Firefox 3.6.4 with Crash Protection Now Available | Hacker News Reader

Firefox 3.6.4 with Crash Protection Now Available

blog.mozilla.com

55 pointschanux31 comments

Note that out-of-process plugins are not available for Mac OS X yet. (That's coming in a future release.) And Firefox does not yet have full process separation like Chrome, but that is coming via the https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis project (which will appear this year in Fennec 2.0, and then in the next release of Firefox after version 4.0).

I'm not sure what definition of 'full' means separating the chrome and content - but that's what Electrolysis does. As far as separation of plugins by process - this is full in every sense of the word.

It's not full, it's literally whitelisted to only kick in for Flash, Quicktime, and Silverlight.

I thought we were talking about whether it was fully separated. Silly English and its ambiguity.

Yes, it does not separate EVERY plugin. But it separates them completely into another process.

Sorry, I should have been more specific. I just meant that Firefox 3.6.4 has less process separation than Chrome, since we only separate plugins while Chrome also has separate processes for content.

There are two reasons why I use chromium (not Chrome) over Firefox.

     Chromium has true process separation.
     Chromium is faster for boot/page loads/JavaScript.

Splitting up plugins like this is chipping away at the first reason why I don't use Firefox. I would really like to use Fx, but chromium is just "better" for what I want in a browser.

Come on Firefox, win me back!

I'm not well aware about chrome process separation. So please educate me.

I thought Chrome gives a separate process per each tab. So for example if flash crashes in a given page the whole page should crash. But in Firefox way this shouldn't happen. Am I wrong?

I only started to use chrome recently so I don't have much experience with it either.

Chrome has a process per tab and runs entirely separate processes for each plugin. So if flash crashes, the page does not crash. There is only one flash process serving the whole browser though, so if flash crashes, flash content on all open tabs stops working. The new Firefox plugin implementation works the same way.

If this feature works well, I think it will eliminate possibly the biggest advantage of Chrome over Firefox. I already prefer Firefox over Chrome for usability reasons, and now soon I should be able to enjoy improved stability on Linux when Flash crashes.

Just curious, how do you feel Firefox is more usable than Chrome? I've felt like Chrome is much more progressive than Firefox with a cleaner and simpler interface.

Well, I can list a couple of things off the top of my head. For reference, I use both Chrome and Firefox on Linux at work and at home, and I have Chrome exclusively installed on my windows partition at home. I am trying to keep my windows install at home light, so I install as few things as possible. Also, I picked Chrome for windows because I wanted to get used to it more.

1. My biggest usability preference for Firefox is the 3.0-and-above address bar in Firefox. I discovered it by accident, but it has probably had more effect on my browsing of the web than any other recent browser feature. With it, I almost never have to fuss with bookmarks or type in the full URL of a web site. The address bar is absolutely amazing at guessing where I want to go based on one or two simple keywords. Chrome, on the other hand, always seems over-eager to give me the google search results for what I'm typing, doesn't handle things like out-of-order/non-contiguous keyword matching as well, doesn't prioritize previously visited web pages high enough, and doesn't order shorter matching prefixes on top, among other things.

2. As a computer-savvy person, I prefer firefox's more standard interface of having a menu bar on top. I also find it easier to configure Firefox, as again, it's editing windows work like most other programs I'm used to. That's not to say I don't like any other alternative UI's. I love, for instance, the ribbon interface in Office 2007 and I still feel like I can find my way around in it.

On a similar note, I also don't really like how Chrome's configuration is managed in separate tabs in web pages. I prefer the again more standard modal dialogues, separate windows, and native style widgets that Firefox uses. I feel like this appropriately separates Firefox-specific things from the rest of the web.

I see a major difference in purpose here between the two browsers. Firefox wants to fit in with the rest of your OS. Chrome wants to pretend your OS doesn't even exist.

3. I feel like I can manage Firefox bookmarks much better. I prefer, for instance, that added bookmarks not go to the bookmarks bar by default. Also, if I want, I can always drag and drop the current tab onto the primary bookmarks bar if I want to. Lastly, because of the location of the bookmarks menu, I know I can easily access bookmarks with alt+b and then use the arrow keys to find my bookmark, or I can even hop to bookmarks based on their first letter. This essentially allows me to access all bookmarks without even touching the mouse.

