FireFox = total crap? And Jobs was oh so right about Flash, anyway. NoScript?

[peter.s]

First of all, and as you know, my working system is XP, and with "only" 2 giga of memory; I acknowledge that in/for 2015, this is decidedly sub-standard.

But then, as you know, too, there have been several threads here in this forum, and many more elsewhere, which treat the incredible sub-standardness of FireFox, re its inexistent memory management.

As said, I'm not into defamation, so I have to admit that in part, my probs could come from Avira free (formerly, I had used Avast free, even more intruding than Avast free), and also, I have to admit that my probs started with the very latest Adobe Flash update (16), which they offered in order to overcome (again, and, felt, for the 1,000th time) "security" probs.

I had installed that Flash 16, and then, after opening just SOME tabs in FF, I quickly not only ran out of memory, but had my system stalled for good, up to killing FF "process" by Win Task Manager, and by thus losing any tab = all the work I previously had put into searching for url's, links, etc. - it should be obvious for any reader that by opening some 12 or 15 tabs from search and links in previous "hits", you've got some "work done", which is quite awful to lose then.

I've always said, "you get what you pay for", and I've always acknowledged there are just SOME exception to that rule, but then, ALL of my experience backs this up, to 99.5 (= not: 99,9) p.c. of all cases, this rule applies perfectly, and FireFox seems to be the perfect example of TOTAL CRAP, delivered by some "volunteers", who like the idea that they are "giving out something valid for free", when in fact, they tell us, hey, dude, I know I cannot sell my shit, but ain't you willing to swallow it for free? Of course, I'm opening this thread not in order to defame FF, but in order to get new ideas about how to do things better, this whole forum being about that, right?

Thus, my very first reaction to FF being stalled* by that infamous Flash update was to deactivate Flash, and to observe things coming from that, for some week or so. Here I've got news for you: Flash, except for YT, is totally unnecessary, AND it's omnipresent (= "ubiquitous"), i.e. almost ANY web site, as poor-in-content or modest in scope it might be, there's virtually ALWAYS that line above my FF content window, "Do you allow FF to activate Flash for this site?" (or something like that, DC NOT doing this shit).

*= Of course, I've got plenty of room for "virtual memory M" by Windows, on c: (since my data, as said, is on some external hdd), and "virtual memory is managed by the system") - but notwithstanding, even if I allow a quarter of an hour (!!!) for any command to become effective, I always end up by killing the FF "process", after HOURS of waiting. At the same time, all other applications functions "quite normally", i.e. they respond to commands, but with that little delay you'd expect by my system's having replaced working memory by multiple hdd accesses, considering FF has eaten all the working memory. It's just FF that doesn't respond any at all.

And fact is, in more than a week, I NEVER had to tell FF to activate Flash, in order to get ANY useful info, from any of those several hundred pages all begging for Flash. (It's understood that for JavaScript, the situation is totally different: If you don't allow for JS, almost any web page of today will not work anymore, in any acceptable way. But again, don't mix up JS and Flash; JS having become a literally unavoidable "standard", whilst Flash is a simple nuisance, except for YT, and then, for rare cases in which you want to see some embedded "film" - IS propaganda? No thanks, and all the rest, no thank you either; let alone for indecently idiotic porn.)

Back to FF: My getting rid of Flash did NOT solve my probs. It's invariably "CPU 100 p.c." over hours, with Flash de-activated though, and as soon as I've got opened more than just 10 or 12 FF tabs; I assume these are JS scripts running, but then, even after MANY minutes, FF never tells me, "that JS is running, should we stop it?".

I have to say that I know about the existence of "NoScript for FF", but then, it's not obvious how to run that NS in some smooth way, just in order to intercept too-demanding scripts whenever they dare run, but leaving alone any menu "scripting" anywhere; do you

I wish to confirm again that I'm NOT speaking of porn or other crap sites, but that I'm just "surfing" among the most innocuous web sites you could imagine.

As for Flash, before deactivating Flash for good, I had tried Chrome, and I had the very unpleasant experience that with Chrome, and that incredible shit of Flash 16, all was as incredible awful as with FF and that incredible shit of Flash 16 (sic), if not worse (!), so it's obvious that Flash 16 is even worse than FF 36 (or was it 35? it's the current version all the same), but then, Chrome will allow your killing ONE tab running, whilst in FF, it's "all or nothing", i.e. if you decide to kill the FF "process", you will lose all your "search" work, too (since FF stalls your FF process (i.e. not your system as a whole, so it's obvious it's all a matter of FF's memory management), so it's not even possible to switch from one tab to another one in order to retrieve the respective url's, even manually).

