When Good Programs Go Bad

I remember a time when the thought of a Web browser crashing was unheard of. I mean, it’s only a Web browser, what is there to crash? When Firefox was launched back in 2004 . My first thought was why does the world need another Web browser? Windows users have IE and Mac users have Safari for free. Soon though Firefox won me over, primarily because of the Web developer tools plug-in greatly simplifies Web development and Firfefox displays valid Webpages and CSS more accurately than IE or Safari. And let’s face it, there are some pages out there that don’t display correctly using IE and there are some pages that ignore the Safari browser.

This was all well and good up until about six months ago. Then I started noticing the dreaded beach ball of death appearing more and more often. Then Firefox would stop responding altogether and I would have to force quit the application. Having to force quit an app is pretty drastic in my opinion, and indicates some serious bugs. I’ve reinstalled the latest version and only added the Web Dev add-on, yet at least once a day I’m having to force quit Firefox. It’s gotten to the point that I surf with both Safari and Firefox open. I’d go over to only Safari but WordPress admin doesn’t seem to like Safari, and I’m still attached to the Web Dev add-on for Firefox.

What to do? The Apple crash reporter sends to Apple not Mozilla, and it IS a free app. I mean I would expect a complex app with millions of lines of code like Photoshop to crash every once in while, but a Web browser? Cmon.

Comments: One Response to “When Good Programs Go Bad”

    Max
    16 years ago

    "What to do? The Apple crash reporter sends to Apple not Mozilla, and it IS a free app."

    Why not enable crash reporting to Mozilla within the app? I've had it pop up a couple of times this year.

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