This post is out of date: Please see the updated post on my new tech site–Green Mountain Geek
Adobe’s Flash plugin for Firefox has never offered the kind of quality performance that the equivalent plugin for Internet Explorer has but at least it handled most Flash based video fairly well. However, somewhere around the 14th of April the nightly builds of Firefox 3 began to seize up on websites that incorporated any sort of Flash based media at all be it video, images or advertisements. Sites that I had been able to view previously would lock up the browser completely and only a “Kill Process” via the Windows XP Task Manager would stop the CPU from having conniption fits about being maxed out at 99%.
This was annoying to say the least and more than troubling. What had been a consistently rock stable, memory friendly new version of Firefox was now no longer able to handle Flash based media? Off to the forums I go along with several other testers and early adopters as I found out when I got there.
Strangely enough I had had the presence of mind to test these sites using Opera 9.5 beta which I keep around for testing website rendering issues between browsers and all the sites that were killing the nightly builds were showing fine in Opera. Since Opera and Firefox use the same plugin this told me that something had changed in the nightly builds that was causing this problem. And since I’m not familiar with programming (yet, can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Watch me), it was up to convincing the Dev’s that this was indeed a serious problem.
I’ve got to hand it to the developers at Mozilla, the problem had been filed on 4/20/08 as a new bug, verified and confirmed and set as blocking Gecko 1.9 meaning Firefox 3. After only a couple days of digging around the code base of the latest nightly builds the developers at large found the problem and had it solved as of yesterday’s update for Minefield (name for any developer’s build of Firefox). Just a bit impressive if you ask me.
Certain types of Flash based media still comes up choppy and dropping frames as usual but that’s more due to the inherent problems of the Flash plugin for Firefox and Opera than anything browser related. I’m just glad that Firefox 3 is back to being a class act.
And kudos to the Dev’s at Mozilla. Nice work folks!
Hi Kirk M,
Thanks for your support for an old OS Dino! (An upgraded PC will be unavoidable soon but Microsoft wont be making an OS as easy to maintain as Win98 SE again, or maybe they will if I ask? )
Maybe I obsess over the Firefox/Flash Plugin fault? (Its almost like an old friend!) but I do like to solve Computing Mysteries.
… So I went digging round the Net (after reading your article & feedback) Stumbled on an Adobe Forum that has 50 or more complaints relating to Flash Crashes on various OS, browsers and plugin versions.
What amuses me is the number of different solutions attempted, including one guy resorting to reinstalling his sound card drivers … Go figure..?
I am beginning to wonder how OS & Browser-related this issue really is? Firefox and Flash work on many sites for me, most of the time. . . Its only certain sites that crash Firefox.
One techguy mentions flash plugin 9 passes an “illegal instruction” to some CPUs, including Intel Celeron & AMD K6-2. The instruction is called
PSHUFW and relates to SSE-1 “bit checking”. Flash 9 (ocx for sure) cannot determine correct CPU-type, so browser is forced to close.
Okay, I know ocx is the IE plugin, but it sure would explain why this plugin bug is so “elusive” (and why some PC users report no problems at all).
This flash cpu bug seems to tie in with your thoughts on Adobe, Kirk M. So I’m hoping what I just wrote constitutes progress.
. . Sorry its so “techie”!
Regards, _writer.
@_writer:
“Techie” is no problem at all. I love techie which makes sense since I’m an old tech head from the Cold War era.
Glad you found some confirmation and I’m not surprised at all the so called “fixes” that probably never worked. It’s still boils down to the fact that a corporation like Adobe is not going to put a whole lot a of time, effort and $$$ into developing and QA-ing a plugin for anything other than IE for at least the near future (which makes absolutely no sense when you consider Firefox is in 2nd place and a close second just about everywhere else but the U.S.). Hopefully Firefox3 will change a few minds and the usage percentage will climb some. The higher it climbs, the more users will start banging on Adobe’s door.
BTW, if you manage to get a hold of an XP Pro machine, I think you’ll find that navigating your way around is just as easy as Win98 and even easier to manage. Besides making sure you do the usual house cleaning like defragging on a regular basis and making sure you empty out all your Temporary Internet files and such which is exactly the same as doing it in Win98, you’ll find that WinXP is easier to maintain than Win98 with little or no reboots needed just to recover resources.
And I don’t know about you but I never used any Win95, Win98 or WinXP system without installing good old “Crap Cleaner” (CCleaner) which has been around since Win95 first came out.
