I just upgraded from Firefox 3 Beta 4 to Beta 5. It’s amazing how unstable Beta 5 is compared to the earlier version. Gmail crashes. Google maps crashes. Almost every other site I visit crashes. And looks like I’m not alone: doing a Google search for “Firefox 3 beta x crash” shows a consistently increasing number of results.
Update (8/Apr/08): As the comments rightly point out, this could simply be because more people use Beta 5. Here’s the number of Google hits for “Firefox 3 Beta x” — and it shows a clear increasing trend.
So, adjusting for this, here’s the relative crash frequency:
Beta 5 still stands out.
Maybe Google search results are not a good proxy. Maybe the mention of “crash” doesn’t indicate the software itself crashing. But it sure crashes a lot more for me.
Glad I’m not the only one seeing the crashes with beta 5.
I totally disagree. Also, your assumption that more google hits means more crashes is flawed. It’s safe to assume that the higher number the beta, the more people will try to use it. I’d be willing to bet that the correlation of number of users and number of google hits is fairly linear.
I’m seeing a bunch of crashes too. Luckily it loads so much faster I don’t even mind. Crash, reload, crash reload. The strange thing is that sites that crash the browser will reload perfectly fine. Also, nearly every word in this textbox has been marked as mispelled. Not sure if I have dictionaries installed correctly, but it sure looks weird.
I have found that pretty much every extension out there, even the ones that declare themselves as supporting 3b5, cause crashes. Removing all extensions has left me with a Firefox 3b5 that has yet to crash, even though I have had several hundred tabs open for about 3 days.
I can’t use google maps, I have to switch to safari. It is the worst release of firefox I have tried. It crashes many times a day.
I have yet to have a crash yet, even while going through my gmail. Everything seems to work just fine, even my extensions.
I too have noticed a *lot* of crashing since moving to beta 5. It’s not just you.
I agree- Firefox 3 Beta 5 has been crashing a lot more for me. Most the time it is when I am viewing a Quicktime MOV file in the browser or cutting & pasting text into a form filed (usually Google search). It’s driving me crazy!
Because we’re an open source project and all of our crash data is available for you to analyze (either to help fix bugs, or just to compare releases if that’s what you’re interested in,) you can get a much better proxy than Google searches. http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/ – A
I have 3 windows with 30+ tabs in each window. Firefox crashed 2 times only on the first day. I don’t have too many add-ons though!
I have it.. hasn’t creashed once..
Haven’t had 3b5 crash yet, have a fair bit of extensions, and use a lot of google and other sites. Even stumbling, which can end up on ANYTHING has been great for me. I much prefer 3, and will be elated when it leaves beta.
Same for me, beta 5 crash a lot more, and some sites it’s almost a “sure” crash with beta 5.. I’d like to downgrade or maybe a beta 6 less buggy..
Great post! I, too, have been having troubles with Beta 5, though that could be due to the fact that I have incompatible extensions enabled… 😛
Firefox 3 Beta 5 is very fragile to Javascript-extensive pages. It crashes instantly on my computer
I can confirm that it crashes a lot more than all previous betas (on XP SP2). Disabling Greasemonkey, Firebug and all bumped extensions didn’t help. (I didn’t want to disable Adblockplus because popups are worse than any crash could be.) It seems to happen more with many tabs open, but not on specific web pages.
It definitely crashes more for me
beta 5 is crashing like crazy for me especially in gmail and other javascript-heavy sites.
for quoting jonno: I can’t use google maps, I have to switch to safari. It is the worst release of firefox I have tried. It crashes many times a day. I think you have a misunderstanding here. It’s not a RELEASE it’s only a demo of a software. You are advised to use the stable one:firefox 2. Even though if you use the beta you should help out developers by sending crash reports. I also suffer from crashes A LOT! but it is my choice…
firefox 3.5b4 crashes randomly 3-4 times a day (~4 hrs use) – mostly flash related I think.
however firefox 3.0.10 did not crash much with the same flash.
Yep, same here. I’ve got a Mac (Leopard 10.5.7) and it’s just out of control. I have to use Safari if I’m doing something that requires no interruptions because Firefox 3.5 is not to be trusted. I spena considerable amount of time removing add-ons one at a time and then finally got gfed up and removed all of them. No change- the thing is a menace to time management. GRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!