Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with firefox and browsers

I can't stay logged in to any websites

peep — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:17:42 -0800

Suddenly today, I can't stay logged into anything - Google, Facebook, Metafilter, Twitter, Flickr, etc. I've run through a bunch of possibilities, but could the power cutting out last night have done something? I'm using Firefox, and I've already uninstalled and reinstalled it. Privacy settings allow cookies and I don't have it set to clear history when closing a window. And obviously I've tried many times to log into different sites, making sure I click "remember me." I've never had this problem before today. Last night the power went out for about 20 seconds and my computer shut down, but all was otherwise fine this morning. I've restarted and it's in regular (not safe) mode. Any ideas?

Can I make Chrome appear Firefoxy?

bluefly — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 07:16:20 -0800

I like to watch a lot of streaming video especially for sports games. I usually use the Google Chrome browser. But some sites' media players say they only work with Firefox or IE and won't even give me the chance of trying it out in Chrome. Is there a way to trick the sites into thinking Chrome is really one of the approved browsers? Or is there really some fundamental difference that makes the players break in Chrome? I am especially looking to watch sports on NBC. I recently uninstalled Firefox because I didn't like the new version. But I can reinstall it if that's the only solution. I am on a Windows Vista computer. Thanks.

Can firefox mimic the Windows integration of IE?

stupidsexyFlanders — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:26:16 -0800

If throw an address like c:\my documents into an IE address bar, it opens up the folder in windows explorer. If I put the same thing in a firefox address bar, I get an html page that displays the folder/files as a series of links down the page. Anyway to get firefox to replicate the IE behavior on this type of address?

I want my Firefox!

trip and a half — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 08:35:36 -0800

Why is Firefox so sluggish on my laptop? I love Firefox. I use it at work. I used to use it at home on my old desktop (which died).

In September of last year, I bought a shiny new Asus laptop which I absolutely love. But every time I've tried to download and use Firefox on it, the response time has been frustrating to the point where I've uninstalled it.

What's going on? I have to wait ten seconds or more each time I click anything before the browser will respond. Often the title bar has the Windows "not responding" message in it.

Any ideas? I'm running Windows XP Home. Save me from IE!

How can I open a specific web shortcut (from the desktop) in a specific web browser?

covert7 — Sat, 05 May 2007 13:34:01 -0800

How can I open a specific web shortcut (from the desktop) in a specific web browser? I can't believe this is as hard as I'm finding it to be so perhaps I'm missing something very very simple.

I have created a shortcut to a website that will only work in IE. I also have Firefox setup on this machine so that it is the default web browser. I want the user to use Firefox for almost everything web related they do, expect for this one site.

To make things simple on them, I put a copy of this shortcut on their desktop. I know if they open the shortcut from within IE's Favorites, they can go there no problem. But from the desktop, Firefox is the browser that gets launched and the site won't work in it. I'm really trying to make things as dead simple as I can for this lady.

So is this possible, or is she just going to have to go into IE and then launch it from there?

Thanks for any help you can provide folks!

How do i go all the way back?

JohnnyGunn — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 19:22:56 -0800

With Firefox 2.0 (did not happen on 1.5.) when I return to the previous page via the back button, I am always sent to the top of the previous page regardless of how far I had scrolled down prior to jumping to the next page. Can I set it to go back to the spot I had scrolled to and not to the top or am I stuck? (My current workaround is to use the add on script that creates a duplicate tab)

Firefox Issues

spicynuts — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 09:01:17 -0800

Firefox 1.5.0.7 weirdness. Please help. Two days ago Firefox started behaving oddly at work for me - everytime I tried to access gmail or hotmail I would get an error message saying "Unable to access this site because site requires SSL to be enabled". I had no problem accessing both of those sites through IE.

Today I come in and fire up the browser and it immediately asks me if I want to transfer all of my bookmarks, cookies, passwords etc from IE. WTF?? I go through that and the browser opens and of course none of the bookmarks and cookies etc that had been in Firefox for the past year or so are gone. However, now I have no SSL error messages and can access gmail/hotmail no problem. What the hell is going on? Is it possible that our IT group moved the network drive that Firefox writes its profile data to? If so, why the SSL error message earlier?

