recoverable from any browser, whether or not an ‘average’ user knows how to do it.

I disagree. For the vast majority of people, it’s a huge problem. Unless you have a guest user for people to use while they’re at your house, the only other option is to never let people touch your computer.

Sure, people can recover websites from any browser. But can they do it in 7 seconds?

[MJinks]

@Morgyn

NoScript isn’t available for Chrome, and that’s important to me.

NoScript might not be available but NotScript is and it does exactly the same thing. I can block, allow or temp allow any script I want at a click of a button.

NotScript and AdblockPlus made me switch from Firefox a few months ago. Firefox actually started giving me bluescreens…

[HookerChemical]

I’ve recently (last year or so) moved more and more toward chrome from FF. Chrome has gotten better and better with more and more plugins. FF has been improving, but not as quickly.

I also gave Opera a shot recently. I’m not ready for a full jump over there, but it’s jumped back to being one of the best browsers again. I was an Opera user for several years, but it seemed to fall behind after Chrome came out. I haven’t fully tested it out, but it seems like the current version (11.52) is comparable with the leader (Chrome) again. It’s my preferred Android browser, so I may make the full switch.

I’ll even toss a bone to Microsoft. IE is back from complete stagnation is is once again usable. I think it’s still more of a security risk than other browsers, so my use is limited to sites I trust at work, but it’s about on par with FF now.

[johnpost]

3.6.24 is a recent security update for that version.

[Don_t_Panic]

@Sinaptics

I disagree. For the vast majority of people, it’s a huge problem. Unless you have a guest user for people to use while they’re at your house, the only other option is to never let people touch your computer.

No, the other option is to use the “master password” option. Then you’ll need to enter a password to see your passwords. It certainly could be more clearly labelled, though, and I agree that most people probably don’t even know about this.

[Snow_Pea]

@Morgyn

Didn’t you set a master password? If you did, then all the list displays is the sites and user names, but you have to enter the master password to see the passwords for the sites.

I just set this, thinking “great! Now in order for someone to see the list of passwords, they’ll have to enter the master password”. Nope. :mad: Firefox crashes for me at least a dozen times a day and each time I restart and need to use Secure Login to login to my mail, it demands the master password. Fuck you Firefox.

Why oh why won’t Chrome allow users to customize where they want their tab bar? I want them down on the bottom, underneath the content, just like Opera does, and just like Windows does. I head down there to switch between programs, wtf do I have to go all the way to the top to switch tabs? :mad:

[Morgyn]

@Snow_Pea

I just set this, thinking “great! Now in order for someone to see the list of passwords, they’ll have to enter the master password”. Nope. :mad: Firefox crashes for me at least a dozen times a day and each time I restart and need to use Secure Login to login to my mail, it demands the master password. Fuck you Firefox.

If you only have to enter the Master Password once in order to use it across multiple sessions, there’s not a lot of point in having it in the first place. I’d rather have to re-enter it for each new session. YMMV.

As an aside, I’m surprised your browser is crashing so frequently. Maybe I’ve been unusually lucky, but I’ve found FF to be pretty stable. (And I did finally give in and upgrade to FF 8.)

[Great_Antibob]

@Sinaptics

I disagree. For the vast majority of people, it’s a huge problem. Unless you have a guest user for people to use while they’re at your house, the only other option is to never let people touch your computer.

Well, to be honest, yes, that’s a better solution. If they’ve got physical access to your machine, “security” is a laughable concept. You are simply attempting security through obscurity, which might be sufficient the majority of the time in your own case but is not, in general, any real security.

@Sinaptics

Sure, people can recover websites from any browser. But can they do it in 7 seconds?

If they were looking to do so and had physical access on an admin account, sure. Maybe not 7 seconds but in a short enough period of time not to matter.

I’m seeing a lot of confirmation bias in this thread. People will tend to post if they’ve had problems. The vast majority of people who don’t have problems will tend not to care enough to post.

I’m not saying FF doesn’t have problems, but the concerns raised by many of the posters in this thread are overblown or aren’t exclusive to this particular browser.

[elmwood]

Not half as bad as anything from Adobe, which has updates that are just as frequent, if not more so. Really, how often do they have to update Flash Player, Acrobat Reader, and the like?

[Morgyn]

@elmwood

Not half as bad as anything from Adobe, which has updates that are just as frequent, if not more so. Really, how often do they have to update Flash Player, Acrobat Reader, and the like?

As often as they fix a security hole that some cracker has been exploiting?

[amarone]

Maybe there is some rule that browsers have to get worse over time. I swapped to Chrome a year or two ago. At the time the only issue seemed to be that not all sites that I used supported Chrome. I assumed this would reduce over time. However, it now feels as if even more sites (that I use) either do not work or do not work properly with Chrome.

Furthermore, there are two known issues with Chrome that have appeared in the last few months and have not yet been fixed:

[ul]
[li]Flash plug-in crashing. This happens a lot on one site that I use a lot (bridgebase.com)[/li][li]Hanging when pressing the Back arrow[/li][/ul]

So I am getting disillusioned with Chrome and have started using IE9 more (tried FF previously - didn’t like it).

[Bookkeeper]

@RaftPeople

Not necessarily true.

All depends on which sites the passwords are for and who has access and for how long.

I can think of scenarios in which just getting the passwords to websites could be much worse than being physically at the box (e.g. online banking).

And your critical passwords, such as for online banking, should never be saved anyway. I love saved passwords for sites like the library, SMDB, club websites, etc., but would never use it for anything financial in nature, such as banks, taxes, PayPal, and the like.