Friday, November 16, 2007

JavaScript Crashing Mac OS X Firefox 2.0.0.9

Recently I upgraded to Firefox 2.0.0.9 on Mac OS X. Ever since then, Firefox has been crashing extremely frequently. Most often, it's when I'm closing a tab---usually GMail.

When the Apple problem reporter app fires up, I get to see the stack. Every time I've checked, the crash has been in the JavaScript engine somewhere (the times I've remembered to check, it's always crashed in libmozjs.dylib).

I just reproduced the problem frighteningly easily: after a crash I restarted Firefox. I then went to GMail. After the page loaded, I closed the single tab containing GMail. Crash. Ouch.

What is keeping me from switching to Safari or Opera? At this point, familiarity and Google's bookmark synchronizer. The synchronizer has its own problems, though.

6 comments:

Team Holyoke Freedge said...

This is happening to us, too, with a vengeance. Have you made any progress in solving the problem?

Jim Menard said...

I reinstalled Firefox. That seemed to help a bit, but closing a tab showing GMail still causes a crash occasionally.

I should try disabling all my extensions. I've been to lazy to do that. Instead, I use Safari to read my GMail.

I tried living in Safari, but missed Adsense and other Firefox addons too much.

Finster said...

Yeah, this is really getting annoying, too. I can usually help the situation by deleting my cache. That usually helps... but not always.

The problem also doesn't seem to have improved with 2.0.0.10

The Templetons said...

Anyone having luck on getting this problem resolved? FF is crashing on my MBPro around 5-10 times per day. It is really weird and very annoying.

Anonymous said...

This crashing is happening with more regularity...anyone got a fix..it happens on safari, firefox and now flock browser..what do you think is up ? I deleted plist and reset and reinstalled and still...crashing.

Jim Menard said...

I've found one thing that helps: make sure there is at least one other tab open before closing the open the GMail window. (GMail is the worst for causing crashes.)