Firefox is finally unusable, is it only me?

[bingo600]

I'm using FF on Linux mint 19 , works like a charm 

/Bingo

[janoc]

Disable deliberate tab crashing and hiding of pages for trivial browser/webpage errors?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1159697

Firefox by setting the related prefs to false on the about:config page.

browser.tabs.remote.autostart = false
browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2 = false

That is a terrible advice. Now if something causes the browser to crash, it will kill the entire browser (i.e. all tabs) instead of just the offending one. The reason for multi-process Firefox was to to be able to isolate the plugins (like Flash or Java - both stability and mainly security issue) and to increase performance.

Also, this kludgy advice (it only sweeps a bug in an old browser version under the rug but doesn't fix anything) is over two years old. The original GHacks article you were quoting is from 2013, i.e. 6 years ago - which would correspond to the ancient version 22 you said you are using. A lot had changed since then!

If your Firefox is crashing with this option enabled and you are running a current version (i.e. 69.0 as of today), then report a bug to Mozilla, so that it can get fixed. If you have this problem on an old unsupported release then this is completely irrelevant and you will only make people degrade the performance of their browsers for no good reason.

[MrMobodies]

Disable deliberate tab crashing and hiding of pages for trivial browser/webpage errors?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1159697

Firefox by setting the related prefs to false on the about:config page.

browser.tabs.remote.autostart = false
browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2 = false

That is a terrible advice. Now if something causes the browser to crash, it will kill the entire browser (i.e. all tabs) instead of just the offending one. The reason for multi-process Firefox was to to be able to isolate the plugins (like Flash or Java - both stability and mainly security issue) and to increase performance.

That "terrible" advice is exactly what I wanted. The thing is it WORKS for me, For my purposes for what I use it for I find it terrible for the whole tab to be hidden over some trivial error like manually killing flash player when it is causing problems and nothing flash on there. Back then I could do that with Firefox 22 without a problem when it stays open and that didn't cause many problems most of the time or sometimes when idle it will take up quite of memory but no cpu usage unlike that built in one in that particular release I was experimenting on.

I want to see the page even that has hanged and can't do anything with it. I wouldn't mind if they can show the whole page and just freeze it and it put something over it that it has a hanged rather than cover it up.

I'd rather there be a timeout and a dialogue "Do you want to continuing running this script" like with Firefox 22 and before rather than hiding the whole tab.

Also, this kludgy advice (it only sweeps a bug in an old browser version under the rug but doesn't fix anything) is over two years old. The original GHacks article you were quoting is from 2013, i.e. 6 years ago - which would correspond to the ancient version 22 you said you are using. A lot had changed since then!

I wouldn't call it advice for everybody but depends what I want it for but I just don't want it hiding pages on some small trivial error.

If your Firefox is crashing with this option enabled and you are running a current version (i.e. 69.0 as of today), then report a bug to Mozilla, so that it can get fixed. If you have this problem on an old unsupported release then this is completely irrelevant and you will only make people degrade the performance of their browsers for no good reason.

After my experience with Firefox I moved over to Chrome I think in 2015. I prefer Firefox 22 for my OLD lan devices, I have no problems with it, Google Chrome for the newer stuff and I exploring Palemoon.

[StillTrying]

I accidentally updated to FF 70, - I wouldn't recommend it.
Seems to need GBs to open 1 blank tab.

[SiliconWizard]

Well, I'm on the latest Firefox. It's rock stable. Sure it's heavily bloated as I said before, and eats RAM like crazy. I have tons of open tabs, and it sure uses several GB and 14 processes. Not very optimal, but it's still the browser that works best for my needs. It's 100% usable. Now of course on a small machine with low RAM, I might look elsewhere. Not bothered on my main workstation which has 64GB, and not either on my laptop which has 16GB.

For privacy reasons, I wouldn't touch Chrome with a stick, so I'm OK with Firefox. I've tried alternatives occasionally, but they rarely come close (again for my needs), so I've never switched so far.

[StillTrying]

FF70 is a bit better since I turned the real time AV off and the HDD quiet mode off.

Of course the address bar and row of tabs are now in the wrong order with no easy way to reverse them.

[Electro Detective]

I use Waterfox which is based on Firefox v56. It still allows you to use the legacy add-ons and is regularly updated.
I gave up with Firefox since they messed about with it.

Thanks for the Waterfox tip  I installed, ticked/unticked the usual preferences/options,
surfed EEVblog and Ebay = works fine

No earth shaking issues with Firefox yet as reported by other users,
but it's handy to have a pre-tested backup browser just in case 

[artag]

I moved from Firefox to Palemoon a while back, about the time of the australiasis interface change. It's been pretty good but have become more and more annoyed by it pausing while loading or scrolling pages, probably because of ads or trackers (even though I always use an ad blocker).

Brave is an interesting alternative. It has some shortcomings but feels astonishingly fast because it doesn't stutter and stop  all the time. It's even faster on gmail, where it fixes a few problems even chrome does badly.
 

[Electro Detective]

My current 'look for'  is finding an honest browser that still works ok with Windows XP and 2000

Just basic browsing, banking and viewing Youtube etc, even if it's at 360p

i.e. not fussed, just need it to work on cash strapped people's computers that won't be doing Win 7, 8, 8.1 and no way 10 anytime soon

It was enough of a drama to shift them from Win 98 and ME.. 

[digsys]

My current 'look for'  is finding an honest browser that still works ok with Windows XP and 2000 .....
i.e. not fussed, just need it to work on cash strapped people's computers that won't be doing Win 7, 8, 8.1 and no way 10 anytime soon
It was enough of a drama to shift them from Win 98 and ME .. ....

Let me know when you find something :-) , I'm in the same boat !

[artag]

As far as I'm aware all the private browsers run fine under linux and if you've got legacy applications that still need windows, you can run them under emulation.

Of course, there are plenty of people with good reasons not to do that but they tend to cluster around 'I don't want to learn a new thing' or 'I want to run some game / legacy app that only works on windows'.

The only downside is that recent windows-only applications may not run well .. but you only want XP compatibiity so that's not a problem for you.

And you don't even have to 'learn' linux - you're just using it in point-and-click desktop mode to run a browser and keeping your existing XP world in a box. There's literally nothing you have to learn.

 

[LeonR]

No issues here (70.0.1 32-bit, Windows).

I've been using Firefox since the pre-1.0 release and AFAIK there's been only one or two hiccups that affected me, but those also affected a large portion of users and Mozilla issued hotfixes a couple days later for them.