I've been using Firefox on a Macbook Pro for a little over 2 months, and haven't had any recurring problems. I'm sure it's hung on me once or twice, but that's to be expected.

For me, it crashes/hangs much more on Linux, but it usually seems related to some type of alternative media, like clicking on a PDF or a page with a bunch of Flash.

Firefox on the Mac totaly sucks. I have constant GUI errors where tooltps of the UI and ALT tags show up when I switch back to Firefox. Since 2.0.0.6 I have massive problems with inlined images.

The only problem with FF i experience on my macbook pro (santa rosa) is the old one of when you get too many tabs open for too long you don't seem to be able to use the address box to go to websites anymore (The search box and using in-page links work). However, I get exactly the same thing on both my windows and kubuntu laptops (i do have an awful lot of tabs open most of the time so I'm probably asking for it)

It also does seem to crash occasionally but no more frequently than the linux version (from the ubuntu repos)

Slow. Slow. Slow. I'm running on an older iBook, but still, Safari is easily four times faster to launch and twice as fast at page renders.

I've recently swtiched back to Safari after using Firefox for years. I've had the problem with all text entry widgets (including the address bar) being locked up after a while, as well as random oddness that reminds me of the days of Navigator. This happens on both my Powerbook (a Firefox with no extensions installed) and MacBookPro (which had all sorts of things installed).

I do pull up Firefox to do some web development, but otherwise it's easier to live without the extra bells & whistles lately.

Yep, using Firefox in Mac OS X is a painful experience. Flash hasn't worked in Firefox on my (many) machines for more than a year now, despite a long series of attempted fixes culled the Firefox lists, and elsewhere. In the last few months I've tried using Firefox to read gmail (and only to read gmail) due primarily to the excellent "Better gmail" add-on, but the sludge-like response of the browser and its frequent habit of "pausing for breath" makes even that simple usage relatively annoying. So it's back to Camino... (What other browser is rendered unusable between the time that you click a download and the time that the download actually begins? Yech...)

I've been getting frequent hangs with Firefox 2.0.0.x on Mandriva Linux Cooker. I don't recall such problematic behaviour in Firefox 1.5.0.x. Note that my default browser is Konqueror.

Yep, it sucks big time. I use it as my primary development platform, mainly for Firebug, but have got used to restarting it 4 or 5 times a day.

The usual symptom is either the browser stops responding or the styles disappear from a page. If I restart it is ok for another couple of hours.

All in all, very disappointing!

I have only one problem with Firefox: The orphaned tooltips mentioned above. Other than that, no problems at all, and I've been using it since it first came out so I didn't need the weight of full Mozilla.

I'm using 2.0.0.6 on OS X 10.4.10 on my Intel Mac and other than it sometimes hanging with Flash (and it usually recovers quickly), I have no problems.

It doesn't crash for me and I have 15 add-ons active. My guess is that you should use the tools that Apple provides to find out where it is hanging, i.e. ActivityMonitor -> Sample. Maybe you have something else on your computer that it doesn't play nicely with.

I wish you were wrong. Firefox on the Mac is plain frustrating. I tried bon echo a Firefox optimized for the mac project. It is quicker, but I do web development, and it is not consistent with Firefox. Flock is the same in terms of speed, maybe even worse. It uses the same rendering engine. FF needs to get their act together. The situation is worse than a bad joke.

I've got FF running on a mini with 10.4. It can flake out a bit when faced with heavy-duty Ajax (I suspect AdBlock Plus is the issue there, not Firefox itself), and I do have some issues with Flash, but otherwise it runs smoothly.

My wife recently mentioned that FF was regularly crashing on her G4 Laptop; she's running 2.0.0.4.

The problem is most likely slow DNS lookups. For some reason, Firefox stops everything during them. Use "Spin Control" an app in the Developer Tools to verify.

From a pure browsing experience, never had a problem.

However it has terrible typehandling. when i do web-based email , or even just typing text into form, then try to edit the text, the screen doesn't update properly. i can't believe all the FF fans on Mac aren't all over that. Completely incompetent type handling.

OTOH, never have a problem with Safari.

Ben

Since I started using 2.0.0.6 a few days ago I have had to do a few force quits, Firefox for Mac does not seem to handle type well. I have had a few probs designing web pages that work on Firefox for Mac more so than for IE recently!

I don't have problems with Firefox on my C2D MacBook. But I primarily use Camino, which is lighter, faster and more Mac-like in its GUI. Camino has crashed on me occasionally, but no more than IE7 does on my Windows Vista desktop.

Tried Camino, Jeremy?

I've been using Firefox on my Core 2 Duo iMac since I got it last Thanksgiving. I've kept it up-to-date, so I'm currently running 2.0.6. I have very rarely had a problem with it that caused it to need to be killed, but it doesn't happen often enough to be a problem.

The hanging may be related to memory fragmentation -- FF appears to have a giant memory leak that will eventually hang or crash the browser.

It's probably the second-best linux browser for Mac. The people who like it mostly seem to be into it for the plugins.

The thing which irritaes me the most is when FF windows will not move around the screen with draging. They keep 'snapping' back to where I just moved them (or even closing or moving off screen or anywhere!). This is a real pain.

Also I cannot open a second (or more) window unless I have one on the desktop. If I only have FF windows in the dock I have to bring one of them up, open the new one and then send the one back to the dock.

These two issues alone mean I am on the point of dropping FF completely.

Jeremy, I'm running FF on my brand new Intel Macbook Pro... 6 weeks into it and no issues whatsoever... Hope you can solve your issue.

slow...leaks tons of memory, if i leave it open for a couple of days i'll get the spinwheel cursor any time i try to do anything with it.

also have occasionally had the text input fields not responding problem, but that's way less bothersome than the general slowness.

it's way faster on my linux machine, despite having more extensions installed.

I've experienced no problems using Firefox on a MacBook.

I don't bother to run Firefox on my Mac. Sure, I have it installed in case I want to use something like the Google Toolbar (to e.g. check the pagerank), but I rarely do that.

Camino, which uses the same rendering engine as Firefox, is much much better as regards the UI. Don't forget that you can remap any menu entry (of any application) you want to your preferred key bindings through the Keyboard preferences panel (as you may not like the default keybindings if compared to Firefox). Try it ;-)

I am running the latest version of FF on a powerPC powerbook and the thing crashes at least 4-5 times a day.

Wow. I guess I'm not the only one. I'm giving Camino a run right now. Well, I'm responding in FF, but only because I already had this up in FF. Thanks everybody for the posts. I'll keep reading your comments!

I am using firefox 2.0.0.6 evey day on a mac (10.4.9 intel) and it works just great.

i have FF running on G4 tower and G4 PowerBook. i also run it on a unix box. i've used FF since it first came out. no problems w/ crashes or hangs, but ocassionally i'm left w/ what appears to be a blank text highlight. it goes away when an actual text is highlighted. FF is the "supported browser for MacOS" at work, so i use it to access web calendar, databases and stuff like that. i actually prefer and use Safari for most operations, but MacOS platforms are a small minority and IT wants to support as few browsers as possible, so FF gets their support. (IE for Windows gets most of their support)
so, no, FF on MacOS is not unusable, i do it every day.