Hi Kirk M,
I had to smile at the phrase “Old Tech Head from the Cold War Era” – As a fiction writer, I’m sure there’s a bestseller waiting to be written about these experiences
Anyway, Firefox 2/Flash Plugin 9 (r124) seems to be running ok so far. The point about “resources” (under Win98) leads me to conclude flash-based sites would be less like watching treacle, if I had a cool 256 MB RAM in which to run Firefox! (P2 RAM is tricky to get, as it runs at 66Mhz, I think, rather than 100 Mhz)
I’m pretty sure only certain websites generate the IPF in Firefox by executing an invalid instruction sent by either Flash Plugin, or the flash script itself residing on the site. It’s also clear MS IE (6 at least) has the same flaw.
I did hear better things about XP Pro (rather than XP Home) when I worked as a PC Tech (Yes I am from the Cold War Era, too!)
But I sure didnt have much fun fault tracing on XP machines (misreporting device errors, unable to reinstall device drivers. . .) In comparison, Win 98 always struck me as having a straightforward interface. . . But I guess I’m speaking from a technician’s viewpoint.
Firefox have got their browser interface just right in my opinion. Mozilla Dev have increased functionality for modern net visitors with features like tabbing within one browser window and integrated popup blocker. Microsoft certainly didnt get this right with MS IE v6.
So, I guess I’ve got something to look forward to with Firefox 3 (though it looks like PCs are all being shipped with Vista now rather than XP Pro).
I sure do Defrag and “housekeep” regular, Kirk M with a P2 still running Win 98 SE (laughs). I even have a section on my web-blog about this topic, citing Firefox, cCleaner (or Webroot Window Washer) as improving ones “online experience”.
Since this is your webblog, rather than mine, I better stop plugging before I get carried away!
Kind Regards, _writer.
I’ve been running Firefox 3 and just couldn’t get any flash player installed:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0
the only thing that worked for me was to install the flash plugin and copy:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\NPSWF32.dll
to this directory:
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins
restart firefox and check installed plugins by browsing to about:plugins
HTH
Mike
This problem still exists, final release of Firefox 3, installed and unintalled and reinstalled flash and shockwave. No luck, still very choppy video and no audio.
Luke,
With Firefox 3.0 the problem solely exists on Adobe’s end of things as far as bringing the plugin up to the quality that the equivalent plugin for Internet Explorer has always had. Your problem is extreme though. Couple things you might try.
If you didn’t use the Adobe Flash uninstaller to uninstall the Flash plugin than you need to do this first before reinstalling the plugin. Using “Add/Remove Programs” no longer works properly as of the version 9.0 series. You can find the uninstaller at the Adobe website.
Make sure you do the stupid check and ensure you’re running the latest version (9.0 r124). You won’t know just by looking at the installer file name since it doesn’t include the version number.
Something else. A few folks who updated to Firefox 3 by installing over an earlier version end up with a corrupted profile which can cause the very symptoms you’re describing. If you think you might be one of these users my suggestion is to follow the procedure on my other website for completely uninstalling Firefox (after backing up your bookmarks of course) and then doing a fresh install. This is of course if you haven’t done this already.
http://www.greenmtngeek.com/2008/07/firefox-3-blues-could-be-a-corrupt-profile/
Note: This was written for Windows users but if you’re running a Mac or a Linux box I’m sure you can adjust accordingly.
Hope this helps some.
can I just add that before SP3 and FF3 everything was running fine for me… I then updated to SP3 and FF2 started to run flash content with the problems you mentioned, this made me update to FF3 and still the same…
me,
The problem resides on Adobe’s side now and their refusal(?) to put as much effort into the Flash plugin for Firefox/Opera as they do for the IE version. For now, it’s something we just have to put up with until Adobe catches up.
HI there,
i am using Firefox since long time almost 4-5 years. in firefox 2 i did not find any problems but now with firefox 3 i am unable to play the flash files on the internet sites. i have installed firefox 3 with latest adobe flash player and my OS is windows vista. could anyone help me out how to resolve this problem.
i am fed googling so many forums to resolve this problem and tried almost all alternatives what ever i found but still no luck
any one from mozialla development team or any one out there please help me. i tried reintsalling firefox as well and put the plugins in various paths as well like
“c:\program files\mozialla\firefox\plugins” nd copied in windows system32 folder as well but nothing worked, please help me….
many thanks in advance. please mail me at smartstylish@gmail.com thanks.