Sorry firefox, 3 months is too long! Hello Chrome?

cormie

It's been at least 3 months I think since an update of firefox made something strange happen with the flash player. Updating flash didn't seem to fix it and it's been the same since through another firefox update or two and another flash update or two.

The problem was that flash things wouldn't show up properly unless I "restarted with add-ons disabled" and I'd have to do this ever time I wanted to zoom to street view level on google maps, watch an embedded youtube link etc.

I tried a bit of troubleshooting when it first happened but nothing fixed it so I've been hanging on since hoping it would fix itself. It hasn't...

I don't have chrome installed and was more than happy with firefox until this happened.

I like to customise firefox so that it's minimalistic and I have a few add-ons such as adblock plus, autopager, british dictionary, check4change, forecastfox and minimizetotray. There's a few more but the ones listed I wouldn't like to give up. This is what I mean by minimal: http://omg.wthax.org/Untitled_225.jpg

So, will Chrome suffice for my requirements I wonder? I know a lot of people love Chrome but I never bothered to discover what the fuss was about. If anyone had the same problem with FF and fixed it, please share how

flutered

i find sea monkey to be great, it has the mozilla engine, not a bother since i moved from firefox six months ago.

Freddy Smelly

to fix flash in firefox you need to

1. download the flash uninstaller and run "as administrator" mode

2. then download ccleaner and run the registry cleaner to remove all entries of flash and other dead reg entries.

3. then delete the contents of the firefox cache folder by going to C:\Users\Yourname\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\yourprofilenumber.default\Cache

4. then download the latest version of flash from adobe and install (as administrator)

this should work then

the issue with flash is adobe's fault not firefox's. basically the integrated uninstaller in the flash updater doesn't do the job right... but the standalone uninstaller does do it right.

28064212

I took the opposite approach to you OP, and got rid of Flash. It's a dying technology anyway, and the only thing I ever use it for is occasional youtube videos and streetview. For those two cases, I have a copy of Chrome installed (which has flash integrated by default) which I'll use as-needed, but I find Firefox to be much better for general use

Ballyv24

I have been using the Opera Browser for over 2 years and I think it is a great browser. The Speed Dial is very handy. Also I have it synced to my mobile deices so all my favorites are synced too

cormie

Thanks for the replies folks. I use street view and a few other flash things quite often so it's been a pain restarting with add ons disabled every time I need to use it. I don't think flash is dead quite yet so I'd prefer just a solution that will work without the hassle and I'd prefer not to be using two separate browsers, but just one I'm happy with.

Freddy Smelly, did you have the same issue as I had and your solution fixed it?

cormie

Really surprised there hasn't been more people promoting Chrome here. I thought it was a real contender to firefox and some people rate it much higher?

yoyo

cormie wrote: »

Really surprised there hasn't been more people promoting Chrome here. I thought it was a real contender to firefox and some people rate it much higher?

When I tried Chrome it's Flash support was worse than Firefox tbh, kept crashing all the time.. Was a while back but still, don't think Chrome would be the solution to plugin problems. Have you tried Factory Resetting Firefox?


Nick

cormie

I just did the flash reset thing freddy posted above, each step. It didn't work so I then resorted to reset firefox.... it didn't work either

when I go to omgpop.com as an example, I just get a black screen. Even now, with no add ons, I still just get a black screen. if I "restart with addons disabled" it works, as it did before I did the reset just now.

Adyx

I'd say there is some other underlying issue then. I'm on Firefox 17.0.1 and latest version of Flash and everything works fine including that website you mentioned. If you do decide to go down the different browser route, avoid Chrome like the plague - try Iron if you want something similar.

dahamsta

Isn't YouTube delivered via HTML5 to all modern browsers?

Lad Of Banter

converted from FF to Chrome bout a year ago, never looked back

cormie

Must be some underlying issue alright, can't think what though if I've the latest flash, latest ff and done the cleaning steps above. When it first happened, it was a pretty common issue, a lot of posters just seemed to switch to Chrome and everything was fine.

