Ever since upgrading to Firefox 3.6.x, it has been crashing seemingly at random. Firefox would just disappear in the middle me doing something. I nailed down one behavior that Firefox didn’t like and found a replacement solution that has worked 100% so far!
(UPDATE: Uninstall any Beta Flash plugins and install the current player (Mac). Zero crashes now)
It seems that two actions will cause Firefox, at some random point in time, to just disappear or hang for a few seconds and disappear, or just hang permanently. These two actions are:
- Creating a new tab by either clicking in an empty space on the tab bar
- Searching in the Firefox default search box in the top right of the browser
When I browse, I’m using shortcut keys or moving so fast that often I’m not sure exactly what the last action I did was the point of a crash. Firefox has been crashing so much, and I have found so little help, that I had to learn to slow down and see what it was I was doing that was causing the crashes.
The eureka moment
Yesterday, I browsed really slow all day. Normally this would drive me nuts, but it was an experiment. I finally nailed the crash culprit down to one specific action: when I click in the Firefox search box and hit the first letter…BOOM! No more Firefox. I tried it again. After a few tries, I realized it was simply typing that first letter that would just BOOM Firefox into the application black hole of non-existence.
Yes, I was really sick of the “Oops, we are so embarrassed” message. That message page was practically my surrogate starting page, I’ve seen it so much. I hadn’t thought about it, but the default search box is really the only way I search. I and really like the auto-suggest. What could I do? I needed to replace that search box with something else.
The Solution
I normally don’t like toolbars that get in the way, but I knew from prior usage that the Google Toolbar has a very diplomatic setting that basically hides the toolbar 100%, but at the same time, allows it to take over the default search box that Firefox provides. My guess was that if I replaced the default search box, at this point, I’d never see another crash caused by simply searching.
Four days later, not a single crash. Wow.
So, install Google Toolbar to stop crashing if you have similar crashes like I describe, and change the settings as follows:
Good luck! And happy no-crash Firefox surfing!