I've experience the opposite.

I've had no crashes, and no other problems with Firefox. I cannot say the same about Safari. For example, with Safari I cannot access my major company brokerage account(asks me to logon again many times) but I can with Firefox. I'm using an iMac Intel Core 2 Duo.

Does anyone know how many Mac Firefox vrs Safari users there are? Actual user numbers may be a better indication of Firefox's reliability and satisfaction.

I've never had Firefox crash on me in the total of a few dozen hours during which I've used it. However, in my opinion it is so un-Maclike as to be unusable. Even simple Mac conventions such as moving to the beginning/end of a text field when pressing up-arrow/down-arrow, are not respected.

Camino is a far better choice with the same rendering engine as Firefox. Unless you need the plug-in architecture, this is a no-brainer.

Thought it was just me. Was relatively crash-free until 2.0.0.6 (possibly previous version), but has become very unstable in the past couple of weeks. Also having a problem with Firebug (possibly unrelated) which is not showing XMLHttpRequests, even though the option is selected (works if I toggle the option off and on just before making a request)

Firefox locks up on Windows the same way. Check the memory usage when it slows down or locks up. It will probably be in the hundreds of megabytes.

Do you use Firebug? One thing that will help quite a bit: Instead of having Firebug enabled for all sites, *disable* it and then enable it only for the specific sites you want to use it on. Firebug can leak a lot of memory.

I found this on my Intel Macbook. When I first got it FF could lock up several times a day. The problem has virtually vanished since I upgraded from 512MB to 2GB ram and now only occurs when it's either been running for several days with lots (20+) tabs or has a JS/plugin intensive page.

Firefox on OS X just sucks. If you want a non-webkit browser, Camino is a much better answer.

Even if it didn't hang constantly, it is just too ugly to deal with on a regular basis

Firefox on OS X just sucks. If you want a non-webkit browser, Camino is a much better answer.

Even if it didn't hang constantly, it is just too ugly to deal with on a regular basis

Just to be contrary - mine is quite good. I'd prefer the fit and finish of Safari but *it* lock up badly on video pages and doesn't seem to multi-thread tabs. Firefox also lets me access Yahoo's Mail Beta (a very good product) and use Google Browser Sync (to sync my bookmarks between home and work). It's not perfect but Safari is the lock up king - Firefox just looks a little ugly for me.

I used to LOVE Firefox-- all the way from v.0.98. But I tried FF 2 on my wife's Intel MacBook and it was beyond horrible-- super slow, buggy, crash prone. I had to down grade her. I refuse to try it on my G4 Mini.

FF 2 for Win XP seems to be fine, or at least "as good as it gets" on Windows, software-wise.

Firefox sucks on Mac Intel. Daily crashes on my iMac, would love to use Safari but I can't deal with their bookmark system. Why full page view for bookmarks?

Hoping the Firefox team have a huge update in the pipes for us Mac users.

Try Camino. Camino 1.5 runs well for me on PPC. A pal of mine who prefers FF to Camino has been irritated of late with FF issues. He's still trying Camino once in a while. When I'm on his production machines showing off websites to clients using Camino, the clients are always impressed by Camino's uncluttered look, and solid rendering of nearly all websites.

Trunk and branch nightlies usually are stable enough for daily use. OTOH, when a bug appears in a nightly, it will hork your browsing experience. I've found them to be pretty stable, but YMMV. Should you try a trunk or branch nightly, be aware they could blow up and make an ugly mess.

Even so, Camino positively rocks for a web-browsing experience. It browses the web without a great deal of fuss or muss, and doesn't try to be all things to all people.

I deal with this by disabling auto-update. If everything`s fine I stick with that version for a while, if I have problems I wait for the next update. Rinse and repeat.

I started doing this because auto-updates I had no choice about frequently broke my extensions. You simply cannot trust the Mozilla guys to maintain backwards compatibility or stability, but have to do your own update testing and change management. They really need to get more professional.

Since people with a negative experience are always much more likely to post, I thought I should add mine. I have nothing but positive things to say about FF on Mac. I'm a developer and run FF on a MacBook Pro. It's snappy and rock solid.

It seems like a handful of extensions/add-ons invariably aggravate any memory leak issues. I generally keep extensions to a minimum on my laptop anyway. Usually only things like firebug, faviconize, foxmarks, and a couple of google maps-related context extensions.

FF does get finicky if left running with a load of tabs, ajax-driven pages that are updating a lot, etc. But this isn't unique to mac. I find that my usual number of browser restarts keeps things in check by itself (1-2x daily).

I find I need to restart Firefox on any one of my several Macs about once a week when I'm heavily using it (it starts getting sloooow).

Under normal usage though it works just great. I haven't seen a crash since 1.x. I've also noticed that Safari seems faster but Firefox has so many more features and extensions that it's still the best choice.

Bottom line... firefox sucks on macosx for most users. No easy solutions at this point

Have you tried Camino 1.5? I'm curious if you would have the same problem. Firefox 2 is slow on my Power PC based iBook 900 also, but I attributed that to the fact that I use a lot of plug-ins. I have since tried Camino 1.5 which is exclusive to the Mac OS but uses the same Gecko engine as Firefox. Wow! What a difference. But, again, I don't have an Intel-based Mac. I would be interested to hear your experiences with Camino if you've tried it.

@Michael Geary,

No - I'm not using Firebug. The only plugins I'm using are FlashBlock, FoxyProxy, and UA Switcher. Oh - and my FF doesn't need help hogging the memory. It was getting in the 100MB+ range daily. Sometimes upwards of 300MB or more.

@Stu,

I just upgraded from 1GB to 3GB on my MacBook. Hopefully this isn't a resource issue.

I think I may have a similar problem. My FF freeze during browsing. It does it at least 2 or 3 times a day. Very annoying. Sometimes it doesn't freeze but stop getting part of the webpages I'm browsing (most of the time it skips the CSS file...).

Michael and Stu,

Those comments were from me. I actually just switched over to Camino to test it out and forgot to put in my name and website... I'm so used to not entering it in there....

It's incredibly frustrating using FF on Mac. It crashes 4-5 times a day for me. I think it's a Flash problem. Visiting teamtalk.com instantly freezes the browser and I have to kill it. I love it for the plug-ins but i'm considering switching to Opera.

On older G3 and G4 computers (an iMac and PowerBook) FF seems to be a resource hog (although I haven't measured as such) and hangs often. It hangs at unpredictable times and at times seems to slow the rest of the system, too. Even the beta of Safari 3 runs better and more reliably. Actually, Firefox has been miserable every since v 2 came out.