What's wrong with Chrome?

dahamsta

There's nothing wrong with it if it does what you want it to do. In my case some of the functionality I need isn't available because of Chrome's stricter nature on some fronts -- Chrome is very restrictive about tabs, for example, and my workflow is hugely affected by the lack of an equivalent to Tab Mix Plus.

But again, if it does what you want it to do, why would you care what people on the Internets think? :-)

maki

The whole Firefox vs Chrome debate reminds me of the Android vs iOS debate. Firefox is open-source and endlessly customisable, while Chrome is slick, user friendly, but ultimately basic and locked down. Ironic on Google's part really.

For me Chrome just doesn't do what I need it to do. A lot of the addons I use on Firefox just don't exist for Chrome, and if they do they don't work as well (such as Adblock Plus). There's no about:config equivalent in Chrome so I can't tweak every little thing to behave the way I want it to. That, and its all in one URL bar is just plain awful.

At the end of the day there's plenty of choice out there. Try a bunch of them and see which one fits best.

Adyx

cormie wrote: »

Must be some underlying issue alright, can't think what though if I've the latest flash, latest ff and done the cleaning steps above. When it first happened, it was a pretty common issue, a lot of posters just seemed to switch to Chrome and everything was fine.

What's wrong with Chrome?

Google uses Chrome to track you (only to serve you ads based on your interests no doubt). See link. Now I don't really have any issue with this as it's practically unavoidable these days, but I don't see why we should make it easy for them! Iron is built on the same open source Chromium engine as Chrome so it looks and behaves the same and all plugins should work with it.

As another alternative you could try Pale Moon. It's a version of Firefox optimised for Windows. Again it pretty much does whatever Firefox does however it's usually slightly behind Firefox on version number.

Freddy Smelly

cormie wrote: »

Thanks for the replies folks. I use street view and a few other flash things quite often so it's been a pain restarting with add ons disabled every time I need to use it. I don't think flash is dead quite yet so I'd prefer just a solution that will work without the hassle and I'd prefer not to be using two separate browsers, but just one I'm happy with.

Freddy Smelly, did you have the same issue as I had and your solution fixed it?

i had similar issues with flash where it crashed whenever i started any browser... the error would continue to pop up even after the browser was closed. this happened on about 80% of the 120 pcs i was looking after in work. work was highly reliant on firefox as we have custom toolbars setup for our travel agents to use inconjuction with our booking reservations systems.

i was speaking with adobe's tech support on it and they told me the problem was down to a buggy adobe updater. they eventually fixed the updater but in order to get rid of the buggy updater you had to follow the steps i posted in my previous post.

basically the buggy version of the updater would not remove some registry entries that the newer version of flash no longer needs and therefore broke the newer version of flash. using the stand alone uninstaller to remove flash will clear out those buggy registry entries as the standalone uninstaller is using the newer fixed code.

always use the adobe uninstaller and new installers in administrator mode if using win vista/win 7/win 8 as the uac in windows can also cause issues when not in admin mode during install/uninstall

cormie

Thanks Freddy, I only have one user account on my w7 laptop and I believe it is the administrator anyway, does that mean I'm in "administrator mode" ?

Freddy Smelly

cormie wrote: »

Thanks Freddy, I only have one user account on my w7 laptop and I believe it is the administrator anyway, does that mean I'm in "administrator mode" ?

no when you download the uninstaller right click on it and choose the option that says "run as administrator" to run it in true administrator mode

your user account has administrator priviledges but it is NOT the actual administrator account in windows 7/windows 8

you can enable the real administrator account and log in using that all the time but its generally not necessary.

to enable the real administrator account

go to start > all programs > accessories

right click on command prompt and run as administrator

then in the dos box type this without the quotes "net user administrator /active:yes"

once done log out and you will now see your account and the admin account appear on the log in page

to hide the account again repeat the steps above and enter this without the quotes "net user administrator /active:no"

cormie

Ah interesting stuff. I might have to try them steps again so. Will revert once I've checked it out. I was always under the assumption that because I had the only account on the laptop, it was automatically seen as the admin account

