Firefox Users Sound Off: Fix Those Bugs!Firefox Users Sound Off: Fix Those Bugs!

Use Firefox for a while, and you're almost certain to become an evangelist for the software, telling your co-workers and friends how great it is and urging them to switch. And should anyone dare to criticize your new favorite browser, you're going to get defensive.

But just between us (and the 800 million people who have Internet access), you have to admit: Firefox has bugs. Why shouldn't it? It's not magic — it's real-world software. These significant usability issues and problems must be addressed if it's going to become a serious, long-term challenger to Internet Explorer, and not just a fad.

To first find out what these problems were, we asked people familiar with Firefox to tell us their pet peeves. We started at home with the TechWeb Pipelines editors, many of whom have at least a year's experience using the browser. And we asked readers to help. TechWeb Pipelines Editor Scot Finnie put out a call for Firefox problems in his Scot's Newsletter, and Reviews Editor Barbara Krasnoff asked for the same in the Desktop Pipeline Newsletter. All told, we received about 200 responses.

The results? In short, Firefox users cited problems with extensions, performance slowdowns, patches and updates, and incompatibilities with some Web sites. Printing was also a problem for some users.

Some complained they often have a problem re-starting the browser after shutting it down. And several mentioned that members of the Firefox community can sometimes have a bad attitude, blaming the user when a user comes to them with a bug report.

Here's a rundown of some of the most-mentioned issues:

Extensions: Biggest Blessing And Biggest Curse
Firefox's extendable architecture is both the browser's biggest benefit, and the source of its biggest problems.

The benefit comes because the core browser itself is lean and — at least when it's working right — fast. When you first download and install Firefox, the software provides only the basics for HTML rendering, saving bookmarks, and tabbed browsing. Many users are content with this plain-vanilla approach. But if you want more, you can have it: There are hundreds of plug-in extensions to refine your browser tab behavior, customize the user interface, and even play Tetris or check on the weather.

The problem: Some extensions are incompatible with others, or are buggy. This creates problems with Firefox performance.

"Every problem I've had with Firefox has been due to extensions," said user Bob Schuchman. "Often, the order in which they are installed makes a difference." Schuchman said his favorite extension is Tabbrowser Extensions, which modifies browser behavior (Note: Throughout this article, we'll link to extensions we think are useful, but we won't link to extensions that appear to be buggy or otherwise harmful).

Schuchman continued, "Even the author admits that he can't fix it any more and the Mozilla people warn against using it. Just today I've uninstalled it and tried to find extensions that will take the place of the features I was using. Not all of them are available."

He added, "The extensions just don't get the attention that Firefox itself does. I don't know what the solution to this problem is, but I agree that something has to be done to vet extensions better than what is being done now. Maybe the answer is including the most important ones in basic Firefox, especially those related to tabbed browsing — the most important feature as far as I'm concerned."

Schuchman's e-mail suggests a solution to the extension problem: The core Firefox development team should be devoting significant resources to testing extensions for bugs, security holes, and compatibility with Firefox and with other extensions. Extensions that pass the tests would receive certification, and users looking for stability would be able to limit their Firefox use to just those extensions. More adventurous users could continue to try out new, untested extensions as soon as they come down the pike.

Moreover, the Firefox developers should offer an alternative to the bare-bones approach to installation. There are some plug-ins and extensions that most users will want to use, and Firefox developers ought to offer a download with those utilities pre-installed. We can argue over what the Deluxe Firefox should include, but we can start the list with Java, Apple QuickTime, Macromedia Flash, and Adobe Acrobat. Not all users will want these, but the overwhelming majority will, and users who don't want them would continue to have the option of using bare-naked Firefox as it is now.

Think you have problems with extensions? Here's how to diagnose the problem and fix it. One problem I struggled with even as I researched this article: No standard way to uninstall extensions.

Or, rather, there is a standard way to uninstall extensions, and developers adhere to that standard almost all the time. It's that "almost" that's the source of the problem.

The normal way to uninstall extensions is to click the Tools menu, select Extensions, select the extension you want to get rid of, then click "Uninstall."

That works on almost all extensions. But not all of them — and you can really get yourself into trouble if you use the uninstall button on an application that doesn't support that button.