Works just fine for me. Maybe you're just an idiot.

2.0.0.x on 10.3.9 for me hangs constantly, so I've given up using it. I used to think this was related to having one more tab open that would fit in a screen width (strange, but it'd sometimes "spin out" on this!). I've read that some hangs are related to poorly-written plug-ins, but for me, that'd defeat the point in many ways, as the plug-ins are major reason for using FF. 1.5.0.x was OK, if a little slow and earlier version fine, although they had some other issues.

I use Opera 9.2.x as my main browser now. Very robust other than the rare issue with download and can handle huge workloads (30-40 tabs open, no issue). Constantly breaking new ground on user features, etc. Wish they'd make an option to leave the spell checker "active" rather make you manually select it and step through, etc.

DNS lookups is something I'll look into, as I know its a problem where I'm from (a village outside of a main town in New Zealand).

Firefox is notoriously iffy on OS X. I had to make an automator action to streamline my force-quitting it several times daily.
http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/06/26/how-to-rapidly-restart-mac-firefox/

@Kevin,

I'm pretty much convinced that I am an idiot in many, many things, but it often helps to know "how" I'm being an idiot. If you could point me in a direction to help me out of my idiocy, I (and I'm sure a number of the people who have posted below) would be very grateful to you. Thanks for the post!

@Grant,

Opera is a very solid browser. This is going to reinforce Kevin's thoughts of me, I'm sure, but I've tried to switch to it several times, but can't get past the general "feel" of the program. I can't point you to a single issue I have with it...it's just the interaction with it. I just don't flow with it. But for features and innovation, man those people totally rock! I love the new "speed dial" feature. I don't know why someone hasn't come up with that before. Thanks for the post!

@Paul Stamatiou,

You know you have a problem when you're making an Automator to kill a process! That cracked me up! Very innovative solution to the problem!

I don't have any particular performance problems - my main problem with FF2 on the Mac is that it looks awful.

- It doesn't feel like a Mac App
- To a certain extent it looks like a re-skinned classic app - with that old-style carbon 'waiting' cursor that constantly appears instead of the new spinning beach ball

It's a great shame as FF2 on XP or Vista looks amazing and feels like a native app - but FF2 on the Mac as I said above feels like it's from classic - or java...

I'm using 2.0.0.2 on OS X 10.4.10 and it is very stable. I only have a few add-ons active so maybe that helps (?)

i've had no problems with firefox on my ibook G3 (mac os 10.4) after making the switch from safari two years ago, firefox has been rock solid.

I haven't actually used Firefox 2.0.0.6 except on Windows where it seems fine.

Of course, there may be something in that itself. Someone in the thread refers to Firefox as a "Linux browser" which is quite wrong inasmuch as so far as it is anything more (or less) than a cross-platform browser it's Windows-centric. In fact, that's even true of the rendering engine:

"The horrible misapplication of COM, misguided pre-optimization, ***a singular focus on Windows***, and a variety of other serious design flaws made Gecko difficult to understand and in some cases impossible to fix."

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/pinkerton/archives/017550.html

Maybe 2.0.0.6 just hasn't been got right on the Mac; it would be unsurprising, and understandable, that the Mac isn't a primary focus for Mozilla. Try again when Firefox version 3 comes out perhaps?

No good. Don't even try to use it unless you are forced to by a specific website. I've been using it for a couple of years now across PowerPC and Intel Macs and I can tell you it glows boats. It is terribly slow to launch. It consumes a ton of resources. It crashes all the time. It is the suck.

And yes, for 90% of my browsing I'm forced to use my work laptop and I use FF on Windows.

Hi Jeremy, sounds like you and I have the same problem. Someone sent me to your blog after I was complaining about Firefox locking up on me several times a day. Like your experience it doesn't happen on startup but in the course of using it. I never have more than six or seven tabs open, and I've seen it happen when I have only two tabs open.

I've been trying to figure out what might be causing it. It doesn't necessarily seem related to Flash. It seems like I might make it crash by noodling the scroll wheel on my Bluetooth mouse. I've also wondered if it might be any of my installed plugins, but I only have Delicious, FoxyTunes, and Y! Toolbar installed. I think next I'll try eliminating those one at a time to see what makes for the improvement. Do you have any of the above? Bluetooth mouse where you use the scroll wheel? Any of those plugins? An intersection there might get us closer to a solution.

Clearly the problem doesn't exist for all Firefox/OS X Intel users.

ian

I guess mileage varies. I have had no problems with any version of FF on my 3GHz Quad Pro Tower with 2GB RAM [and RAID 0]. I just installed 2 GBs more RAM [Apple RAM from OWC] and all is still fine. I just don't like the Safari look, but I will give it another chance. I did not upgrade the latest firmware since 10.4.10 wacked a USB peripheral and I read another USB problem with the firmware update.

Running FF 2.0.0.6 here on a 2Gig iMac and it's just great. The only issues are related to not having buttons as tabstops, and very poor behavior in rich text controls.

I have Firebug, AdBlock Plus and Greasemonkey installed.

FF on Windows and Linux is definitely ahead of the Mac version, but they are all preferable to anything else. Mainly because of the plug-ins.

It seems from reading the comments that people with a decent amount of memory, who surf relatively safely, aren't having much in the way of problems, though maybe the FF guys should take a look at behavior in marginal machines.

I move freely between Safari and the latest Firefox. not running any plug-ins. there are still many sites that do not function correctly with Safari, sad to say. And if you want a good laugh, try running Safari on a PC and see if you can go more than five minutes without a crash, especially on video playback. All I can say is, thank God that Firefox is there to bail me out when Safari all too often fails the compatibility test

Firefox is fine on the newer Macs (I prefer it over Safari on Mac as well as Windows) but is intolerably sluggish on my G4 iMac. Safari is a speed demon by comparison on the older hardware, and Camino is pretty good, too.

Wierd, I use it a lot but no lock ups. I haven't tweaked any settings either.

No problems. Been running Firefox for a long time. Years. It is rock solid on my Mac Pro 2.66 and good on my Powerbook G4. Operating the newest versions on both. I have NO EXTENSIONS on the Mac Pro client. I have a few extensions (i.e., Web Developer) on the Powerbook) which causes a few hickups but I only see evidence of this every few days and it is more of an irritation.

I am not an Opera user but I dive into it every now and then. If you want performance you should try Opera but Firefox is good on my end.

My experience so far has been quite dismal and things are far worse with the 2.0 version. It starts slow, it hangs all the time for no apparent reason with only a few open tabs, Flash websites tend to freeze it permanently. I have to re-start it often and I can't wait for the final Safari 3 to come out, perhaps I'll be able to switch to a browser that actually works.

Thanks for the tip related to "anti-phishing functionality", I'll give it a try.

I have found that Firefox is infuriatingly slow. We have a web based application that we use firefox for (the developer suggested it) and I have had to go between firefox on the Mac and Firefox on the PC. Firefox Mac is light years slower... What really gets in my caw is the fact that I can run windows XP under Parallels, and use Firefox and it still blows the doors off the Mac version.

