Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with internet and firefox

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?

Alternative Browsers

bluelight — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:59:11 -0800

What superior/alternative web browsers to Firefox do you use? I have been using firefox with NoScript and most cookies disabled. When it gets too annoying to enable scripts and cookies, I switch over to Internet Explorer (non-updated version). I really dislike using IE but lately, Firefox has been crashing a LOT.

I was wondering if you had any good experiences with other web browsers such as Safari, Chrome, etc. I plan on keeping firefox but I'd like to explore other options.

I use a PC running Windows XP.

Thanks!

Chrome clone that isn't made of Chrome?

doublehappy — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:35:55 -0800

Are there any browsers that are essentially Chrome clones in function and appearance, but aren't Chrome and don't share any common code? I really like it and find it easy to use, but it kills my computer when I use it (we're talking forcing hard reboots, etc.). So does firefox, incidentally (but less often for some reason).

I tried Iron, but it is the same code, just with the 'send data to google' removed.

What add-ons to Firefox do you find useful?

melodykramer — Sat, 09 May 2009 17:39:47 -0800

I just learned about Firefox add-ons and grease monkey scripts (I know, I know....) There are literally thousands of these things and I was wondering which ones you find useful and how you use them. Any recommendations? I'm really open to anything, from easy to complex -- so I'm not going to write how I use the internet -- because I'm interested in varied responses. What streamlines your browsing? What do you have now that makes life simpler or that you find yourself glad you have?

Thank you in advance. :)

internet self-discipline

a womble is an active kind of sloth — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:39:25 -0800

Is there a way to ensure that firefox can only access specific sites for a specified period of time? I need to use the internet for my research but I find it easy to get distracted. Usually when I work, I try to be somewhere that has no internet connection, but some of my work requires me to browse through papers and references online.

I looked at answers to previous questions, such as this and people suggested OpenDNS and LeechBlock. I'm more interested in specifying five sites that I can have access to for a fixed amount of time (and ideally in a password protected way) rather than a list of things I want to block. Perhaps this is possible in OpenDNS - from looking at their website I couldn't tell.

I'm using firefox on windows.Thanks.

Facebook, delicious and flickr not loading!

carofowler — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 12:30:12 -0800

My facebook, delicious and flickr aren't working, but all other sites are fine. What's wrong and how do I fix it? I have been trying for over a week to use my facebook account unsuccessfully.

I use Firefox 3.0.5 on a MacBook although I have also tried on Safari 3.1.2.

Usually, I am able to sign in and arrive at the home page successfully. Then, when I try to go into any other page, the page won't load and I get a "failed to open page" error or "page load error - connection interrupted" or something of the sort.

Clicking on links in my email to posted pictures or messages also doesn't work and the page will not load. I have tried deleting all facebook cookies, all cookies, restarting Firefox, restarting the computer and nothing has worked.

My account is working fine on other computers, but since it doesn't happen with any other site, this must be an issue with Facebook AND my computer.

Also, my delicious account won't load either. I tired on Safari and the home page loaded but none of the other pages and I get "connection interrupted" as well.

When I try logging into flickr (through the Yahoo! sign in page, which is where flickr redirects you when you click to sign in) i get sent to a blank page: https://login.yahoo.com/config/login_verify2?

These sites work fine when I sign in through other computers and all other sites and the internet in general are working fine on my computer. I have also tried deleting cookies for these. For delicious it works and allows me to enter the home page, but then I still can't access any of the other pages.

Does anyone know what is going on and how I can fix it?

Thanks!

Switch to Firefox 3 or stay with 2?

jujube — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:15:48 -0800

Advantages/disadvantages of Firefox 3? I'm currently using Firefox 2, and am completely happy with it. After the latest security update, I see a message saying that there will be no more security updates, and that I should switch to Firefox 3 instead.

Should I switch? If you're currently using Firefox 3, what is better about 3? If I stay with 2, am I leaving myself open to viruses, attacks, etc.?
Also, I have a couple of firefox extensions I've installed. Do they transfer over to 3, or do I have to re-install them? Looking for the least troublesome/time consuming option here. Thanks.

Clicked something random, now I can't view a site in FF3?

SputnikSweetheart — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:35:48 -0800

Help! I clicked something without realizing, now I can't view one of my favorite websites. What did I do? For starters:
I use Firefox 3.
The website in question is qwantz.com, a webcomic, but I doubt it matters.