I encountered this problem when I had trouble with the FlashBlock extension. This is one of my favorite Firefox extensions — it replaces Macromedia Flash on Web pages with a single button. Press the button to run the animation. This is very helpful when browsing advertiser-supported Web sites. Some ads are just plain annoying, and Flash advertising is the worst of the lot: moving around, playing sounds, and distracting you from whatever you're trying to read. FlashBlock gives you the opportunity to skip most Flash elements (and eliminate those annoying ads), while still seeing the Flash you want to see, such as online demos.

When I transferred my Firefox installation to a new computer recently, I found that FlashBlock wasn't working right. I'd click the little button, and nothing would happen. I figured the logical thing to do was to uninstall FlashBlock and re-install it. I clicked the Uninstall button, and then found that I could no longer view any Flash at all.

It was then that I checked the FlashBlock home page and saw the warning: "If you are reinstalling or upgrading to a newer version of FlashBlock you MUST remove the existing installation of FlashBlock first."

Oops.

The uninstall process for FlashBlock is a five-step procedure. I tried to recover, but I just made the problem worse; all my extensions began misbehaving. So I removed them and re-installed them.

The developers of FlashBlock are probably getting their fingers limbered up to flame me on this one, saying I should have read the Web page first. But this is simply not how most users work. If there's a big uninstall button that works most of the time, users will push that button, especially when the users installed the application months earlier and haven't looked at the home page for it since.

The solution is simple: Build the uninstall process so that the user is warned immediately if an extension requires a special procedure to work.

Or, even better, the uninstall button should just work on all extensions. Several users reported that Firefox slows down and gets buggy when it remains open for a long time.

User Rodger Karl said, "I have found that, using Firefox extensively over a period of several days, it seems to continually consume large quantities of memory. It eventually gets the point where I must routinely kill the process in task manager. I have since reverted back to Mozilla for now. I love Firefox but the memory consumption I can do without."

"The main problem I have is that it locks up from time to time," said David Langdon. "When it does this, the CPU jumps to 100% and it may last for less than a second or several seconds before it unlocks. Sometimes it won't unlock and I have to kill it with Task Manager. I first noticed this with V1.0 but it seems to happen more frequently with later builds, especially the latest one. What's strange about it is there's no pattern to when it happens. Although it does seem to happen more often with multiple tabs open, it also happens with just one. I've seen other people have this problem on the Mozilla forums, but so far I haven't seen a solution or common cause either."

In a related problem, many Firefox users cited a problem where they are unable to re-start the application after shutting it down. For instructions on how to solve that problem, click here.

Disappearing Web Sites And Nonexistent Documentation
My colleague Barbara Krasnoff e-mailed me to say: "My biggest gripe so far? The lack of serious and current help documentation.

"I recently installed Firefox on my spanking new VAIO laptop — it was one of the first apps I put on there — and suddenly I've got this situation where the browser will claim that sites like google.com and microsoft.com don't exist, and I should probably check the spelling. This happens in a totally unpredictable way — sometimes it will not occur for a while, and then it will happen repeatedly on different sites though a two-hour session. And then stop.

"There is absolutely no mention of this on the Firefox site. The only place I found it was in the forums, where a discussion of probable solutions — I'm not the only one with this bug — degenerated into a fight about whether or not it was only a problem with Firefox or whether a bunch of technical know-nothings were blaming Firefox for something that was obviously the fault of their firewall or ISPs.

"It would have been nice if there was some official bug report that I could check. Not only nice, but it would prevent errant thoughts of going back to IE from creeping into my brain."

User Al Gottlieb reported a similar problem with missing Web pages that Internet Explorer can find.

Patch Problems
One of Firefox's biggest lacks is the absence of a procedure for patching. You can't just update the software when a patch comes out — or you can, but it's likely to create problems. Best practice is to first uninstall the old version, and then re-install the new version.

That can be time-consuming, as Firefox has released four security upgrades since the 1.0 version shipped in December. Sure, it only takes a few minutes each time — but how much time do you have to waste each day?

User Lewis A. Locke said, "If there's a way to install just the patch or update, then it's well hidden in the instructions. Not a big deal for those of us with broadband connections, but I feel sympathy for those forced to use dial-up." He added, "It's very easy for the rabid supporters of Firefox to say, 'Well, if you're having problems, just do such-and-so. That'll take care of it.' My only response is that I use a browser to surf the World Wide Web, not to provide another use of my time. If the darned thing doesn't work properly 'out of the box,' then I'll not use it. Case closed."