Don't get me started about text handling. Sometimes I simply have to switch over to Safari for web forms.

I have blogged often about my dissatisfaction with all browsers on a Mac. I only use Firefox for sites that don't allow me to get full functionality via Safari. Actually, I tend to use Bon Echo on my G5 desktop and Firefox on my Intel MacBookPro.

The problems include: slowing way down when too many tabs are open and then freezes and hangs. I realize I'm a fairly intensive internet user with lots of tabs open, but I don't think my usage should bring FF to a crashing halt.

I used Camino in its pre-1.0 days and found it way too unstable...I never went back.

I'm fairly happy with Safari...i'm only unhappy with the platforms and applications that don't work properly with it.

Not a single problem with Firefox v2.0.0.6 on a Mac-tel.

No problems here. Macbook pro with FF 2.0.0.6 and usually have about 10 tabs open at a stage. Have a few plugins as well, but nothing too fancy (web developer being the main one). I can recall a freeze up once in a while, but we're talking every couple of weeks or so. I often leave the laptop on for days and still problems are rare.

It happens to me too, but on Vista, I find it really strange because it used to work smoothly, it doesn't actually lock up, but its a memory&cpu hog. Opera on the other side is very light but doesn't have the extensions I need. FF sucks big time, performance-wise, even the Gran Paradiso Alpha.

I have been using firefox on Mac for a loong time (actually, ever since I first got a Mac a few years ago). I will say it is just as good as any other browser on the platform in the long run. All browsers have issues, and I stick to firefox for its features. For completeness, I have tried safari, opera, and flock (and maybe even a few more) in periods, but always go back to firefox, mainly for the extensions I guess - stability is just fine!

I am using Netscape 9 on my MacBook and it works great. It is based on Firefox. Give Netscape 9 a try.

I have been using FF for ages and love it more than any other browser I have used. It has occasionally quit but very infrequently

I have had no issues...in fact im using FF atm....im just not willing to set up everything again in safari

dude .. it aint (only) ffox that is locking up ...

it is osx itself!

the application thread model is almost as bad as the kernel (funnel) thread model ...

not to mention that actionscript/javascript are almost as inherently dumb as the script kiddies who run most web sites --

the combination is just lethal -- for all browsers.

if the stars are aligned, then everything works great ; but osx is so fragile that any collection of things can hobble it without mercy ...

yes, linux has the same sort of unix-induced interaction model / cpu scheduler problems; and windows suffers from its own inanities ... but a mac is SUPPOSED to be 'different' -- it's all supposed to "just work" ... oh yeah, i forgot: some people call that magic; others call it superior engineering ... in either case, sadly, os/x doesnt give us either :-(

ps: it doesnt help matters that the mozilla mac team has hold-overs from the netscape 4.x ++ days ... this was the worst engineered code in history (worse than any piece of windows shiite) ... so we cant exactly hold our breath for high standards (on the mac) from ffox/camino :-(

@ian c rogers,

It does sound frustratingly similar, doesn't it? The sad part is that I don't see much overlap at all. I am running on a MacBook (plain white one, not even a Pro) with no bluetooth mouse (and typically, no mouse at all). I am, however, constantly using two-fingered movement on the touchpad for scrolling. The only extensions that I run are FoxyProxy, FlashBlock, and UserAgent Switcher. Given the bugzilla report I mentioned in the original post, I think it's something that FF just isn't handling particularly well. Give Camino a try. I'm starting to migrate everything over and make it my default browser for the moment.

@zahadum,

Thanks for the insight. I know the FF devs are looking into the problem. Hopefully the Mac folks are as well. Don't know if it's high up on their priority list, though.

I'm running Firefox 2.0.0.6 on my MacBook. It crashes occasionally -- maybe once or twice a month -- but this might actually be down to Flash.

I wasn't aware that Firefox was deficient. I've been using it for about a year on my Mac Powerbook G4 and haven't seen nearly the problems I had with IE on my PC.

I also have had hangups but I have a bigger problem with Firefox. I run a website called http://www.naughtynostalgia.com and I offer streaming videos in two versions: dial-up (256k) and broadband. On both Macs and PCs, Firefox displays them both as the smaller broadband version - making all the work of the larger broadband version - moot. So I state on my home page - and in every monthly newsletter - to NOT use Firefox. It's garbage.

Firefox is the browser of choice on my MBP C2D and with the amount of windows and tabs I have open it usually uses close to 1GB memory. The only major problem I have is when it crashes and I believe due to Flash, usually when accessing Google Analytics (mostly flash content).
Aside from that just peachy :D

I used to have Firefox problems on my mac but it turned out it was because I had some extensions that didn't get upgraded. I haven't had many problems since removing those. But I will say as a backup I do use Camino. That product (also by Mozilla) has never given me a bit of trouble ever.

I stopped using FF on my Mac. Besides crashes, it starts slow and hangs inexplicably. Safari is OK, but not great. It's still better than FF. I miss the Firefox features, but they are not worth the aggravation.

I wouldn't say it's unusable, but it's not worth using for full-time browsing unless you can't live without your extensions. I tend to avoid these rants but I have to say that in my experience, FF on OSX (intel at least) is the slowest, buggiest and biggest memory hog of any other OSX browser I have tried. The window snapping bug has to be one of the most infuriating bugs I've encountered, much like a 6' cockroach that sneaks up behind you and flicks your ear at random. Performance wise it seems to require at least a daily shutdown else it makes my MBP feel like a Pentium 66.

Maybe part of this has to do with the extensions I use (nothing crazy, just web dev related things) but given that I've heard a few people ask similar questions to yours, I suspect not.

If Safari would only sync up seamlessly with del.icio.us, I wouldn't need Firefox for anything...

Weird.

I have very few problems with FireFox. It can lock up after I have had it open for 4 or 5 day and more than 30 or so tabs - it also get slow around that time.

Maybe my copy runs better than most because I have it loaded up with add-ons like colorful tabs, greasemonkey, google notebook, search-status, tab-mix, stumble and a bunch of developer add-ons.

Maybe it's because I don't visit pr0n sites :)

Firefox 2.0 is my default browser on my C2D iMac with 2 GB of RAM. It's generally been quite stable, and I open 30 or more tabs at one time daily. I've loaded it with a dozen themes and extensions, the best of which is Adblock. I don't think I'd ever want to give that up because it makes the Web a far better experience.
I do think Safari launches faster, and it sometimes plays video and renders text fields better than Firefox. But I've also run into issues of incompatibility between Safari and some local government Web sites.
I'm looking forward to Firefox 3.0, which is supposed to have an enhanced rendering engine. We'll see how compares to Safari then.

i've been using firefox on a late 04 ibook since i got it through every update and have had no major issues other than myspace music sites. i find if i visit those i have to resize the browser a certain way in order for them to load. it is an inconvenience, but it is minor.

