
Firefox 3.6.4 with Crash Protection Now Available - chanux
http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2010/06/22/firefox-3-6-4-with-crash-protection-now-available/
======
mbrubeck
Note that out-of-process plugins are not available for Mac OS X yet. (That's
coming in a future release.) And Firefox does not yet have full process
separation like Chrome, but that is coming via the
<https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis> project (which will appear this year
in Fennec 2.0, and then in the next release of Firefox after version 4.0).

~~~
adamdecaf
There are two reasons why I use chromium (not Chrome) over Firefox.

    
    
         Chromium has true process separation.
         Chromium is faster for boot/page loads/JavaScript.
    

Splitting up plugins like this is chipping away at the first reason why I
don't use Firefox. I would really like to use Fx, but chromium is just
"better" for what I want in a browser.

Come on Firefox, win me back!

~~~
chanux
I'm not well aware about chrome process separation. So please educate me.

I thought Chrome gives a separate process per each tab. So for example if
flash crashes in a given page the whole page should crash. But in Firefox way
this shouldn't happen. Am I wrong?

I only started to use chrome recently so I don't have much experience with it
either.

~~~
whopa
Chrome has a process per tab _and_ runs entirely separate processes for each
plugin. So if flash crashes, the page does not crash. There is only one flash
process serving the whole browser though, so if flash crashes, flash content
on all open tabs stops working. The new Firefox plugin implementation works
the same way.

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sreque
If this feature works well, I think it will eliminate possibly the biggest
advantage of Chrome over Firefox. I already prefer Firefox over Chrome for
usability reasons, and now soon I should be able to enjoy improved stability
on Linux when Flash crashes.

~~~
logic
Sadly, while I appreciate the multi-process model of Chrome as a geek, it had
almost nothing to do with why I switched: I'm a 64-bit Linux user. Firefox is,
from a performance standpoint, almost unusable for me.

(On 32-bit Windows XP at work, Firefox is great, but there's value to me in a
similar browsing configuration across machines.)

~~~
technomancy
Try the latest nightlies. They bring Mozilla back to within an imperceptible
speed difference vs Chromium on my 64-bit Linux machine:
<http://nightly.mozilla.org/>

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catch23
This is the number 1 reason I use chrome. Flash crashes at least 10 times a
day for me.

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gojomo
How polite of them to be balanced by saying "Firefox offers crash protection
for Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime and Microsoft Silverlight".

I wonder, though, if their crash stats for Windows and Linux also match Jobs'
claim for MacOS, that Flash is the biggest offender. (The assessment should be
controlled for frequency-of-use, of course.)

~~~
sayrer
Our public crash stats lend some support to Jobs' claim. Flash is by far the
biggest cause of crashes on OS X Firefox.

It is the largest problem on Windows as well, but the proportions there are
more even because a lot of Windows installations crash due to viruses,
trojans, toolbars, av programs, and other crapware.

~~~
there
but without having stats on how many "successful" flash renderings all those
users' browsers complete, the stats would be pretty skewed towards flash just
due to its prevalance over quicktime and silverlight. much wider use of flash
would lead to more reported crashes even if quicktime crashed more commonly.

~~~
sayrer
Not skewed when compared to crashes inside Firefox itself, though. Last I
checked, over 50% of OS X Firefox crashes had Flash involved.

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jafl5272
This seems like a pretty big change for a patch release?

~~~
mbrubeck
Yes, this was an unusual release, and an experiment in shipping new features
quicker than our major release cycle normally allows. Out-of-process-plugins
was a good candidate for an interim release, because it is a stability
enhancement and is transparent to the user (no UI changes).

~~~
boredguy8
Take that upvote as a "it seems to be working well in this situation" vote.

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vicaya
+1 firefox. I've been resisting Chrome because they don't care about script
blocking API.

No chrome until noscript!