NO, I would not like to open the link in a new tab

pornucopia — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 10:07:47 -0800

Can I get rid of the "open in new tab" option on the right-click menu in firefox? I hate opening things in a new tab. I don't use tabs, tabs don't work for me. That's just how it is. So I basically NEVER want to open a link in a new tab.

"Open in new tab" is right next to "Open in new window" on the right-click menu in Firefox, so I'm constantly accidentally opening something in a new tab. I would like this option completely removed from the menu, if possible. I guess if it were removed, "Bookmark this link" would then be the new accidental target, so if you could tell me how to add a blank slot to that menu that would be cool too.

Thanks!

Re-installed WinXP Won't Show CSS Images

ao4047 — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 20:09:32 -0800

Re-installed Windows XP on my old laptop (Sony PCG-SRX87). Let it run through all the updates. Now neither IE nor Firefox will show CSS background images. Example: when I view Gmail or Google Spreadsheets, there's no background images for any of the rows. Searching Google for css, background images, service pack 2, firefox, internet explorer, troubelshooting, etc... checked Internet Options, Windows Firewall, turned off firewall, turned off virus scanner. Any ideas?

Bonus and maybe related: text sizes in IE are huge. I go to View > Text Size and it is set to Medium but if I got to AOL.com homepage the headlines are massive.

Is there a perfect OSX web browser out there for me?

bruceyeah — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 03:26:22 -0800

I'm trying to find a (stable) OSX web browser that... A) allows you to select text and right-click to search for that text in Google, AND B) displays bookmarks in the bookmarks toolbar as favicons (not just plain text buttons). Firefox and Safari seem to do A, Camino has B, Shiira does both but it's hella unstable on my Intel Mac mini.

Or alternately... is there a way to customise Safari, Firefox or Camino so that they do both? I've searched high and low for relevant extensions with no success.

Camino is close to perfect, but not being able to right-click and Google something thing is annoying. Or am I just in need of a good bookmarklet script that does this?

Is the new IE broswer, Beta 2 as good as Firefox?

Postroad — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 07:36:33 -0800

Is the beta2 Internet Explorer broswer as good as or a replacement for Firefox? Microsoft has released Beta2 browser for IE browser and claims it is much more secure and makes amends for shortcmings of previous browser, the one that got so many to switch to Firefox. Is it as good as Firefox now?

Firefox stalls on certain sites and Opera 8 font-rendering bug

Frankieist — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 02:28:34 -0800

I'm having major problems with both Firefox (my browser of choice) and Opera 8. Firefox stalls consistently for a considerable amount of time (1 min - 5 mins) on specific sites (for instance del.icio.us/popular/) and Opera has a font-rendering bug on most sites (for instance, again, del.icio.us/popular/). Regarding the firefox problem (screenshot):
- oddly, during the time that firefox is not responding, the CPU usage is only between 0% and 2%.
- if, in the same session, I visit the site again or refresh it, it loads just fine. However, the problem can present itself for different sites multiple times in one session.
- I have Firefox 1.5, though I've had the problem since at least 1.0.4
- I've tried deleting my profile and creating a new one. No luck.
- I don't have any extensions installed, other than the Talkbalk one that comes with firefox.
- I've tried uninstalling the current version and reinstalling to a different directory. Again, no luck.

As far as the Opera 8 rendering bug is concerned (screenshot) , even when the website's css specifies a font that it should use to render the page, it will instead render the page with regular Bauer Bodoni LT in some instances and Bauer Bodoni LT RomanSC in others. It makes Opera completely unusable, since I can't tolerate reading long amounts of text in small caps. Maybe this will provide a clue: about a month ago wikipedia used to be displayed in Bauer Bodoni LT RomanSC, but now it shows up with a sans-serif font. Please help!

Firefox back-button speed issues

jikel_morten — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 18:57:34 -0800

So I downloaded Flock and became instantly indifferent, until I noticed it's near Opera-like rendering speed via the back-button. Sluggish back button (again, compared to Opera) action is my least favorite thing about Firefox. Given that Flock is based on Firefox, can I mimic Flock's speedy rendering on already visited pages in Firefox sans digging into code? I so miss this from my Opera days. I'm also too attached to my customized Firefox setup to abandon it, and Flock didn't really do enough for me to justify another browser switch. tia

Is it just me, or does Firefox kinda suck anymore?

mrkinla — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 05:31:52 -0800

In less than a month, I've had Firefox crash on one machine -- a new G4 Powerbook relatively free from stuff like GUI mods, extra software, a million extensions, etc. -- more than 15 times. Usually, it's while doing something innocuous, like trying to open a new tab. I have the same problem on my G5. Previous versions almost never crashed, and being a Mac user, I'm relatively unaccustomed to constant program crashes (oh, there were the early days of OS X, but let's not talk about those...)