Have'nt seen this problem on a MacBook 17". It's been working flawlessly since moving from XP to Mac 10.4.10.

Have been using Google for anti-phishing.

Been running FF on my new Macbook Pro (Intel, 2.2 ghz) for 14 days now. No problems.

At first I had a problem with Flash (slow, lagged), but I fixed it somehow, think it had something to do with an addon (Flashblock?).

Sometimes I have a problem: if I open a new tab, hit google, and quicly start typing a search query, the first character doesnt appear, which is really annoying. Other than that its smooth sailing...no crashes,

To an extent I agree with you. Firefox 2+ is such crap that I removed it (no easy task) and went back to using 1.5+ which works. As in, it actually works. It renders more pages correctly than Safari and has an intelligent bookmark system and can be skinned so it looks nice. Also, its extensions are frequently magnificent. (I use LeechBlock, Encrypt This, VideoDownloader and GSpace every day) Would I use Firefox 2+? Not at present, not at the point of a gun. If I had to, I might go back to Safari, but the Mac has about ten other browsers to choose from, so there is no real hassle at all.

I use FF2.0.0.6 on my Mac Mini (10.3.X) and Dual G5 Mac Pro (10.4.6). On the Mac Mini I've a tendancy to open A LOT of tabs. I have no issues to report on either system. ymmv.

I've been getting one or two hangups a day with the latest version. Of course, I use it 8-12 hours each day too. I thought it might somehow be due to the number of extensions that I've installed. It's a pain, but thankfully Firefox remembers which tabs were open when you froze and asks if you want them reopened when you restart the application.

With the SEO and developer extensions, not to mention StumbleUpon, Jade, Firebug and others, this browser is best of bunch. I sure hope the developers can work out whatever little bugs are causing these issues. So far, it's not bad enough for me to consider switching.

I've got the MBP 2.33 with 3GB RAM. FF 2.0.0.6 (and others before) were having bunches of issues. If I could go to Safari--I like it's integration, I would--but for now, it's FF (extensions are critical).

Running Spin Control showed a fun and rather lengthy trace, particularly an interaction with Witch, the prefpane tool. I've disabled that now, and I will keep you all posted. I also did notice some calls in the trace from FoxyTunes as well, looking for the name of the song, even when iTunes is not running. I would be loathe to disable that, but 20 second locks on this system are just unacceptable.

Keep you posted.

Nope, still happened...for 16.39 seconds (an eternity for someone with ADHD). Witch was probably just in the way, since it hooks into the current app list. Still the code looks to be an Apple Event, as the issue starts with the AESendMessage occurring. So, I've hidden the track's title with hopes that FoxyFire will not look for a title if it does not show one, but maybe I'm just hoping for too much. If it still occurs, I'll switch FoxyFire off and see if that prevents the lock.

my Firefox(intel mac) crashes several times a day, and it all started when I upgraded for 2.0
If just Safari could handle Life Bookmarks, I would switch immediately

Perfectly usable for me (latest FF on Tiger). I let it update when it wants to and it works fine for the most part. It can be bloody slow rendering pages (try middle-clicking a bunch of vBulletin threads, for example - maybe vBulletin uses heaps of tables or something, but other browsers don't have the same trouble), and I have occasionally had the "snapping" problem that mike describes, but I still prefer it to Safari. I do also use Camino some of the time, and my preference varies depending on how they've been behaving, but FF is, for me at least, perfectly useable.

Can's say I've had any significant problems with 2.0.0.6 on either of the Macs I use. I rarely if ever experience crash problems. Just peachy, really . . . .

I've tried to be a loyal Firefox user for some years now, but am pretty frustrated now. I use it on a G4 Powerbook. One problem I've had for a while is the inability to use any text boxes if I minimize the program to the dock and then re-maximize it. If I open a new window and then go back to the old window, problem solved.

Now I also have the problem (which has just started in the past couple of weeks) that if I run the program for more than a couple of hours it becomes extremely sluggish.

I have recently purchased my first Mac (20" iMac 2.0Ghz). I have been a long time Firefox for Windows user, and have no complaints for the PC version. But the mac version doesn't handle downloads, well, at all... Trying to download a .dmg file just creates randomly named files on the desktop with no purpose. It couldn't even download a simple .wmv file from my hotmail account today. I have googled the d/l problems and tried setting .dmg to be opened by DiskImageMount, and using the Download Status Bar extension, but neither have fixed it. Anybody else suffer from this downloading problem, and possibly have a fix (other than switch browsers, ltm)?

Hangs two or thee times a day. FF 2.0.0.6 Mac OS 10.4.10 Macbook Pro.

I have 1Passwd and WeatherBug plug ins.

I use Firefox and Camino almost exclusively. They both work as well as Safari. They both render as well as Safari. In fact, some specialized websites don't render at all well on Safari (some of the financial websites, in particular). The biggest advantage FF and Camino have over Safari are the extensions, especially ones that block flash animation. There is nothing as annoying as trying to read a long article on a complex subject (say, the NY Times Business section or Wall St J on sub-prime mortgages, CDOs, and market volatility) while having a flash animation distracting me. On Safari, I have to switch to print view to get rid of the flash animations.

I have had few, if any, stability problems. For me, everything is peachy.

For me, Safari is my third browser, after Camino and then FF.

It's okay. But it's too slow.

I'm running FF on an old iBook G4, and I have one instance running on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. In both cases, FF runs like a dream. Maybe I've just been lucky?

I've been running FF2 on my Macbook since launch and it's performed flawlessly... no problems at all.

Firefox used to be fast for me. Now its slow. If I right click an image and try to save it, it takes almost 2 minutes- even if its only 100k or something. I have 5 megabit DSL. If I drag the image to an open folder, its instant. Camino has some annoyances- like not being able to scroll across tabs- you get to the last one on right and there's no arrow like on firefox. Fire fox has the best right-click options- like "search google for this." Opera automatically slects a tab when you create it. I HATE that and it can't be turned off. I like to look at a page- open a few tabs off of it, then keep reading- not go back. I have the tabs there to read when I'm done. Opera takes an extrordinary amount of system resources- I'm always watching the Activity Monitor. I could go on, but even this box is running slow.

(By the way, its too bad that there isn't a link to add to the discussion at the bottom. I read to the bottom, and the page ended. That's not a logical flow. Sorry for being so irritable, but it seems like people are venting a bit here. So while I'm at it, I just want to let all the smug-ass quad and 8 processor macpro owners reporting here that I'm impressed that their 4,000 dollar computers can run a web browser. Does it run itunes and word no problem too? My newest computer is 2 years old. I have 2 "Clinton-Era" G4s running FCP- helping me earn my living.)

I've found that Firefox can become unresponsive if you have several Javascript-heavy pages open in tabs. Even on my MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM I get beachball for a few seconds when switching between tabs. It's been so bad I've switched back to Safari.

