Life Intrudes
In addition to trying to work on a project, Firefox keeps crashing, so I’m not around much.
So far I have updated the software on this site, as the crashing have been occurring on returning to this site, with no effect. I have run multiple scans with different software and no one can find anything worse than tracking cookies.
Both MS and Firefox have issued updates just before this started happening, so I can’t be sure who owns the problem.
I’ll attempt to keep up with comments here, but I’m not doing much commenting anywhere else.
8 comments
Is that FF 3.0.3 Bryan? I had problems with random crashes after updating to XP SP3 with FF 3.0.2. And it seemed slower to me. So, I decided to use Minefield 3.0.1 and haven’t had any more problems. If you don’t know, Minefield is a branch from FF optimized for the more *recent* CPU’s (AMD/Intel) SSE2 instruction sets. It’s faster (and I think more stable) than the main FF branch. 🙂
I found another reason I had FF crash was after an automated extension update which suddenly made it incompatible with another one. That’s a regular annoyance! So, I update manually, one by one / day now. That way, if I get problems, I know which is the culprit!
Ahhhh… the pain of using Windoze for Dev work! LOL
I just had a hell of a time getting Python/mod_python/spyce running on my Windoze dev system. It killed apache until I edited a couple scripts ind .ini files. Now I’m having trouble getting Vtiger CRM to play nice with Joomla! 1.5. I’ll get it in the end! 😉 One way or another… LOL I suspect it’s incompatible versions of SQLite (used by Apache/PHP/Python/Vtiger/Perl… etc!) They were all different… so I’ve now standardised on one version. So far… so good! LOL
*sigh* As if there’s not enough problems just making code work! 😉
/rant
You don’t have vista, do ya?
It’s Firefox 3.0.3 and Windows XP service pack 2 on this machine. All of the current patches are installed, including the latest emergency patch issued by MS. It has to be synched to a client’s equipment in California for debugging reasons, so until they change I’m stuck with it.
I hear you, Kryten. It’s like the old days when every new program on a DOS machine played with the autoexec.bat and config.sys files to optimize its performance without regard to anything else. As a group we programmers are an egotistical lot, believing that whatever we write is the most important thing on anyone’s machine, so all of out decisions are the right ones.
Bryan, I offer you some doggerel I wrote back in 1997. Have things improved since then? I leave it to you to judge…
=====
(With a deep but not solemn bow to Ogden Nash…)
A Version Therapy
You’re a programmer, and you’ve just written this
wonderful application and alpha-tested it
and created an installation which carefully
checks the version of each and every component,
And you install the application on a user’s machine
and are overjoyed when it works and feel certain
it will work forever and ever, but it wonent,
Because some application the user installs later
was created by a bunch of idiots on whose parentage
you may rightly cast aspersion,
And their application used components of the same name,
and their installation blithely neglected to check
of each control the version,
So without checking, they overwrote your newer component
with their older,
After which their application works wonderfully well,
and yours suddenly will not even load to the point of
displaying the splash screen, and your user assumes that
because their application works and yours doesn’t, you are
at fault, and they may as well uninstall your application
and delete the whole folder,
Because every component-based application depends on having
of each control a sufficiently new version,
And when you get the call, you know exactly what
has happened, and at that instant you to murder
have no aversion,
Because the bloke who wrote the other installation
didn’t with his fellow developers cooperate,
And your only recourse is to be sure that for
the time you spend on this idiocy, you bill
your complaining client at the proper rate,
Nevertheless, this devil-may-care behavior by the other
developer just kills your soul,
And also your application, as both it and you
suffer a loss of control.
— Steve Bates
1/2/1997
(Apologies for the size of the above comment… I’d forgotten how long it was.)
Back to topic… with Win XP SP3 and Firefox 3.0.3 (IEview is the only extension I use), I have no crashes while viewing your site.
OTOH, SP3 on a laptop messes up WiFi with certain pairs of WiFi cards and routers… e.g., my laptop works with my router, but not (damn it) with Stella’s. This problem is widely acknowledged on the boards, but none of the suggested fixes remedies the problem in my case.
Oh, yeah, I remember that crap, and the installation of an older version of a DLL with a program because it uses a “undocumented feature” that was fixed in an update. I have run into that recently with Java, a program trying to install a version older than what I have on the machine.
Just using naming conventions would help, i.e. unique names for an individual’s modules.
While I didn’t upgrade to SP3 based on the EULA, the client had to back it out because it wouldn’t work with their network. [Linksys – who doesn’t work with fricking Linksys?! It may be a firmware problem with the router, but this client should not be allowed near a firmware writer.]
My router is Linksys, with a very slightly out-of-date firmware revision (for good reason); the laptop’s WiFi works peculiarly but adequately with it. Stella’s router is a fairly new NetGear; the laptop’s Wifi fails utterly with it, in a most annoying manner (it toggles connection status at about 1-second intervals). The laptop’s internal WiFi is, if I recall correctly, RALink. So we’re not talking about some odd off-brand hardware… we’re talking Microsoft’s inadequately tested SP3.
I believe I’ve read that MS has revised the way Windows installs apps that come with their own DLLs so that each app has its own space that it checks first before it looks in windows\system for a DLL. This avoids my 1997 problem, at the cost of apps’ not sharing DLLs on disk or in RAM… a small price to pay in this day and age.
I get the feeling, between Vista and SP3, that MS is ignoring older standards and assuming that people have replaced hardware. They only really test against the most recent drivers and versions, not realizing that people are not replacing equipment on a regular basis, as they once did. People, since Y2K aren’t replacing hardware until it breaks. The days of a new box at least every 5 years are over.
The market has matured and plateaued. I knew there would be a business buying fall off for about 5 years after 2000 as people spent several years worth of hardware budgets to avoid problems. There just hasn’t been any reason to buy something new since then. Things are incrementally better, but there hasn’t been any great new thing that you had to have.
Your problem with Stella’s router sounds like what was happening to my brother with my router. I know we worked it out in software, but I don’t remember if we changed the router settings or his settings. That may have been when I switched to MAC on the router, or he may have tweaked his addressing settings. It was too long ago.