Anyway, the other night, I was looking for a specific strip in the archives. I think this is what happened:

I opened a new strip and accidentally right-clicked and then left-clicked in rapid succession, thus selecting something from the dropdown menu that appeared. Now, none of the strips will load, leaving me with white space between the top menu and the bottom columns. As a test, I opened it in Safari - no problems there.

So, first, I can't figure out what I clicked, and second, I have no idea how to go about fixing it.

The right-click menu's options are:
Back
Forward
Reload
Stop
_
Add to Kaboodle ((firefox add-on, don't think that's what I clicked))
Bookmark this Page
Save Page As...
Send Link...
Shareaholic ((also an add-on, not one I'm used to/familiar with yet, though))
_
View Background Image
Select All
_
View Page Source
View Page Info
_
Community Links

I'm not very technical - but it doesn't seem like any of those would cause that to happen. Am I wrong?

It's not exactly an emergency... as I said before, I can open it in Safari, but as I don't use Safari very frequently, I'd rather be able to open it with all of my other daily comics without opening another browser.

Any help will be appreciated! Thank you.

Automatically remove certain items in Firefox history?

sittered — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:02:36 -0800

How can I arrange it so that my Firefox history is automatically purged of sites of a certain domain like imdb.com or facebook.com? I don't know much in terms of scripting languages, but I won't rule that out as a possible method. I was thinking in terms of a greasemonkey script or a full-fledged extension, but a script that directly edits the history database file is OK, too.

I use Mac OS X with Firefox 3.0.4.

Why can't I listen to conference calls on Yahoo Finance? (using Mac Safari/Firefox)

b_thinky — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 02:44:41 -0800

Why can't I listen to conference calls on Yahoo Finance? (using Mac Safari/Firefox) Here is a link of all the day's conference calls. When I click to listen to the audio, my browser goes to a new page and attempts to load the media. Media plays, but all I hear is some light static for a couple seconds, followed by a click - then it goes dead.

This happens in all the calls I try to listen to, whether using Safari or Firefox. Also I tried AOL finance and can't listen there either. I tried upgrading Windows Media player but still no luck. I cannot download the file - only streaming is available.

Can someone suggest a solution?

Does IE7-like RSS Reader exist for FireFox?

karizma — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:35:49 -0800

I love IE7's built-in RSS/feed reader. I hate, hate, hate IE7's slowness and general, overal crapiness. I would love to use FireFox, but I want the same kind of RSS reader functionality. Is there is a plugin or extension for Firefox that exists and works just like IE7's RSS reader? I am looking for the exact same or as close as possible functionality for an RSS reader in FireFox as found build-in in IE7. I'd like it to integrate into the browser. I can't stand FireFox's live bookmarks.

Things I'm not looking for: Web-based RSS readers, desktop RSS clients, or FireFox extensions/plugins that don't work like how IE7's functionality does.

Does this kind of tool/functionality/plugin/extension exist for Firefox?

(btw, I'm running the current version of Firefox).

Thanks.

Linking problems with Firefox??

i less than three nsima — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:12:18 -0800

Why doesn't Firefox open links that I click? I've noticed over the last several days that when I click on some links the status bar will start going through the motions to connect, but then it will stop dead (it actually says "Stopped" as if I had pushed the stop button before the page had a chance to load). Nothing really happens after that, its as if the click command was lost in transit. I found that a work-around to this problem has been to Control-click the link (i.e. the command to open the link in a new tab). This always opens the offending link.

I've noticed this phenomenon especially in Facebook, but I've seen it happen on several sites, so I haven't noticed an over-arching pattern.

I know in the scheme of things this is a minor problem, but its pretty annoying in my day-to-day web browsing, and I would like to get it fixed. What could be causing this to happen?

In case it matters, I'm on a MacBook with Firefox 2.

Crazy Like a Fox.com: Make it Stop!

GS1977 — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:57:24 -0800

Help! For a few days now, Fox.com keeps loading a tab in Firefox automatically every so often. How do I get it to stop? I tried clearing cookies and stuff, and scanned for malware and found nothing. I also tried reinstalling Firefox since I wanted to upgrade to the latest beta of Firefox 3 anyway. I'm behind a corporate firewall here, so this kinda thing never happens typically. Any ideas?

configuration of vista breadcrumb bar/firefox second tab row

lrodman — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:15:34 -0800

Is it possible to trim Vista Breadcrumb sections so that the breadcrumb bar doesn't clip off most of the path in long titles? I.e. anything over say, 10 characters gets cropped, so that long paths can be shown? Also, is there a way to fix the glitchy second row of tabs in firefox? I want the second row of tabs to have the same height as the first, so that graphics don't go all screwy.