I don't think the problem is speed because I use FF 2.0.0.6 on a 1.67GHz PowerBook G4 without the problems people suffer on the newer Intel-based machines. (OK, it loads slower than Safari and sometimes crashes with applets where Safari doesn't.)
Of course FF is not a Mac browser (nor is Camino) with its ugly Windows-style dotted-outline focus, but I find the plugins available are invaluable for web development. I only use it for this, and for commerce sites I have to access that don't work with Safari. I really hate the way the politically correct accessibility Mozilla mafia have thrust obligatory focus down users throats in all their browsers.

Quitting 2.0.0.6 on OSX 10.4.10 PPC just doesn't work, it just closes open windows. You have to quit again to actually quit. Was this developed by Windows Programmers? Glad I use Camino mostly

Wow. I've never even heard of people having problems with FF on the Mac. I've been using FF on the Mac for years and never had any problems -- actually I've had more problems with Safari locking up on me then FF, and I am (or at least was) a web developer. Huh.

I have a MacBook (2.16) that is five days old and FireFox flat out sucks. Safari doesn't provide everything I need, Camino isn't there yet - Opera is just eh, I'm basically in mini-Browser hell. Before I got this machines, I had been using FireFox exclusively in XP for yeras - but no, I don't know. Supposedly there is a DNS issue - but I get more than just the standard BeachBall - FireFox has it's own pointer and black beachball. Lovely. Come on Mozilla - get Mac owners the same reliabilty/speed you have for Linux and Windows users!

I had to stop using Firefox for the same reasons. I have a 6 month old imac and it just drove me crazy. I have switched to Safari and find its more reliable.

Heresay!!!!! How dare you even suggest that an open source product is buggy!!!!! How dare you even suggest that a something running on a Mac can crash!!!!!

You have to be a Microsoft employee and as such you must be banned from the web immediately.

Microsoft Sucks!!!!!!!!

I've had zero problems running with running Firefox 2.0.0.6 on my Intel Mac Book Pro.

I've had lots of problems recently. It's crashing, locking, not launching. Don't know what's going on, but it's driving me crazy.

I've loved Firfefox on the Mac (other than its slowness and crappy Flash plugin, at least in my experience) up until v2. The most recent version, on my G5 dual processor, under OS X 10.4.10, is absolutely unusable.

Worse, actually - almost without exception, it freezes my machine, one process at a time, until the entire thing is locked up. In conjunction with (I believe) iTunes, it can take me 15 minutes just to bring up the Force Quit box, much less actually kill any of the processes. Firefox is absolutely the culprit, which is a real shame since it does a lot that I wish Safari would do.

Is there any known fix for this level of issue with it? Anyone share this experience?

Yep....I have the same problem....I'll be happily browsing and suddenly clicking links, refreshing, going to pages, etc no longer do anything....you hit refresh....that does nothing.

Also, pages loose their images and style and hitting refresh doesn't fix it. I'm getting pretty annoyed with it....I always used FireFox on XP before I switched :( I have found a "mac version" called Camino however Firefox extensions dont work with it, rendering it useless for the time being.

The Mozilla team know about the problem and have known since 2.0.0 was released but still refuse to support the evergrowing number of mac users....very sad!

I just hope they fix it soon otherwise it looks like I'll be looking for another browser :(

My power pc with firefox hangs or freezes on every media site that my son wants to watch, like flash enabled sites, like toys r us or hasbro. The Transformers link to watching an animation was just the latest. I don't know if it's my cable link or the machine. We are being switched over from comcast to time warner and ever since the switch-over things have been slower than before. I have an updated G4 with 1.5 gHz processor and lots of ram, and OS 10.4.10 but I still can't figure out the problem. But mostly these kids sites or media sites using flash seem to be the most problematic. Any help would be appreciated.

I use exclusively Firefox. I used it for years on Windows 2000, Win Server 2003 with no problems.
I used it for couple of years on Ubuntu.
I'm using it now on my 17" iMac - I browse a lot, I disable nothing, and additionally I also install lots of plugins ... however for me it behaves perfectly. Although I keep hearing people say it's bad and it's not good ...
I don't understand how come I never have problems

I agree. I'm so frustrated with Firefox on the Mac that I'm about to go back to Safari. It's slow, the GUI is quirky (can't get the scrollbar buttons to appear!?!) and it just plain sucks.

I love it on Windows. But things like iGoogle don't work correctly (when I click on a feed's links title it only work sporadically). Plus I find the key-combination lacking. Gmail for instance is brutal on Firefox.

Just my two cents.

Bleah, I only use it for testing. It hangs and gives me a spinning beach ball way too often on my 12" 1.5GHz PowerBook G4.

I've had numerous problems with Firefox. I've found that when debugging Javascript, Firefox will often hang. Also, for some pages, a single refresh is insufficient and I must repeat the refresh/reload of the page.

I use Safari except when a site does not support it. I find the rendering in Safari to be much more attractive as well.

I have an iMac and MacBook Pro both Intel running 10.4.10.
Until recently, Firefox has never been a problem but 2.0.0.6 crashed OS X on the MBP at least 5 times this past week. I'm going to down rev to 2.0.0.4 or something as soon as a I can. The iMac isn't doing the OS X crash but it has a faster/different net connection.

I stopped having problems with FF locking when I installed NoScript. I'm pretty sure that the problem is due to Flash plugins, though. Certain advertisements seemed to be particularly good at giving me the beachball.
On a related note to other comments, I also have to complain about FF mac having a terrible memory leak. If I don't quit it every day or two, it winds up with over 1GB of virtual memory.
On the other hand, I still prefer it to Safari, perhaps because I spend ~50% of my time on a Linux box at work.

Me too post. However, I'm running 2.0.0.6 on Windows Server 2003. I have Firebug and Adblock Plus installed as extensions, neither of which I want to do without.

When i first got my mac i thought that i would start using FF, at first sight it appeared far superior to Safari. However after a while i took a test run with Safari and havent looked back. In comparison, FF seems so bloated and slow compared to the lightweight but super fast Safari; quick startups and quick page rendering. Safari is the must use browser.

Having said that though i do use a number of the plugins on FF for development etc but it has to be said, i only use these when i really have to.

Also, i am forced to use an XP machine at work which is highly irritating, however i do use the Windows version of Safari. Although a fan of the OS X version i have had a few issues on XP; on occassions the browser will just crash and require a restart for what seems like no apparent reason, slightly annoying but i would rather put up with that than use IE. :-)

It's really quite ridiculous... I notice the most issues with using web apps that require a bit of memory, like gmail for instance. If I leave a gmail session alone for a few minutes and then come back to it, it almost invariably has FF completely locked. I'm definitely switching back to safari, it just sucks that safari (even with the hidden debug features unlocked) doesn't have the tools for web development that FF does...