Is Firefox a victim of its own success? I can't keep enduring the crashes; it's driving me back to Safari, which I don't even particularly like. Anyone using Deer Park without a massive crashfest?

Firefox extension problems

stupidsexyFlanders — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 10:12:10 -0800

All my firefox extensions in the Extensions window are greyed out, none of them work, and right clicking doesn't give me any workable options that are not greyed out. What's up? They used to work.

Why has my Firefox slowed down?

zorro astor — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 08:49:14 -0800

Why has my Firefox slowed down? It started a few day ago. Sometimes it takes several minutes for a page to load. Some only partially load, then stop. Some don't load at all. Not every page is this way, but I'd say about 20% suffer from one of these problems. IE is zipping right along though. I did a virus check, ran Spy-bot and Ad-Aware and cleaned up my registry. Yet the problem persists. Oh, I'm running 1.0 and XP Pro.

Why can't I subscribe to RSS feeds in Firefox?

John Smallberries — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 18:03:49 -0800

I am having a bit of trouble using RSS on Firefox. Whenever I click on one of the little orange RSS boxes, I am taken to a page which states, at the top, "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below." followed by a code listing that I presume is the document tree mentioned above. Am I supposed to do something with that?

I suspect there is a real simple answer to this that will make me look like a dork, but I can cope with that if it results in figuring this out.

Printing .jpgs

selfnoise — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 10:03:19 -0800

Printing .JPG images from the internets- help! [mi] So, I have a large image in a tab in Firefox (in Windows XP). This image is scaled down to fit in the window. When I print it out in this form, it takes up a portion of the page. When I print it out zoomed in, it prints out larger than the page. I want this image, which is of 1 8.5by11 document, to print out taking up the whole page, but no more. How can I do this efficiently?

I'm switching from IE to Firefox. What extensions can't I live without?

darainwa — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 18:09:36 -0800

Ok, I'm making the big switch from IE to Firefox (now that it has gone 1.0). What extensions can't I live without?

Camino vs Firefox

mhaw — Wed, 11 Aug 2004 09:05:45 -0800

Compare and contrast Camino and Firefox for OSX. What are the key differences? How are they similar? Which would do you prefer?

Firefox and Unicode

PrinceValium — Sun, 27 Jun 2004 18:57:12 -0800

Why does Firefox insist on loading pages with Unicode character coding, when I prefer Western character coding? The former turns high-ASCII characters like § into question marks; the latter displays these normally. Does this happen to anyone else, and can I fix it?

How to import updated bookmarks from IE to Firefox?

casarkos — Mon, 08 Mar 2004 19:24:31 -0800

Finally decided to make Firefox my default browser, but the bookmarks it imported from IE are four months old. Is there any way to get the updated ones without handcopying?

Is it possible to stop Mozilla/Firefox from truncating tooltips?

Tlogmer — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 20:36:25 -0800

Is it possible to stop Mozilla/Firefox from truncating tooltips (or whatever the link title="popping stuff" popup things are called)? I assume this is somehow a "feature," not a bug, but it really pisses me off.

How can I sort my Firefox bookmarks the way IE does?

Grod — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 20:59:42 -0800

Fire~~bird~~fox question. I've been trying to find a browser I like, and after playing with Opera, Mozilla, and Firebird, I settled on firefox. Now I can't figure out how to make it feel familiar, the way IE does. For starters, I would really like my bookmarks to sort the same way, directories listed first a-->z, followed by links stored in the top level also sorted a-->z. It doesn't appear to care if an imported bookmark is a directory or an actual link, and it really annoys me. I would use opera, which I love, but using the scrolling region on my synaptics touchpad is such a big part of my workflow that I am unwilling to accept its loss. To date, I've not found a way to enable this in Opera, though installing the generic driver from synaptics fixes the same bug in Mozilla and all java based applications (for some reason dell's version of the driver doesn't like java). If anyone knows how to fix this, I'd switch to Opera in a heartbeat.