Why is the newest Firefox 12 so much slower than Firefox 3.6.28 and why do they all crash?
I love Firefox but of late the fastest Firefox they have is 3.6.28 which the fools have decided to discontinue upgrading! I started with Firefox 12, slow/crash. 11, ditto, 10.2, slow, 9 back to 4, slow as crap/crash crash crash! Looks like 3.6.28 will be it for me and live with the crashes. If addons are the culprit, Firefox should test 'em and ban the incompatible ones. Dunno why I'm asking again because unless I can talk to the makers of Foxy I'll get no concrete answers anyway. Foxy and Mozilla are the only browsers on the web that do not have email addresses for troubleshooting problems! Wish I could find a better browser than Foxy! Used to love it but now it's just plain BS! I depend on Henrietta for my livelihood (survey work, web ads surfing &c) and I need a reliable browser. Looks like Foxy ain't it and IE i even worse! Opera's great only incompatible with most of the sites I need to use! Any suggestions at all? Thanks I hope- keimanzero Scion of Anime of PA. Oh a word to the wise- if you use Web of Trust get rid of it! You'll need a special uninstall tool but WOT blocks every single site as unsafe and that includes this one and Firefox!
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Hello keimanzero, I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing issues with Firefox, but I don't think there is much to be done to resolve them... You might want to scan your system for viruses or malware and maybe clean-up your PC so it goes a little faster. Other than that, you could launch Firefox in Add-Ons-disabled mode or remove some unneeded ones. As to why Firefox is slower than 3.6.28 I think it is due to the resources they use on your computer. 3.6.28 was very stable as it was a LTS (Long-Term Support) release and it was very simple, compared to the latest versions. As to the crashes and bugs, Firefox 12 is very recent and it is only a bridge to the next few releases that will bring many interesting and useful features to the web browser. While it is true that Mozilla does not provide direct support through customer support representatives to their users, they do provide a pretty good knowledge base and a strong community that is ready to help and support them. I hope that I could maybe illuminate you a little bit and on a side note, I have to say that I myself don't like WOT very much for their warnings and inaccurate ratings of some websites.
A possible cause is security software (firewall,anti-virus) that blocks or restricts Firefox or the plugin-container process without informing you, possibly after detecting changes (update) to the Firefox program.
Remove all rules for Firefox and the plugin-container from the permissions list in the firewall and let your firewall ask again for permission to get full unrestricted access to internet for Firefox and the plugin-container process and the updater process.
See:
Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.
See "Basic Troubleshooting: Make a new profile":
There may be extensions and plugins installed by default in a new profile, so check that in "Tools > Add-ons > Extensions & Plugins" in case there are still problems.
If that new profile works then you can transfer some files from the old profile to that new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files.
See:
I have installed Fx12, Fx 10.0.4ERS, Fx13 beta, Fx13 aurora. I find Fx12 start fine, but after a time get very slowly to browsing or to get to the active focus. I noted in about:memory an network-memory-cache error (negative value, only in Fx12), i disable java and go away, but the slowness remains.
I test the other with the exact same profile(going to the profile directory and copy the release profile to the others) and all of them are very speedy.
I made an aditional test loading 7 pages(from a bookmark) at the same time and they delayed: Fx12 125s,Fx ERS 44.5s, Fx Beta 34.5s, Fx aurora 37.5s Fx12
Modified
I have heard that Firefox 15 was extremely fast and it has a lot of new interesting features to bring to the web experience. I guess we will have to wait until then for a noticeable speed change...
To use Fx ERS until the new release then
Natrist, there is noting even close to a Firefox 15.0 release yet as it was only started a couple days ago on the unstable Nightly channel that is meant for devs and testers.
Yes James, but I have developer friends from the Ubuntu community that told me that it was going to be pretty amazing and that there would be great improvements to the speed and that it was hitting pretty hard on SunSpider benchmark, if I am not mistaken.
I removed all the Add-ons with the exception of: Addblock Plus, All-in-One Sidebar and Web Mail Notifier. Firefox 12 is now back to normal speed.
You shouldn't have to make a new profile with a new version or disable necessary addons to get it work how it should.
Each version gets worse and worse, even on a high-end pc.
I have been experiencing crashes with version 12. I'm patiently waiting to receive an answer but having looked at all the problems with Fox this will be a long wait. Have gone to version 8 and all is fine. The risk is there but hopefully nothing is going wrong ????
Would be nice if one would answer of what to do. I like my fox, but will switch if I have to. Nelueg
Thanks nelueg. Maybe I'll try Foxy 8 but last time I tried it I still had crash city man! Why won't our lousy bloody govt who loves to close down honest websites like megavideo (Greed of course!) won't regulate crooked companies like Mozilla and Maxthon who constantly put out inferior browsers that do not work, crash often and cause damage to our PC's OS's? Wish I could switch nel but the survey work I do requires Foxy as a browser. I'd loove to use Opera for everything but that is not possible. Take care now and sayonara- keimanzero SOA of PA
Mozilla is most certainly not a crooked company. Just because you may be having some issues does not mean the new Firefox releases themselves are bad or everybody else must be having the same problems.
Most often times the issues are due to some certain Extensions or Plugins versions believe it or not.
Have you even done any troubleshooting as cor-el mentioned?
I have done everything! Nothing works. If you don't know the answer just say so! Guess I'll have to wait for them to answer my letter. Goodbye and thanks for zilch- keimanzero
YOU CAN'T ENLIGHTEN THE UNENLIGHTENABLE.
trying to migrate all of our PC's from 3.6.28 to 12.0 (which I gave up on and now trying the ESR release) and 10.0 - compared to 3.6.28, Firefox 10 and 12 are still extremely slow on all PC's even with new profiles created with fresh installs, no add-ons, in safemode, and with antivirus and firewalls disabled, reinstalled java and uninstalled flash.
there seems to be a memory problem; even with only one or two tabs open, you can watch the memory usage just get bigger and bigger with nothing happening in the browser.
Just done a fresh install of win7 x64 and installed FF12. It's so slow, The typing lag is unbelievable. Even typing this reply is driving me bonkers :-) I've also just installed Chrome and that's much much faster.
try to disable hardware acceleration in firefox > options > advanced > general or update your graphics driver
Upgrade your graphics drivers to use hardware acceleration and WebGL
just tried disabling the enhanced java plug-in and hardware acceleration on 4 different PC's, all drivers are up-to-date, no difference whatsoever.
the cursor will actually lag as you try to move it around the window and across tabs and typing will intermittently lag extremely badly.
hello, robyrob - i was aiming this advice primarily at mozart999uk, since you've also reported you've done all sorts of troubleshooting steps... another thing you may try: is the same memory leak/lagging appearing with a portable version of firefox? http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable (note: those are not provided by mozilla)
@madperson..thanks for the tip :-) - certainly improved the typing lag a lot! I still find 12 very slow compared to previous versions and chrome though...