I have the same exact problem on my Macbook Pro with the same version of FF. I've noticed that when I use FF with multiple tabs open on JavaScript-heavy sites that it will slow to a crawl and sometimes crash altogether before the JS loads. No idea what causes this problem but it has become so annoying I have started to use Safari more often.

Intel Macbook Pro user here. Firefox locks up on me repeatedly during the day. The only option is to force quit. I've tried to using Safari, but don't like that it doesn't have tabs (plus, all of my bookmarks are saved in firefox).

Using Firefox on a PowerBook G4. It crashes constantly, requiring Force Quits. Main annoyances are the window "snapping" problem mentioned by others, a recurring problem with Flash Player (every time I update Firefox I have to re-install Flash or I just get a giant question mark on websites) and text entry fields in certain websites or secure forms don't work at all. Also, sites using Java pop-ups often freeze or don't load at all.

I'm also running Firefox 2.0.0.6 on an Intel MacBook and the same problems Jeremy describes started happening today. Thankfully, I found this thread through Google and don't have to start wondering if the problem's all mine. I love the Firefox with extensions idea but it's becoming more and more problematic. I've got Safari as a backup but I've never liked Safari for many reasons, primarily because it has no real adblocking or javascript filtering capacity like I can get with Firefox. If disabling phishing or NoScript doesn't work I'm going back to Camino, a browser I really like, with not so many features but a genuinely Mac like interface.

I've been using Firefox on the Macs in the info commons here at the college I live at. It seems to work fine, I have never had a lock up with it. I have had lock ups on my Toshiba laptop using Ubuntu, but I have a strong feeling it has something to do with *.swf content, because not one of the lockups has been without a large flash object hovering somewhere on the screen

I have absolutely same problem wirth FF!

Firefox on windows and linux is great. Firefox clearly has only 3rd class support for Mac. It is ridiculous. It hangs so often. I am considering switching back to Safari.

Something really should be done about Mac support. The FF developers obviously do not care about the mac experience.

yeah firefox 2.0.0.6 on osx 10.4.6.10 has been really slow recently, always when im accessing gmail, google docs etc, but on other sites too, i have ahd to revert back to safari because it is almost unusable, i ope somene can fix it cos google docs doesnt support safari 3 :(

Give Camino a try, it´s Firefox in Apple´s clothes (aka cocoa)
Works like a charm vor me

I've been running Firefox for about 9 months on a mac mini with no problems. I run from a disk image which means every time I start it up it has to mount the image, but it runs great. I liked Safari, but found it wasn't as compatible with many of the sites I use as Firefox.

I have experienced freezing with firefox on my dual powermac g5 since version 2 came out. Prior to version 2, I had few problems.

Firefox on my Powerbook and three G4 desktops is totally fine. The memory issues only appear to happen when logged onto websites with high feed updates, or streaming audio/video. For example I love Pandora.com but that will add 50MB within a very short time to FF memory usage. Close Pandora and the memory drops back. We use FF for website administration, often open for days at a time, and no problems.

I thought as many of you did that FireFox 2.0.0.6 was all screwey. It had all the fingers pointing to it cause IE was flying on my PC but firefox was dragging on my Intel MacBook. Finally did some time responses off our two local DNS servers and saw they were responding slowly. To extra verify i changed the DNS settings on my mac to point to one of our companies other DNS server (in Atlanta) I work in DC. With my computer using our DNS server in Atlanta it was flying again. Simply rebooted our two local DNS servers and everything came back to normal. Got to love the power of the reboot!

I have the same issue. Certain sites with "lots" of animated graphics get locked up, especially advertising. I was assuming it was something like that because it would take long time to load. It was always a site like Yahoo! or other portal site but not exactly a news website.

I would force quit but asked to restart the same site, I would always say no. I tried it a couple of times but I never got far more than a couple of pages from the original page where I got kicked out.

I have been using FF for Mac for around 5 months and now within an hour of booting it is around using about 50% of the CPU with spikes above 100%. Like others, tried the Intel version (BonEcho) and it does the same thing. The flexibility and add-ons are huge with FF (especially since I use GMail) but I have to shut it down and restart several times daily...

I've been using Camino for a few years now, after trying Firefox long ago and being disappointed by how clunky and un-Mac-like it was. I am nothing but happy with Camino, although I wish that it was extensible as Firefox is.

My company (once:technologies) has been working with Firefox and Camino for the past four years. Our application development and delivery environment exists ENTIRELY within these browsers.

We know that Camino runs 40-60% faster than Firefox on any Mac running a PowerPC and Firefox runs 40-60% faster than Camino on any Intel machine.

We also know that Camino has some consistency issues that Firefox doesn't seem to display. And it appears that Safari 3 will be at least twice as fast as the Mozilla browsers.

With current offerings, Firefox is about twice as fast as Safari. Mozilla, Opera, Netscape and a host of other browsers sit in the mid field for performance with Internet Explorer falling so far behind, I'm too embarrassed to mention it. Right now, we are working on a solution that will make IE7 competitive by building a once:client that follows Microsoft standards, rather than open standards. Oh well, so much for standards!

As for reliability...

I haven't seen a crash in more than two years. I don't recall a Firefox or Camino crash that wasn't due to early software development by our engineers that broke the rules. So why Firefox is intermittently crashing for some users is a mystery.

I've tried using Firefox on my iMac G5 (v2) on and off for a couple of years. It drives me insane, no matter which version I use. I have problems with text rendering - overlapping and stretching - to the point of unreadability. I have tried de-duping my fonts and fixing my permissions hundreds of times, based on other users suggestions, to no avail. The worst part is text entry windows. God forbid you make a typo, because when you backspace - I can't even describe it. It's just impossible to use. I've gone back to Safari.

I have had severe problems with Firefox on Mac recently, both iBook and MacBook. Like past 1 month or so. Before everything was ok. Very strange, it somehow appeared after the last Mac OS X update. It could be a part of a new browser war that Apple is planning to win this time.

I find that Firefox and Flash 9 don't always get along, especially when Flash is consuming a lot of memory.

I have used the Fox on my intel macbook for quite some time and have never had any issues with it. that's crazy.

I've had a problem where a few times a week, Gmail simply won't load. The Gmail icon is displayed but the inbox window is completely empty. The first time it happened I cleared all private data and Gmail worked as it should, but clearing all the private data is a pain to recover from. But since then I've narrowed it down to cache, meaning that within clearing private data, if I only clear cache, Gmail works as planned.

FF locks up all the time. even with plenty of RAM it has issues. even with light usage, it is a resource hog of both processor and RAM... if i want to run parallels the first thing i do is kill FF.

It doesn't display fonts correctly--running words, characters and links together like a drunken typist. I've tried tweaking its settings, the system's font settings, to no avail. I'll take a screenshot later today to demonstrate. I'm about ready to boot the Fox, because words and links are my job!

