Firefox fixes stability bug Mozilla has pushed out a new version of its Firefox browser designed to fix a stability issue with the previous version of the open source application. Some users of Firefox 3.6.9, released on 7 September, experienced crash problems, particularly on start-up. In response, Mozilla suspended the automatic rollout of the browser …
My 3.6.x install is so much more unstable than 3.5.x, and all of my crashes seem to be related to flash - and more specifically, the "plugin-container" designed to stop flash killing the browser!
Why the hell does this task end up consuming upwards of 150MB, and 50% of the CPU time. Versions not using this so called aid for flash were not faced with this sluggish and unreliable behaviour.
I have seen people complaining that their 3.6.x doesn't respond to mouse wheel commands - well I had a brief spate of that and again - the wonderful plugin-container was the culprit. Killing it allowed mouse wheel events to work again (although it it immediately restarted by the browser anyway).
Ever since it got released I've had persistent crashes - possibly due to flash but perhaps other causes.
The only advantage is that on dual core processor the crashing component - the app container - only uses one core so I have enough CPU left to kill the rogue process.
When Firefox stops using flash and / or designs it's software to detect rogue processes the world will be a better place.
I follow Ustream.tv birds (theOwlbox) and eventually the Flash App Container hangs the whole system (I can see it on the PC, but it happens on the Mac also). Killing FF doesn't entirely fix it - have to kill Container also to recover memory.
Flash has its uses! Needs rewriting (Open Sourcing) to become well behaved.
Was getting random hang/freezes on 3.6.9 and earlier, never did get to the bottom of which plugin was at fault, (maybe flash but couldn't be sure as I was running noscript and flashblock). the hangs didn't last long, seconds really, but annoying none the less.
Had no recurrence since the upgrade to .10 today, but early days I suppose.
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