4. Firefox's search interface feels nicer. I like how the search bar shows up at the bottom left and spans the entire width of the screen. I believe it is less likely to be intrusive at the bottom as a lot of pages have right-columns. The fact that it spans the entire width makes it easier to notice the bar in the first place if you are new and have no idea where the search bar would show up.

Also, I like how options like case sensitivity and highlight-toggling are immediately visible, how alt+n and alt+p move forward and backwards, and how all of these and other options have underlines as the standard affordance for their alt-shortcuts. I know that enter/shift+enter work for both browsers for navigation, but there is no affordance for that. Lastly, for the VIMer inside me, Firefox responds to / for quick find! If that isn't cool, I don't know what is :).

There are probably other things, but these stick out at the moment.

Some of these things may be going away in Fx4.0.

The UI for 4.0 will probably move to tabs-on-top, although it looks like there may be an option to return to tabs-on-bottom: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/4.0_Windows_Theme_Mockups

Some of the modal dialogs and windows may become web pages. The Extensions Manager (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Extension_Manager:UI_Update_oldvers...), for instance, looks like it will become a web page.

I agree with 100% though on the superiority of Fx's Awesomebar over Chrome's Omnibox.

The UI is to draw a crowd that may have been lost, I think. Personally, though, I like TreeStyleTabs. It's a godsend for widescreen.

Sadly, while I appreciate the multi-process model of Chrome as a geek, it had almost nothing to do with why I switched: I'm a 64-bit Linux user. Firefox is, from a performance standpoint, almost unusable for me.

(On 32-bit Windows XP at work, Firefox is great, but there's value to me in a similar browsing configuration across machines.)

Weird. My work machine is 64-bit Linux, and since we use GWT I have to use Firefox for debugging, but I have not noticed any performance problems. I have unfortunately noticed, however, than even with compressed OOPs, Eclipse, GWT, and maven devour memory like beasts!

Try the latest nightlies. They bring Mozilla back to within an imperceptible speed difference vs Chromium on my 64-bit Linux machine: http://nightly.mozilla.org/

This is the number 1 reason I use chrome. Flash crashes at least 10 times a day for me.

How polite of them to be balanced by saying "Firefox offers crash protection for Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime and Microsoft Silverlight".

I wonder, though, if their crash stats for Windows and Linux also match Jobs' claim for MacOS, that Flash is the biggest offender. (The assessment should be controlled for frequency-of-use, of course.)

Well, there's not a whole lot of quicktime or silverlight out there on the 'net. So I'm pretty sure most, if not all, crashes are directly related to Flash.

Our public crash stats lend some support to Jobs' claim. Flash is by far the biggest cause of crashes on OS X Firefox.

It is the largest problem on Windows as well, but the proportions there are more even because a lot of Windows installations crash due to viruses, trojans, toolbars, av programs, and other crapware.

No doubt - I grew tired of Firefox and flash constantly crashing it. I watch a ton of online video/TV.

but without having stats on how many "successful" flash renderings all those users' browsers complete, the stats would be pretty skewed towards flash just due to its prevalance over quicktime and silverlight. much wider use of flash would lead to more reported crashes even if quicktime crashed more commonly.

Not skewed when compared to crashes inside Firefox itself, though. Last I checked, over 50% of OS X Firefox crashes had Flash involved.

I just installed Firefox 3.6.4 on my Mac Mini (Snow Leopard) and then updated flash. In doing so, Firefox crashes each time I try to open it :(

Going to use Chrome though I prefer to use Firefox. Any others experience this? Is there a fix - thnx

Here's a nice bug for Firefox with Flash on 64bit Fedora [1]. I'm getting updates about new crashes from other users almost daily.

[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=532456

I don't use Silverlight...I have never had Quicktime crash...flash...I am at the point where I am surprised it doesn't crash.

This seems like a pretty big change for a patch release?

Yes, this was an unusual release, and an experiment in shipping new features quicker than our major release cycle normally allows. Out-of-process-plugins was a good candidate for an interim release, because it is a stability enhancement and is transparent to the user (no UI changes).

Take that upvote as a "it seems to be working well in this situation" vote.

The idea is to push things out that help users as fast as possible. Things that require users to rethink how they use a product require longer release cycles as to not confuse users. In other words, rethink releases from a user's prospective, not a developer's.

+1 firefox. I've been resisting Chrome because they don't care about script blocking API.

No chrome until noscript!

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