User dissatisfied with Mozilla

[Yahweh]

Prepare for a rant, kids...

A while ago, I made a thread citing my problems I was having Internet Exploror (the problem was IE was not displaying images), I solved the problem by switching to Mozilla.

Unfortunately, I am very dissatisfied with Mozilla. I've been using computers for a long long time, and Mozilla is the single program who I believe has craving to crash. The program is literally itching to freeze itself!

I frequently have 2 or more windows open at one time (right now, I am also browsing through Renata's Forums). And no, this program does not crash like other programs, this takes a much less effiecient and much less convenient approach to error handling: When one window crashes, they all crash.

On a given day, Mozilla will easily crash a good 5+ or so times. Mozilla crashes all the time, usually for no good reason. I notice a few things I do will invoke a crash: When I have more than 4 Mozilla windows or tabs open at one time, when I attempt to view the thread that will not die, when I attempt to write long descriptive and/or intelligent posts, when I leave my computer for 10 minutes and screensaver comes on, etc. etc. etc.

Aside from Mozilla being the least reliable program I have ever used, it slows the loading process of my computer. With the "Start Up" option on Mozilla unchecked, my computer boots up in a minute or two. When checked, my computer is unbearably slow for up to 10 minutes after Windows begins intialization. I have to keep the Start Up option checked because it retains the program in memory, it needs to do this so it starts up faster. If I dont have it checked, I have to wait a full 60 seconds for that digusting orange Mozilla splash screen to go away everytime I exit and restart Mozilla.

I've even considered using Opera, I downloaded it (which took a few tries because Mozilla has an amazing capability of forgetting its place when it crashes in the middle of a download, I have to start all over... surprise?), I didnt like the way it looked, I couldnt figure out how to use it (meaning when I typed an address into the URL box, Opera would get confused and refuse to function). I removed Opera from my computer.

Twice already, I've lost all my bookmarks and favorites thanks to Mozilla. I dont know how, all I remember is having difficulty using Mozilla, it errors, next thing I know all my bookmarks (50 or more) were wiped out.

Mozilla doesnt allow you to open a new window if you right click on an image link, thats kind of a peeve of mine.

Now I've encountered a new set of problems, as of a few days ago, everytime Mozilla crashes, my mouse dies. Its a standard Compaq mouse, there is a cord that connects it to the CPU, when Mozilla crashes as it does every so often (5+ times a day) the mouse will cease all function. I have to use my keyboard to restart the computer (and remember the restart process can take up to 10 minutes, at 5+ times a day this will get frustrating).

 

[Yahweh]

I'm no stranger to shoddy software, I use AOL Dialup (I'm going straight to Hell for that one, AOL Dialup is strictly prohibited in the Geeky Nerd's Computer Bible). I'll admit, the team at AOL has made their program much less excruciating to own. At the same time, they've added so many useless features.

For instance, I use AOL for 3 purposes:
1. To sign online
2. I use AOL's built in AIM (I also have AIM downloaded... my arent I resourceful)
3. I use an AOL address as my private emailing address, this means I only recieve mail from friends and family, maybe a coworker from time to time, my AOL mailbox is pretty much spamfree (I use yahoo mail for my general address, that one recieves all the spam).

Aside from that, I have no use for AOL. I dont go into chatrooms, I dont use AOL Autos, Careers & Work, Computer Center, Entertainment, Games, Health, Home/Real Estate, International, Kids Only, Local Guide, Music, News, Parenting, Personal Finance (I use TC2000, it beats the Hell out of AOL Personal Finance), Research & Learn, Shopping, Sports, Teens, Travel, or Women.

I have never used AOL "Remind Me" feature, AOL Radio, AOL Yellow Pages, and God knows I would never use AOL Personals.

I hate the AOL search.

I dont use AOLs internal browser (which has serious problems displaying animated GIF files and Java Applets).

The only thing I like about AOL is its semi-Customizing features. I use a snail as my AIM icon, I set my background to Preferences > AOL Themes > Change Desktop Theme > Time of Day > Nighttime. My toolbar theme is Monochrome Blue. My favorite feature is the outgoing IM expressions, I set mine so everytime I send an IM to someone, the default IM chimes are replaced by a cat meowing.

I would be better off using PeoplePC. But Mrs. Yahweh likes AOL, we can afford the US$24, its not a big deal to me.

 

[Zep]

Don't write Mozilla off yet.

