Stopping Firefox-loaded pages from vanishing.

September 7, 2009 9:13 AM

Firefox pages vanishing after short appearance -- problem, with the Firefox on my laptop, the page appears for about two seconds and then disappears. This even happens with the sciencefriday.com site and so it's not a problem with the site. Any ideas on how to fix this? (I'm sure a default setting is wrong, etc., but I don't know which one.) Thanks! Yours, Kalepa
posted by Kalepa to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

I'm getting this too (FF 3.5.2 on WinXP SP2), was just about to google it, strangely so will be reading the replies with interest.
posted by ceri richard at 9:22 AM on September 7, 2009

Your FF version and OS would be really helpful in answering this question.
posted by double block and bleed at 10:20 AM on September 7, 2009

Response by poster: My Firefox version is 3.0.6 (this is the one with the quickly vanishing pages).

Again, any help would be greatly appreciated!

Yours,

Kalepa
posted by Kalepa at 11:12 AM on September 7, 2009

Hm, me three (also, pages frequently go blank when I switch between tabs). Firefox 3.0.13, Vista, running NoScript.
posted by thomas j wise at 11:57 AM on September 7, 2009

Do you have Greasemonkey running? I had something like this happen with a GM script to remove ads from Hotspot Shield.
posted by signal at 12:43 PM on September 7, 2009

I'm on Firefox 3.0.6 with vimperator on Debian, and I don't understand what's going on. Do you mean the page blanks itself after a few seconds, but the tab remains open? The tab closes? Firefox itself closes? Does it pop up one of those little "firefox closed unexpectedly---may I send a crash report?" dialogues?

You say "This even happens with the sciencefriday.com site and so it's not a problem with the site." Why do you know that sciencefriday is not causing this behavior? Or do you mean that it's not specific to metafilter?

It might be wayward Javascript (on preview, what signal said) or plugin/addon. Sciencefriday uses Flash and Javascript.
posted by d. z. wang at 1:22 PM on September 7, 2009

Response by poster: You're right about Java being the problem -- when I disable Java Script, the vanishing stops and the page remains.

What are the implications of disabling Java Script?

Also, when I click on the Firefox tabs and then return to sciencefriday.com, again the page is blank, but refreshing it brings it back.

Before I disabled Java Script, the tab remained open and I continued to get the sciencefriday.com heading at the top of the page after the page blanked out below after about 2 seconds.

Thanks for any insights!

Yours,

Kalepa
posted by Kalepa at 3:09 PM on September 7, 2009

Install the IE View add-on. Use it to open those pages. I've experienced this as well, that's my workaround, grudgingly.
posted by hungrysquirrels at 3:19 PM on September 7, 2009

If you're running Windows that is.

The implications of disabling JavaScript is web 2.0...it's required for Ajax which allows the websites to implement some nifty features. That's why people at Google with Chrome and Firefox and so forth are putting so much work into optimizing the JavaScript code.

Try updating to Firefox 3.5.
posted by hungrysquirrels at 3:27 PM on September 7, 2009

Response by poster: I updated to 3.5.2 just now but the page still vanishes if I don't disable Java Script.

Thanks for the suggestion, though.
posted by Kalepa at 4:16 PM on September 7, 2009

What addons are you running? Does this still happen in Safe Mode? If not, disable all the add ons and selectively reenable them, one by one, until you figure out which one is the culprit.
posted by signal at 8:53 PM on September 7, 2009