Btw., WITH that incredible Flash 16, simple Flash sites (which in fact would not have even needed Flash to begin with, see above) brought FF to 1200 meg, then 1,500, then 2,000, 3,500 meg... in fact, Flash's memory demands are simply unlimited, and that's confirmed not currently (I admit), but from Flash users' experience back in August, 2014, i.e. some few Flash versions ago, and who say Flash of summer 2014 asked for unlimited memory, 6 giga, 8 gia, 10 giga... they were on systems of 8 or 16 giga of working memory, and they thought it was unbearable...

The only reason I cling to FF is the fact that "YouTube Video and Audio Downloader" is available for FF only (i.e. not Chrome), and that it's the ONLY YT downloader of my knowledge which lets you select best AUDIO quality, too (and not only best video quality, as its competitors do, at best) - but in the end, you can perfectly use FF for this YT downloading, whilst using Chrome for anything else, so that's "no reason".

Hence :

- Except for very limited usage (YT), Flash is totally useless and, short of viruses, the utmost nuisance on pc (or Mac) (and as usual, Jobs was first to identify this problem, AND to resolve it, for much of the systems he's been marketing)
- ( Similar things could be said about the really ridiculous and useless Adobe pdf viewer, but that's another story. )
- FF is to be considered liquid, stinking, green, morbid shit: If not even in iteration 36, software meets most basic standards, it will probably not meet them in iteration 100 either
- Chrome is "free", too, but we all know you pay with all your data... BUT: At least there, you KNOW WHAT price you pay for their "free" service, whilst FF "do it all benevolently", and obviously serve you perfect crap (whatever the reasons of FF being totally stuck, with 2 giga of work memory, and plenty of "virtual memory", your only alternative is to kill FF throughout if ever you want to get rid of some "CPU 100 p.c." over many, many minutes, with no end, instead of killing JUST SOME tabs going bonkers, is kindergarten)
- And yes, Avira free could be "in it" to some degree, too (= I had less problems, even with FF, when I "surfed" without any "protection") (but Avast free was really "unbearable", by their pop-ups (i.e. at least, I thought so, before my current problems with FF)... but perhaps, function-wise, they would always be preferable to Avira free, which is less intruding re pop-ups, but doesn't work as well with FF, then?)
- Any insight into NoScript for FF? Is there a chance to get it to stop JS scripts running amok but letting go of any "regular" JS script anywhere?

Your opinion/advice/experience is highly welcome.

EDIT:

Sorry, my mistake above, I just read:

"Allow www.donationcoder.com to run "Adobe Flash"?" - Should we not enter some overdue discussion re "Are site developers trying to do Flash even in pure-text pages utterly nuts?", right now?

[Ath]

You can change your FF settings to start with the tabs that were open when FF was last 'closed'. Also works nicely if it dies or needs to be killed.

Sure it's not your AV acting up, btw? I tried AVG for a while, and my FF based Pale Moon grinded to a halt after being open for about a day, and nearly eating 100% ram. After returning to Avast I can leave the browser running for weeks without issues.

Oh, and another, well meant, advise: Get rid of Windows XP.
There are no excuses left of keeping that OS in use for internet research (of all purposes ), that task can easily be ported to an up to date Linux.

[peter.s]

Thank you, Ath, I'm thankful for constructive comments.

Re XP: Yes, yes. I'm not saying you're wrong, but fact is that XP is a perfectly stable OS, and the ONLY reason everybody wants it gone, is that Bill can spread even more of our money to little cute black toddlers in sunny Africa.

This being said, what do I know about Avira free? Nothing. Thus it's perfectly possible that the interaction Avira-FF is doing 2/3 of the harm I currently endure from FF (which anyway is ridiculous in its 36th iteration's memory management). So I'm going to install Avast free again, and will report back in some 8 or 10 days; Avira vs. Avast being the non-"controlled" factor in my setup.

And of course, NoScript would always be an option in order to possibly kill UNWANTED js (but the unwanted variety only, and without any side-effects on regular js), were it not about its features/options being far from evident.

EDIT: Avast free from Avast > cnet = as we all know, to be avoided at all cost. google "avast free download" > filehippo.com (= 5th hit or so), never had any prob with them. And yes, it's the same, current version (I checked for that). That being said, I always download from filehippo wherever possible: for the time being, it's possibly the premier download site overall. (Knock on wood.)