PatrickMc

Ballyv24 wrote: »

I have been using the Opera Browser for over 2 years and I think it is a great browser. The Speed Dial is very handy. Also I have it synced to my mobile deices so all my favorites are synced too

I use FF GC IE and Op for different tasks depending what I need to do. I noticed recently that while downloading an iso that FF IE and GC was corrupting the checksumms in their download managers where's Opera didn't. Opera is the best of these bunch, well for now anyway I guess as they become more popular commercialisation will take over.

yoyo

PatrickMc wrote: »

I use FF GC IE and Op for different tasks depending what I need to do. I noticed recently that while downloading an iso that FF IE and GC was corrupting the checksumms in their download managers where's Opera didn't. Opera is the best of these bunch, well for now anyway I guess as they become more popular commercialisation will take over.

If the downloads were corrupting the likely problem would be network drivers or ISP issues. It could even be some faulty RAM causing it. Particularly if multiple browsers failed. Fwiw I have downloaded large linux isos i.e: ubuntu etc using different browsers when needed, and never had a bad dl using the inbuilt download managers!

Nick

cormie

Followed freddy's steps again in administrator mode but still no luck Is there any way to get rid of all traces of firefox and flash and just start completely again? I do of course want to save all my bookmarks etc.

Freddy Smelly

yoyo wrote: »

If the downloads were corrupting the likely problem would be network drivers or ISP issues. It could even be some faulty RAM causing it. Particularly if multiple browsers failed. Fwiw I have downloaded large linux isos i.e: ubuntu etc using different browsers when needed, and never had a bad dl using the inbuilt download managers!

Nick

poor wifi signals will also corrupt downloads due to dropped packets

Freddy Smelly

cormie wrote: »

Followed freddy's steps again in administrator mode but still no luck Is there any way to get rid of all traces of firefox and flash and just start completely again? I do of course want to save all my bookmarks etc.

do you have other addon's installed in firefox? one maybe conflicting with your flash addon.

also some websites use adobe shockwave player and not flash.... do you have that installed?

shockwave is similar to flash but there are still a fair few differences in how the code works.

Also is your java runtime upto date? Alot of sites use java applet's for launching flash based contents, you can get the latest version from sun java

cormie

Thanks again for the input. Downloaded and installed the latest java and, tried omgpop again and no difference. Did the same with shockwave and still no difference

After following yoyo's advice on resetting FF, I now have no addons installed at all, but it works fine when I "restart with addons disabled" again. Which is weird considering I've no addons installed to FF...

yoyo

Hi cormie,

Try running ADWCleaner and see if it picks anything up, it does sound like something you don't want/are not sure about is loading into Firefox!

Nick

Freddy Smelly

cormie wrote: »

Thanks again for the input. Downloaded and installed the latest java and, tried omgpop again and no difference. Did the same with shockwave and still no difference

After following yoyo's advice on resetting FF, I now have no addons installed at all, but it works fine when I "restart with addons disabled" again. Which is weird considering I've no addons installed to FF...

ok try sea monkey instead of firefox

it's basically firefox but without all the bloatware.

that way you'll know if it is indeed firefox at fault or if it's a flash problem

thebman

+1 for Opera. It is free and like a polished version of Firefox IMO.

I hate the lack of speed dial support in Firefox.

That most visited pages thing which works the same as Chrome is a pain in the rear for me compared to Speed Dial which just works.

Lightbulb Sun

Iron is nice the way it's basically Chrome without the spying.

However it annoys me that the google search autofill feature is disabled permanently. So you have to type the full terms, google won't finish it for you.

I just use Chrome, I'm not too bothered by the tracking.

I honestly think FF has gone way downhill recently. Seriously lagging behind Chrome in speed. I don't even touch it anymore. The 64 bit 3rd Party FF alternatives like Pale Moon and Waterfox don't improve the speed enough to make it worthwhile using them IMO.

cormie

Thanks for the input. What about the main plugins I use, is there decent alternatives of Chrome ones that do similar?