Go and try their Firebird product instead - downloadable from the Mozilla site (hunt about a bit). It's a thin browser only, no fancy overheads like email client, etc. They say that the engine underlying Firebird is the same Gecko engine that powers Netscape ... for what that's worth!

I've been using it for some months now, and it has never crashed on me at all. It loads very quick (although granted, I fire it manually after startup), and it appears to run as fast as/faster than IE6.x. It has a few little kinks that I'm not entirely in love with, but otherwise it's a good all-round browser for me. I'm running it on XP Pro and an AMD CPU, incidentally.

Your mileage may vary, of course...

 

[Skeptoid]

Having any AOHell software installed on your computer is likely to be at the root of all of your browser problems.

AOL = SANTA.

 

[Yahweh]

Don't write Mozilla off yet.

Go and try their Firebird product instead - downloadable from the Mozilla site (hunt about a bit). It's a thin browser only, no fancy overheads like email client, etc. They say that the engine underlying Firebird is the same Gecko engine that powers Netscape ... for what that's worth!

I've been using it for some months now, and it has never crashed on me at all. It loads very quick (although granted, I fire it manually after startup), and it appears to run as fast as/faster than IE6.x. It has a few little kinks that I'm not entirely in love with, but otherwise it's a good all-round browser for me. I'm running it on XP Pro and an AMD CPU, incidentally.

Your mileage may vary, of course...

I've just downloaded Firebird, it seems like a good browser, I've been using it for 10 minutes and it hasnt crashed yet, A+ for already exceeding Mozilla's effeciency.

 

[CFLarsen]

AOL = SANTA.

I resent that!

 

[Zep]

I've just downloaded Firebird, it seems like a good browser, I've been using it for 10 minutes and it hasnt crashed yet, A+ for already exceeding Mozilla's effeciency.

Try hitting F11, as you do with IE - my default mode of operation. In fact, it seems to respond to most of the IE function keys and command sequences.

Your mileage may vary...!

 

[Zep]

Oh, I should have mentioned.

Firebird has one important advantage over IE - it DOES NOT ALLOW ALL THOSE ANNOYING POPUPS! That's why I got it in the first place!

 

[jeremyp]

Originally posted by Yahweh

I've just downloaded Firebird, it seems like a good browser, I've been using it for 10 minutes and it hasnt crashed yet, A+ for already exceeding Mozilla's effeciency.

Firebird is just Mozilla without the mail client. It sounds to me like you were using an alpha or beta release of Mozilla.

 

[tamiO]

Having any AOHell software installed on your computer is likely to be at the root of all of your browser problems.

I second that.

 

[Hand Bent Spoon]

The browser wars have been over for some time now. IE won, hands down. However bad IE's problems, the other browsers have even more vexing ones.

And remember: IE is the original alternative browser. Netscape/Mozilla was the monopolistic monster once upon a time, but due to lack of innovation, they lost market share until finally this one-time monopoly was completely marginalized by the now-superior IE. (And if you bring up Mosaic, I'll be forced to bring up WorldWideWeb. )

 

[Mendor]

The browser wars have been over for some time now. IE won, hands down. However bad IE's problems, the other browsers have even more vexing ones.

And remember: IE is the original alternative browser. Netscape/Mozilla was the monopolistic monster once upon a time, but due to lack of innovation, they lost market share until finally this one-time monopoly was completely marginalized by the now-superior IE. (And if you bring up Mosaic, I'll be forced to bring up WorldWideWeb. )

While you might be right, I've been using Mozilla and Opera for about six months now. I will never, ever go back to IE.

If IE were fast and had mouse gestures and tabs, I might think about it.

It does, however, annoy me that I sometimes have to go back to IE to get something to work, so in that sense, I suppose IE has won.

IE is only in its overarching position because it comes embedded into Windows (so much so now that I believe it's unremovable).

edited for lack of apostrophe's

 

[arcticpenguin]

Yahweh,

You didn't mention which version of Mozilla you were running, nor how much RAM you have in your machine. The uccrent stable release is Mozilla 1.4.

I have been using MozillaFirebird recently. It uses much less RAM than mozilla.

 

[arcticpenguin]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/09/27/microsoft.browser.reut/index.html

SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) -- Security holes in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser have been exploited by hackers to hijack AOL instant messaging accounts and force unsuspecting Web surfers to run up massive phone bills, computer experts cautioned Friday.

Some Internet Explorer users are also finding that malicious Web sites are secretly slipping trojan programs onto their computers, which could prove an even more dangerous exploit, said Drew Copley, a research engineer at Aliso Viejo, California-based eEye Digital Security, who discovered the original security vulnerability.