Site Incompatibilities
One of the perennial problems in using an alternative browser is that some sites and Web-based applications are designed specifically to be used in the majority browser. Today, that browser is Internet Explorer, which still has better than 90 percent market share.

That's a problem that hits home here at the TechWeb Pipelines; the publishing software we use, Interwoven TeamSite, is only usable with Internet Explorer —. It's even fussy about which version of Internet Explorer you use.

Other users reported problems with other sites:

Foaming-At-The-Mouth Firefox Fans
Several users complained that the Firefox community has a bad attitude.

"I encountered a surprising amount of hostility from the admins when I decided to post what I thought was a new issue as a new bug. The admins told me I was wasting their time and that I should search the bug database before posting. Anyway, this attitude seems fairly common among open-source folks. I think the problem is that although you can find all kinds of people who want to do the programming, nobody wants to do support or documentation on open source projects, particularly as they will not be paid for it. In my opinion, this will prevent open-source solutions from ever going fully mainstream," said user Jeff Rivett.

"Firefox is slow, slower than IE, way slower than Opera," said user Gord Braun. "Mostly though, it's the foaming-at-the-mouth FF fans who keep me turned off on the browser. Imo, Firefox is like Linux — more religion than reality."

Print Problems
Several users reported problems with printing pages, and with Print Preview.

Firefox doesn't allow users to view two pages in one window, and prints too much white space when printing tables, said user Tidmore.

User Dick Scott said pages that use frames don't print correctly, printing separate pages for each frame.

But Wait, There's More
Users cited a range of miscellaneous problems that bug them about Firefox.

User Dominic Gill complained that Firefox doesn't copy the title of a page when copying an URL to the clipboard, making it difficult to use a clipboard-extender utility, like ClipCache, to build a clip library. Internet Explorer does carry the title of a page into the clipboard.

Reading Adobe Acrobat pages is a pain in the neck. I've noticed this myself; the page will take a minute or more to load, and the browser will freeze up while waiting for the page to finish loading.

User Michael Fessler said, "The big thing that caused problems for me was the Adobe Acrobat plugin. Often, Acrobat would be hung invisibly as a background process — somehow, it was still holding a Firefox instance hostage so no new one would launch. Killing the Acrobat process freed things up." He said he thinks the problem has been solved with the current version of Adobe Acrobat.

Two users, Roger Dickey and a user signing his name as "Bluie," reported that Firefox is incompatible with Zone Alarm, where page access slows or is blocked entirely.

Click Link, Take Nap
And, finally, there's a bug that's been bedeviling me for months, and it's the top of my list of Firefox problems:

After several months, I found that Firefox was responding very slowly after clicking links in e-mail. Response time could be more than a minute. During that time, my e-mail software (and I've tried this in Microsoft OutlookThunderbird, and Barca), would be locked up and unresponsive, which pretty much prevented me from doing more e-mail reading while waiting for Firefox to wake up and respond.

It's not just e-mail; I've noticed this problem in all external applications, including Word, text documents, and my Usenet client.

The problem appears to be related to a bad extension or combination of extensions, which I surmised after running Firefox in safe mode — which disables all extensions —, and seeing the problem disappear. However, I haven't been able to figure out which extension (or extensions) to blame. Simply uninstalling all extensions does not (as far as I can see) solve the problem. Apparently you also need to re-boot.

I've been able to fix the bug by removing all my extensions, rebooting, and then re-installing the extensions one at a time. I have not, however, been able to reproduce the bug, so I'm not sure this is a permanent solution.

Conclusion
After all this, you'd expect that I'd hate Firefox. On the contrary — I like it a lot, and I plan to continue using it as my default browser indefinitely. (I had a brief flirtation with Netscape recently, but it didn't last, and I came running home to Firefox.) Firefox's advantages when compared with Internet Explorer — such as tabbed browsing, customization through extension, and heightened security — overshadow any difficulties that I've been having so far.

However, there are problems, and those problems must be solved if Firefox is to become a real challenger to Intenet Explorer.

Right now, it's a novelty, the first browser in the 21st Century to actually reduce Microsoft's market share. But Microsoft is fighting back, with a new version of Internet Explorer — including tabbed browsing — due this summer. Firefox developers are generally conscientious about fixing bugs, but they need to get even more so, or else Firefox will join the long list of once-promising applications that were flattened by the Redmond juggernaut.

Mitch Wagner is editor of Security Pipeline.