[peter.s]

"You can change your FF settings to start with the tabs that were open when FF was last 'closed'. Also works nicely if it dies or needs to be killed."

Yes and no. In theory, you are right, and I tried this both in FF and Chrome. Problem is - and I'm speaking from experience here -, that will reload ALL of your previous tabs in a row, without your leaving the option of loading them one by one (or, let's say, in groups of 5 or 6 or such), and thus, after such a "full reload", my system is as unresponding as it will have been before killing the browser (since anywhere in the list, there is/are the 1 or 2 tabs with "100 p.c. cpu"), so there is nothing to be gained from this, in most circonstances. (I even set my Click & Clean accordingly, in order to not kill that list - well, if I knew where it was, I could at least manually process that list then...)

"Oh, and another, well meant, advise: Get rid of Windows XP. - There are no excuses left of keeping that OS in use for internet research (of all purposes mad), that task can easily be ported to an up to date Linux."

You're speaking of security considerations applying to browsing. I understand that, in fact that's why I gave in and installed AV sw. Problem is, my browsing is too much interwoven with the rest of my doings (= AHK macros for snippets' downloads, etc.), in order to be done by some Linux. Anyway, in Chrome I can kill single tabs (without knowing which one I'm killing, just selecting by its cpu eating), whilst in FF, it's "all or nothing"... and as explained above, after killing the process, "all" again, with the same problem as before.

But I appreciate your opinion/advice.

[4wd]

You're speaking of security considerations applying to browsing.

-peter.s (February 16, 2015, 02:14 PM)

Or possibly because memory management is better under Windows 7/8.1.

Flash is not required for a lot of Youtube, set FF to use HTML5: http://www.youtube.com/html5

[dantheman]

It may be a long shot, but Firemin works for me.

[peter.s]

4wd, thank you for this clarification. As for memory M, the problem almost exclusively lies within the FF memory block growing and growing, other applications just slowed down a bit (virtual memory on hdd since no more work memory), but it's FF alone that's frozen.

This being said, the Win version COULD play a role in that, nevertheless.

Wasn't aware even YT doesn't necessarily need Flash anymore, thank you! (But YT's Flash is not the problem after all, don't run YT in the background, and even then it's

dantheman, tremendous find, thank you so much, wasn't aware of such a tool, could probably bring LOTS of relief!

This being said, I must stay in a (at least, semi-) "controlled environment", so I just deinstalled Avira and reinstalled Avast, and as for now (always speaking of FF with de-activated Flash), it SEEMS to go much better, but cannot say for real yet. Again, with Avira at least, I've had those problems even with Flash de-activated (but to a lesser degree than with Flash running everywhere).

As soon as I'll know more about Avast, I then (only) will try Firemin, too.

[Shades]

The Av (free) solution I prefer on resource strapped PC's remains BitDefender. That is lighter on resources and less intrusive in other ways than the competition, while getting good results.

FF is definitely a memory hog...but not necessarily much worse than Chrome or Opera. If you did not do this already, take a look "under the hood" of your OS with Process Explorer (you can get that for free from Sysinternals (a Microsoft owned company)). It will show you much more than the standard TaskManager does and allows you to terminate a process or process tree.

It also shows you info such as hard disk I/O, network I/O, interrupt use etc. This info might give you a better insight in what is happening on your computer and take (more) appropriate action(s).

As you said, your OS is old and likely your hardware has the same age. Electronics do not last forever and when moving parts are involved, it's even worse.

For example, your HD might be the reason why your systems slows down so much. During hard disk I/O, you expect some rise in the Interrupt values Process Explorer shows you. However, if those values are higher (above 5.0) when the system is idling, your hardware is fighting with each other and that is the first sign of bigger troubles. Also, when this number is high, you will experience tremendous amounts of slowing down. The same is true for network I/O.

With FF, who writes a lot of info to (virtual) RAM, generating a lot of network I/O (flash usually means streaming video), while the AV solution is doing a lot of disk I/O to keep your system safe...it doesn't take too much imagination to see that even minor hardware hiccups can cause big slowdowns on any computer. Aging hardware can throw you unexpected curve balls, be sure of that, at least.

Tools such as Process Explorer give you much more insight in what is happening in the background. On every computer I own, work with or have worked with, it is the first thing I install (actually, it is portable, so I should say: copy).