Great news for people who have both MS IE and AOL.

 

[Yahweh]

Yahweh,

You didn't mention which version of Mozilla you were running, nor how much RAM you have in your machine. The uccrent stable release is Mozilla 1.4.

The version of Mozilla I use is "Mozilla 1.4".

I honestly dont know how much RAM I have on my machine, I am almost hardware illiterate (STOP LAUGHING!). Mrs. Yahweh knows more about hardware than I do, she says she doesnt "care" enough to memorize RAM of different makes and models of computers, but her computer is an HP Pavilion mx70 with 256 mb RAM. I guess that sounds about right.

I have been using MozillaFirebird recently. It uses much less RAM than mozilla.

I dont know what that means, I asked Mrs. Yahweh and she told me not to worry about it, it just means "Good". Cool.

 

[uneasy]

Mr. Y,
Don't you realize that Mozilla is a cult, and I must respond to say how great it is? Sorta like Apple.

I switched from Mozilla to Firebird a few weeks ago, and I haven't found a need for Mozilla since.

Mozilla is "bigger" (technical term) so it takes longer to start. I also found it mysteriously slowed way down now and then. This happened less and less as the version number increased (more fixes I guess). So try the latest Mozilla version if you don't hvae it.

I haven't had the problem with Firebird yet, so I recommend it.

Note, Firebird blocks popups, but it doesn't block resizing the window. So sites can make your browser fill your screen if they want. It's the only feature I've found missing from Mozilla to Firebird.

Check out that TAB feature! CTRL-click! I can't live without it!

 

[Zep]

We have had ONE issue to do with running Firebird, and it wasn't that software per se. One component of our online banking product would not work properly with Firebird, but it WOULD with IE. The bank support line simply shrugged and said that it WAS supported on IE and Netscape. (I think it was to do with the popup blocking...)

Not that I "hate" IE, it's just that the "security" on IE is like air-conditioning on a dune-buggy.

 

[evildave]

There's also Opera, and I know people who swear by it.

Mozilla is "good enough" for me, but Opera is certainly better in many ways. You can try out the "free" version (with an ad window) and see if is has features you like, and pay $20 for the full if it suits you. It has the tabbed browsing that I find addictive in Mozilla, and many controls for banners and popups. Even to the point of assigning your own themes to web pages. The 8-bit theme is a crack-up (makes a web page look like it's being displayed on an old Atari or Commodore computer).

Me, I like cheap and simple. Mozilla never, ever crashes on me. Not once. Three different computers (win 2K or later), no problem. I would suspect you have some lousy plug-in stuck in it that's causing the problems. Of course, I don't leave things animating, or allow flash plug-ins, and map ad servers to localhost in my hosts file, even though I have a broadband connection. That eliminates 90+% of the garbage that might cause problems for me.

So, if you try Mozilla again, install it FRESH. Don't upgrade the previous install.

But give Opera a try, too.

 

[uneasy]

We have had ONE issue to do with running Firebird, and it wasn't that software per se. One component of our online banking product would not work properly with Firebird, but it WOULD with IE. The bank support line simply shrugged and said that it WAS supported on IE and Netscape. (I think it was to do with the popup blocking...)

Note, that very often when a browser "doesn't work" for some web site, it's because the web site checks what browser type you are using and then displays a page saying it won't work if it doesn't know what it is. Maybe you know this.

I had this exact same problem, same browser, different bank. I sent them a note, they gave the same answer as you got, and mysteriously it started working a couple weeks later. Keep trying.

 

[Zep]

Note, that very often when a browser "doesn't work" for some web site, it's because the web site checks what browser type you are using and then displays a page saying it won't work if it doesn't know what it is. Maybe you know this.

I had this exact same problem, same browser, different bank. I sent them a note, they gave the same answer as you got, and mysteriously it started working a couple weeks later. Keep trying.

Indeed! Although I understand Firebird tries to fake out such servers by giving "Netscape" identification codes when required (I've seen some servers echo this back in various ways).

The "desired action" of the bank software was to pop up a sub-window with some handy-dandy stuff in it (stuff I WANTED to see!). IE allowed that to happen, but Firebird simply "did nothing", no error messages. This is how it silently blots out popups anyway, hence my suspicion this is the case.

Incidentally, not only did IE pop up my bank window, it also popped up a dozen or more [casino|prescription|prize-draw|scam] windows as well. *sigh* It never rains but it pours....