I was doing a search for "Firefox on Mac problems" and came across your page. My Firefox freezes several times a week and is starting to drive me nuts! I'm glad others are experiencing this problem. I hope they do something to fix it because I used to enjoy it.

Try Camino.

Most of what I have to say has been said but I was so disappointed by Firefox's performance on my humble iBook (1.5Gig RAM) that I have to throw in my two cents. Both Firefox and Safari perform terribly compared to Camino and Opera on my machine. I'm a big fan of various Firefox plugins so I feel quite cheated not being able to use them. On the other hand, Opera's features are very cool and show a real instinct for usability issues beyond tabbed browsing. So, Opera is the browser for me (for now at least) on the Mac.

I'm running firefox 2.0.0.6 on my Macbook Pro and haven't noticed any problems. In fact, I've been running Firefox since I purchased my new laptop in February and can't recall a time is has locked up on me.

Owned an iMac since February of this year. First thing I did is install Firefox. Up to the most current version now. Only thing is the lag on flash on such sites like gizmodo and engadget. Unexpected shut down count is up to five or six. Maybe happens once a month. Other than that it's solid, like jello.

Owned an iMac since February of this year. First thing I did is install Firefox. Up to the most current version now. Only thing is the lag on flash on such sites like gizmodo and engadget. Unexpected shut down count is up to five or six. Maybe happens once a month. Other than that it's solid, like jello.

I've been running FF on an slightly older PPC iBook with Tiger installed. It has worked very reliably for me. Now I also use privoxy for popup/ad suppression. It does actually alter pages so I couldn't tell you if the stability is due to the PPC coding or the privoxy filtering out some possibly bad javascript.

You can fix this problem really easily.

Don't use a Macintosh.

I've been using Firefox for years with very minimal problems. I'm currently using an Intel MacBook and have no issues other than the occasional tooltip that won't go away.

As to the "don't use a Macintosh" comment, I have to use Linux and Windows (XP and Vista) along with a Mac every day in my job. I run Firefox as the default browser on each of them, and Mac OS X is by far the most stable when it comes to running Firefox.

Hangs frequently on intel iMac particularly when trying to load wiki pages... Am now looking for an alternative and considering camino.

Real shame Firefox has been good to me on all platforms up to this.....

Like most things nowadays the more things progress (there's a laugh - we're talking updates). Computers become less and less usable.

Logical that one, eh?

i have experienced exactly the same issues as you state. i will try disabling the phishing filter to see if that improves things. i find that when it locks up, it sometimes recovers after a minute or two but generally by then i have killed it. i am wondering if it something to do with a rogue plugin i've got installed that doesnt behave quite so well on the mac. perhaps try disabling some / all of these. i use the web developer plugin a lot so i dont really want to switch to safari. i have even resorted to running ff under parallels which is quite a frustrating thing to have to do

I use FF on my MBP 10.4 4G RAM - I have about 30 extensions and often have > 60 tabs going. Sometimes even 80.

I have had no real problems - I think using the NoScript extension and Flashblock is a good idea so you can control what dodgy flash/js is being executed.

I use the Firefox mostly only for Wordpress admin issues since the Ajax implementation in Safari sucks = crashes safari (until the release of 10.5 maybe). Sad that firefox is so cpu intensive..

I find Firefox has another problem: when downloading something (e.g., a PDF), the browser is unable to, as it were, fork the downloading process. Instead, it temporarily "hangs" until it has verified that it will be able to download. No such thing happens in Opera or in Safari.

Regarding the I just reported: Bob Lee poosted above that the issue appears to be DNS look up in Firefox. It just hangs there until it does the look up. That's probably it. I hope some Firefox developer reads this.

Regarding the I just reported: Bob Lee posted above that the issue appears to be DNS look up in Firefox. It just hangs there until it does the look up. That's probably it. I hope some Firefox developer reads this.

Oh, yeah, and the scroll buttons issues. Sometimes the bottom one just disappears. Geez...

I use FireFox and it works pefectly for me. Watch what you download or what sites you goto. Maybe you picked up a bug and that is preventing the program form working.

I use FireFox and it works pefectly for me. Watch what you download or what sites you goto. Maybe you picked up a bug and that is preventing the program form working.

I tried FF... Man it's slow and buggy.
I now mainly use Safari 3 and on some websites, Camino.

just bought new mid 2007 imac and firefox causes computer to restart or the app just freezes. it more than most times makes my mac restart. does not work very well. sucks b/c i love their format. used it on my pc, but now i gotta change to another browser though i prefer theirs.

just bought new mid 2007 imac and firefox causes computer to restart or the app just freezes. it more than most times makes my mac restart. does not work very well. sucks b/c i love their format. used it on my pc, but now i gotta change to another browser though i prefer theirs.

I have been using it for about 18 months on a MacBook (Core Duo, not Core2). Never a problem, restart it once a day, because I close it when done. Using whatever the plain Jane installer includes with a few plugins - Flash, Quicktime, Java, Tidy, Firebug, Gmail, YSlow.

I would look more at the configuration of browser plugins than at FF itself. Also, make sure you have 1.5 or 2 GB of memory, with the shipped 512 everything on my Mac sucked, not just FF.

Yeah, it's dreadful. You need to shut down the app every other day or it haemhorrages memory.

@Charlie - FYI

Dragged Firefox to AppZapper, re-downloaded it from Mozilla, No plugs no nothing....

Just as bad as it was before I zapped it!

In terminal condition and not worth the stress anymore!

Just moved over to MacOS X having been a windows junkie for a long time. FF has crashed out on me a few times now since I installed it about 3 weeks ago. Often happens when I have more than 5 tabs open and it's doing a multitude of things. Can't do without it (FF) coz of the multitude of developer tools available as plugins.

How many of you have the new version on 1Passwd installed?

I had useless firefox and not mmuch better safari - thrashed The upgrade and went back to a previous version. Things much better now!

OK here's a possible solution.

I've been driven crazy by crashes so frequent (eg within ten minutes of launching, half-way through typing a Gmail) that I had to revert to Safari (I'm using a Mac Intel Mini with 10.4.10 and 1 Gb of RAM). I miss many of the plugins, especially for the Google stuff like notebook, bookmark sync, a better Gmail and docs and spreadsheets along with web developer toolbar and Backpack plugin. So finally, after trying running it clean and turning off various extensions, I deleted the profile and started again, downloading all my plugins afresh and re-syncing my bookmarks. It was a bit of a PITA but so far it hasn't crashed once in over 6 hours (a recent record) and I've been using loads of AJAX and multiple open windows.

So if it's driving you crazy but you still want to use FF - try deleting the user/library/application support/Firefox/profiles/???????.default folder (I kept a backup so I could copy over the bookmarks html files (I have over a thousand bookmarks) Delete/rename profiles.ini too - otherwise FF seems to think it's already running??

So far, it's worked for me - and I'm very happy about that - good luck.

Without a doubt the most frustrating program I've dealt with recently. Everytime I shut down my computer Fire Fox disa