Only for Firefox, only on one computer: manual connection to high speed required. Why?

flibbertigibbet — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 08:05:26 -0800

After installing a new wireless router, what router/network setting would force only Firefox, and on only one computer in the network, connect to the internet and ethernet manually, while everything else connects automatically? Some background: all but one (1) of the computers mentioned run Windows XP.

A friend gave us a very broken laptop of hers a while back. We fixed it, got to keep it, and set up a wireless network to accommodate it.

In the network we have: DesktopA (Vista, new server), DesktopB (old server, connected to printers, the problem), DesktopC, DesktopD, and LaptopA.

We switched from a non-wireless Linksys router to a "Linksys Wireless-G 2.4Ghz (54Mbps) Broadband Router." There was a moment where the two routers were daisychained.

The only change to the network was the change in the router, and in individual security permissions on each computer to allow the computers to connect via the new router, and to see each other's shared files.

Only with Firefox, and only on DesktopB, are we forced to manually connect with the (broadband) internet. There is literally nothing I can think of that explains this, especially as it's not required to connect with Firefox on any of the other computers in the network. However, once I manually connect, it works like a dream.

The connection screen is seen here. Even weirder is the fact that the connection screen is well-known to us, following some internet problems resulting from uninstall BitTorrent, which damaged some files whose name escapes me, causing intermittent internet access. However, back then, the client has its own icon--as you can see here, the icon it takes is Firefox's.

We even removed the connection clients (installed during the BitTorrent problem) from DesktopB entirely, but this one still pops up every time I start Firefox after restarting the computer. Any help?

Flash me!

princeofpersiaxz — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:25:43 -0800

Adobe Flash Player apps won't work on my Internet Explorer 7 browser. All of my settings are positioned to allow flash and ActiveX. I downloaded Adobe Flash Player multiple times within Explorer. But heres the thing, I was having the same problem with my Firefox browser, but everything was fine after downloading Adobe Flash. I really don't want to use Firefox, I want to fix this problem with Explorer.

I know there is some issue with Microsoft and ActiveX, up until last week, I was promted to click the app to allow me to intereact with it, now I dont even get that far, all I get is a red 'X'.

What's wrong with my Internet connection?

Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:27:12 -0800

Please help me diagnose this mysterious Internet problem. I can't connect to a few websites in the normal way -- for example I can't connect to IMdB.com if the URL begins with "www". But I can connect if I remove the prefix. There are a few other websites I'm having similar problems with. What's going on here? I'm using the latest Firefox 2 on a Macbook Pro. I tried using Firefox 3 and same problems. Safari also has the same problem. What's the best procedure for sorting out what's wrong here? Thank you!

Where does autofill come from?

M Edward — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 23:38:34 -0800

Firefox Filter: Is there any way to view the autofill lists outside of Firefox? Where does Firefox store the autofill information? Like previous google searches? Is there a way to view them with a text editor?

I am looking for something I googled a long time ago but going through the entire history of my searches line-by-line with only 4 at a time showing is driving me batty.

What could possibly cause MySpace to kill my internet connection?

cheero — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 20:30:53 -0800

What could possibly MySpace to kill my internet connection? Hi all,

Before anything, I fully understand the unfortunate and stupid nature of this problem because it deals with MySpace but I've had this problem for two years and NO ONE seems to know whats wrong with it.

Secondly, I would love to hear anything other than 'lolz, its cos MySpace sucks!' -- Yes, I'm with you on the MySpace hate, but here is my issue.

I have my music on MySpace and I receive between 15-20 new messages/comments per day from fans around the world who take the time to listen to my music so I want to be respectful and respond to all of them. The issue is that whenever I view more than 2-3 profiles/accounts, my internet connection completely dies (I'm unfortunately with bastards from Comcast because Verzion FiOS is not available in my area). Whats really weird about this issue is that only my web browsing works, but mIRC and AIM work just fine.

What could be the cause of this extremely stupid and unbelievably annoying problem? Could some software be causing this problem? I use Firefox and have tested this out on Opera, Flock and IE and the same thing happens. If I simply click on more than 2-3 accounts, internet web browsing connection dies and I am forced to unplug my router (Netgear FVS 114) from the wall, wait 5 minutes and plug it back in again.

I've called Comcast and of course, they never know anything so I wasted time talking to them.

