MySpace hates Firefox.

May 18, 2007 10:22 AM

MySpace brings FireFox to a standstill. Why?!

My install of Firefox just seems to hate MySpace (and rightly so I guess). I'm not a big fan but many of my friends are, so I visit it daily.

Whenever I do so Firefox suddenly gets dipped in treacle and slows to a halt. Not just the tab with MySpace in either, all tabs. Everything just seems to stop. Opening new tabs/sites has the same outcome; they take forever to load (3min just to start downloading the page and images).

Restarting the browser fixes everything. What's going on?

(Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070309 ImageShackToolbar/4.0.7 Firefox/2.0.0.3 - Build ID: 2007030919)

posted by lemonfridge to computers & internet (15 comments total)

too much flash can make baby Firefox cry.

Try installing the extension Flashblock.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 10:58 AM on May 18, 2007

A page with 800 animated gifs, 3 flash movies and two songs set to play on startup will do that to any browser.

There's a good greasemonkey script that blocks custom styles, and thus eliminates much of the cruft.
posted by chrisamiller at 11:17 AM on May 18, 2007

Seconding Flashblock. As bad as Flash is on Windows, it's worse on a PowerPC Mac. Without Flashblock, MySpace is a killer. And you can click on any Flash object to run it if you want.
posted by tommasz at 11:17 AM on May 18, 2007

It does the same thing on non-flashy pages, such as the login screen and messaging.
posted by lemonfridge at 11:21 AM on May 18, 2007

Probably shitty javascript.
posted by SpecialK at 11:39 AM on May 18, 2007

the login page has plenty of flash on it too. some of the newer ads in there have video now..
posted by mrg at 12:27 PM on May 18, 2007

Thirding Flashblock. Pages load in a snap now!

I'd like to see a Firefox add-on that shoots a hot, fiery liquid into the eyes of anyone who feels the need to post a 6mb gif of an animated crying angel with the American flag and Toby Keith playing in the background.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 12:29 PM on May 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

My FF has no problem with myspace. I'd start by deleting all cookies and deleting the cache. If that doesnt help I'd export my bookmarks out and delete my firefox profile, uninstall firefox, and reinstall it. Now try visiting myspace. If it works then install flash again.
posted by damn dirty ape at 12:40 PM on May 18, 2007

Actually, disable all your extensions first. They may be causing the problem. Uninstall that toolbar too.
posted by damn dirty ape at 12:41 PM on May 18, 2007

Another program on your computer could be fubaring your system such as a virus scanner or backup program. Try Ctrl+Alt+Dlt --> Task manager --> Processes tab and sort by CPU usage. Look for other programs which are close to 100 or using all your memory.
posted by jmd82 at 12:47 PM on May 18, 2007

I've had the same problem. I usually just don't open more than one or two MySpace pages at a time (including the login screen, my personal home page, and any profiles).
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:47 PM on May 18, 2007

I'd like to see a Firefox add-on that shoots a hot, fiery liquid into the eyes of anyone who feels the need to post a 6mb gif of an animated crying angel with the American flag and Toby Keith playing in the background.

If you repeatedly visit a page with a large animated gif, you can use Adblock Plus to prevent it from loading. Adblock Plus is not just for ads.

Also, in general you might want to disable memory caching of recent pages (which gives fast back-button action)

go to the URL about:config and set browser.cache.memory.enable to false.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 4:16 PM on May 18, 2007

Adblock Plus
Flashblock
NoScript
Stop Autoplay

I sadly find all of these extensions to be necessary for browsing MySpace.
posted by anaelith at 5:46 PM on May 18, 2007

What's going on: MySpace users SUCK when they add eleventy hundred gifs, pictures, animations, backgrounds, videos, songs, etc. Not just Flash... many times my Firefox chokes because someone links to a song in addition to a gigs worth of images. Sometimes I just walk away and let everything load, if it's important to see the page. Otherwise I bail.

(I do have a MySpace. I keep it simple.)
posted by The Deej at 6:39 PM on May 18, 2007

I generally don't have big problems with myspace, but when I do, they usually seem to be caused by some nonstandard video file on a page (I think a .wmv) that seems to cause (my mac version of) Firefox to choke up.
posted by stilly at 7:57 PM on May 18, 2007