Sunday, February 14, 2010

Firefox Crashing When Searching And Playing Flash

I've been having this problem for quite sometime now with various versions of Firefox (3.5.7 here as of this writing).

Problem description: When there's something playing, or has already played with flash content (like youtube videos), and then I attempt to search for text in a page and that text is NOT found, the browser crashes (segfault).

I found 2 solutions to this, one of them seems more of a workaround rather than a solution, and the real problem seems to be coming from Adobe's Flash plugin for Linux (they just can never get it right...).

Solutions:
  1. Turn off search sound: open a tab and in the address type: about:config
    look for sound and then disable: accessibility.typeaheadfind.enablesound by double clicking it, then restart your browser.
  2. Use nspluginwrapper along with Adobe's libflash package. Whether the search sound is enabled or disabled, this should work just fine.

8 comments:

Bloggylife said...

so who's fault is that. Adobe or Linux ppl got the plug-in development messed up.

ohhh btw, nothing wrong on windows :P

MBH said...

Ever since Flash was developed by Macromedia (before Adobe bought them), and it's been crappy, which prompted people to reverse-engineer the plugin and produce an open source one, but development stopped quickly for the open source and once again we were stuck with the proprietary broken plugin for Linux.

Windows is their main target, and later expanded to Mac. Linux is the black sheep :(

Bloggylife said...

Don't you have a Chrome version for Linux? Why are you using Firefox aslan? I use it to open another session of the same site with different credentials than the one I have with Chrome, email sites. Or playing online games.

So if you are force not to use Linux, would you rather Microsoft or MacOS :P

MBH said...

I have Chrome. I use it to login with my GMail & Facebook accounts ONLY. Everything else is opened in Firefox (including pictures & youtube videos).

Chrome's Javascript engine is quite fast, so I use it for Google's GMail & Wave since it means less CPU usage ;)

I use Firefox for general content since it contains useful addons like AdBlock Plus & Perspectives.

Even though Mac OSX is based on Unix, it's very limiting and restrictive to one can do, so I'll have to go with MS Windows, unfortunately. (but slap Cygwin on it for sure!)

vinnie said...

Interesting that Steve Job when asked about support for flash on iPhone and iPad said that flash is too buggy and that people are moving to HTML5.0
I hope thats the case, I didn't like flash since it was introduced mainly for the closed source
And that particular problem might not be on windows but there r other flash bugs in windows evident even on youtube when u want to navigate a video for example

MBH said...

Vinnie, HTML5 & Video are gonna take some time to reach browsers, let alone phones.

Currently, there's no standard on which codec to use for HTML and what kind of container to put the encoded multimedia into either... yet another format war :/

As for iPhone/iPad, Apple is blaming Adobe for Apple's laziness to do thorough testing and help out.

I have an Android phone and flash plays quite well in both the browser & youtube. I can also view youtube through a specific application written for it, and you do notice the better quality in videos with this custom app.

Steve Jobs is a moron; he should let the deciding to the customers rather than himself. Provide an application to view flash content and if it's buggy, then people won't use it! End of problem.

vinnie said...

Okay, Zain Ego is sucking bad today

So from the tone and previous entries I can tell u hate apple and can't help but wonder how u and 3baid could get along ;)

So, the android has flash support? I thought all smartphones don't have a flash support. is it a new app or it always had flash support?

Your talking about the HTC hero huh?

MBH said...

Vinnie,
I hate Apple's approach to making and enforcing software, though it comes up with pretty nifty hardware & software most of the time.

Unlike many others, 3baid doesn't try to shove something down your throat. He uses what *he* sees fit from each OS.

All Android phones have had flash support from the start. I have an HTC Hero now & going for Nexus One.