If anyone has any solutions I really would love to hear it, I seriously feel bad not being able to interact with my fans who take time to check out my work and I can't even respond to them without wanting to punch a hole in the wall because of this annoying problem.

I thank you all very much in advance.

Browser makes incorrect requests.

Yogurt — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 07:57:07 -0800

My browsers frequently try to load the wrong page. They invent web addresses based on other open pages. What's happening? I don't think it's spyware. For example, in trying to load Ask.Mefi, Firefox tried to load http://www.metafilter.com/content/themes/onion/style/tabber.css (I had recently closed The Onion). I'll sometimes get CSS templates or favicos instead of the page I'm looking for. Generally, the third refresh loads the page properly.

This happens in Firefox 2.0.0.9 (safe mode and normal) and IE 6. I haven't noticed problems with other Internet programs. Multiple spyware scans reveal nothing. Other computers connected to the same router are fine. I've reinstalled Firefox. My system is Windows XP SP2.

Better Browser for the Mac

jdroth — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:59:14 -0800

I need a better browser for my Mac. I use a MacBook Pro 17". For the past year, I've been using Safari as my default browser. I like it swell except that it crashes all the frickin' time. I've installed SAFT, which allows me to restore my browsing sessions, but still -- it's a pain. Last weekend, I moved over to Firefox in the hopes that things would be improved. That's not going to work. What's with the delays for nearly every action? Ugh. (No extensions installed.) I don't yet have Leopard, but am willing to upgrade if Safari 3 offers a marked improvement in performance. What can I do to improve my web browsing experience? (Session restore is a must. Undo closed tabs is nice.) As a tag-on, I would love to know if there's anyway to restore sessions in BBEdit. Though my MBP is fairly stable, it does freeze sometimes. Worse, it has a bizarre habit of restarting itself sometimes when the lid is closed. I typically have 20-30 BBEdit documents open at once, including some that have not been saved.

How do I open certain sites in IETab?

Rabulah — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 07:36:27 -0800

I use Firefox. I want to be able to open certain sites in IETab/Internet Explorer automatically. I can do this quite easily if they are bookmarked, but I want to be able to do it every time I come across a link to the site. Example 1] I'm browsing the web, and I come across a link to foo.com. Normally, when I click the link to foo.com, it will open in a normal Firefox tab. I want to be able to just click the link to foo.com, and have it open in IETab/Internet Explorer automatically, without having to right click and choose "Open in IETab", or copy the URL from the address bar and paste it into Internet Explorer.

Example 2] I do a Foo.com search from the Firefox search bar. I want the search tab to open in IETab/Internet Explorer automatically.

I have been using IE View Lite, which will load the site in IE after half a second, but Firefox still starts to load foo.com before IE View Lite takes over, which I don't want. I want Firefox to never load foo.com AT ALL.

How can I get this functionality? Example 2 is the more pressing problem, if that makes any difference.

Blocking Porn with OS X and FireFox

davidstandaford — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 13:07:47 -0800

Is there a free program (os x) or firefox extension to do porn filtering/blocking online? I'm looking for something that could run on a macbook or through firefox with an online porn blocker. (Not looking for anything that uses a whitelist.)

It would also need some sort of password over-ride so that the computer could still access acceptable websites. I checked out DansGuardian but it's way more complex for what I need. K9 WebProtection sounds great, but it's windows only.

Whatever solution must work with firefox. Thanks!

Why are some major websites suddenly not working on my computer?

jordanian2 — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 10:37:20 -0800

Why are some major websites suddenly not working on my computer? My Internet works perfectly except for a few major websites like bankofamerica.com and unlv.edu. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer can't connect to them. I've always been able to connect to them until about four days ago.

I have ZoneAlarm for my firewall, but I haven't made any changes to it, nor have I installed any new software or hardware or anything.

How can I make these websites work again? I really appreciate your help!

How does one commission a Firefox Extension/ Greasemonkey script?

Smarson — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 10:04:11 -0800

How does one go about hiring someone to create a specific Greasemonkey script or Firefox extension for them? As per a previous post, I'm in the market for a web browser with gray-scaling abilities (a la ghostzilla). Ghostfox wasn't the answer and searching through numerous Greasemonkey scripts and Firefox extensions yielded nada. So how does one go about commissioning a script or extension from the developer community? Anyone have experience contracting or being contracted to work on a such a project? What kind of fee is associated with this kind of labor? Does it matter that I would want this script/extension to be available to everyone?