Firefox 3 Bounds Forward

On 06-24-2008 5:49 PM, Ken W wrote:
>
> With Firefox 3.0 (Gecko/2008061004) my Menu Bar has stared appearing
> with duplicate entries and neither disabling the Extensions (Add-ons)
> nor starting Firefox in the Safe Mode [start FF with the Option key
> held down] has not resolved the problem.

I have not had that problem, OS X 10.4.11 on a G4.

I couldn't find any entries in bugzilla, perhaps you should report the
bug? <lecture>Only by describing the problem in the proper place will it
be fixed, and the huge advantage of an OS title like FF, over the (also
venerable) Safari, is the community that surrounds it. Community
includes the end-user as well as the programmers and marketers ... and
the project's continued success depends upon participation of ALL
community members.</lecture> (lecture not aimed at Ken specifically!)

kazar

am 25.06.2008 11:05 Uhr schrieb tidbits-talktidbits.com unter
tidbits-talktidbits.com:

> With Firefox 3.0 (Gecko/2008061004) my Menu Bar has stared appearing
> with duplicate entries and neither disabling the Extensions (Add-ons)
> nor starting Firefox in the Safe Mode [start FF with the Option key
> held down] has not resolved the problem.

I, too, grabbed the FireFox 3.0 release (Gecko/2008061004 Firefox/3.0) and
installed it on my PowerMac G4 MDD 1.25 GHz and on three PowerBooks G4
Aluminum 1.5 and 1.67 GHz. So far no problems with double entries or such
have arisen. In fact FireFox 3.0 is noticeable faster than its predecessor.

However, I have a plain installation with no extras. The "FastVideoDownload"
I had for FireFox 2.x was disabled by FireFox 3.0 when I started it for the
first time.

Udo

Thought FF3 would be a valuable addition, since I've used it with Windows for several years. Didn't try any of the early betas because I'm not interested in debugging. Downloaded, and installed to my Windows work computer just fine last Saturday - (their site was so busy I ended up using FileHippo.com). So, thought I'd try it on my Macbook Pro (Leopard 10.5.3).. BIG MISTAKE! Almost nothing worked - could only get it to open and run under an administrative account! Tried changing rights and such - no joy! Changed back to FireFox previously run version 2.0.1.4 and had no further problems. I'll just wait for FF v.3.0.1.x revision before I try it again.

On 27-Jun-2008, at 06:44, gvoyager wrote:
> So, thought I'd try it on my Macbook Pro (Leopard 10.5.3).. BIG
> MISTAKE! Almost nothing worked - could only get it to open and run
> under an administrative account! Tried changing rights and such - no
> joy! Changed back to FireFox previously run version 2.0.1.4 and had
> no further problems. I'll just wait for FF v.3.0.1.x revision before
> I try it again.


Something is wrong with your machine then. FF3 works perfectly well
on a non-admin account on many different Macs.

I'm having the same problem even with Firefox 3.0.1 in non-admin accounts on a G4 running 10.4.11. It crashes one second after the window is drawn.

Creating new accounts does not help, even when the account is allowed to run nothing beside Firefox 3.1.

Firefox 2.0.16 works perfectly well in those non-admin accounts, as does Firefox 3.0.1.

Anyone found a solution?

When Firefox 3 was released as final, I gave it a go since I have been fairly happy with FF 2. What a mess! There were so many problems, that I immediately went back to FF 2. One of the problems I noticed was that multiple menu items started to appear; almost as though a second or third menu bar was being drawn. Click on the wrong menu item (a ghost?) and Firefox would crash.

Today, I thought I would try Firefox 3 again. Now it's at 3.1, so I figured it should be a smoother ride. It was a nicer install; not losing all my passwords, etc., as the first install did.

However, the blasted "Multi-Menu" is still there. In fact, as I look at it right now, it shows: Window, Help, Firefox, File, Edit, View, History, Bookmarks, Tools, Window, and Help ...in that order. Soon, there will be more menu items! They just keep getting added in until Firefox crashes. Whoops! Now a new "Tools" menu has been added, so now there are two of those also.

I've tried dumping everything I can think of, but nothing seems to affect this. At least now, when I have a crash, I can send the info to the Firefox team. I'll keep searching for a solution and will post here if I can find one.

On 2-Sep-2008, at 03:25, younkint wrote:
> However, the blasted "Multi-Menu" is still there. In fact, as I look
> at it right now, it shows: Window, Help, Firefox, File, Edit, View,
> History, Bookmarks, Tools, Window, and Help ...in that order. Soon,
> there will be more menu items! They just keep getting added in until
> Firefox crashes. Whoops! Now a new "Tools" menu has been added, so
> now there are two of those also.

It's something unique to your machine. I run FF3 (and have done since
beta days) without any of these issues, or really any issues at all.
No lost passwords, no multi-menus, hardly any crashes.

Try creating a new user on your machine and see if that user has the
same problems.

Okay, replying to myself here. I have found what causes the "Multi-Menus" in Firefox 3 on OS X 10.4.11. The problem isn't Firefox, but rather the application Grammarian. In particular, it's the "pencil" menu drawn in the menu bar by Grammarian.

I found this by hours of testing. In the end, it was 100% repeatable. I contacted David Long at Linguisoft, who confirmed that it is a known issue and that Linguisoft is working on a fix.

Anyone using Grammarian and Firefox 3 should contact David about this. He will respond with the proper workaround (which is easy, but more involved than I want to get into here).

I think the multi-menu seems ('least on my machine) a issue with
URLManagerPro.

I disabled the "shared menu's" feature and it went away.

Not sure if URLManagerPro will ever really be updated. It's been at
3.5 for years now I think.

At 2:44 AM -0700 09/03/08, younkint wrote:
>Okay, replying to myself here. I have found what causes the
>"Multi-Menus" in Firefox 3 on OS X 10.4.11. The problem isn't
>Firefox, but rather the application Grammarian. In particular, it's
>the "pencil" menu drawn in the menu bar by Grammarian.
>
>I found this by hours of testing. In the end, it was 100%
>repeatable. I contacted David Long at Linguisoft, who confirmed that
>it is a known issue and that Linguisoft is working on a fix.
>
>Anyone using Grammarian and Firefox 3 should contact David about
>this. He will respond with the proper workaround (which is easy, but
>more involved than I want to get into here).

I have been experiencing the multiple menus problem in Firefox 3.0.1
but am not running and have never run Grammarian so there must be
something else involved.

I would love to revert to Firefox 2 but every time I re-install and
launch 2, it immediately downloads, installs, and runs 3.0.1 instead
without allowing user control.

I am running Mac OS X 10.4.11 on a 15" PB/G4 1.67.

- Maretta

am 03.09.2008 11:03 Uhr schrieb tidbits-talktidbits.com unter
tidbits-talktidbits.com:

> However, the blasted "Multi-Menu" is still there. In fact, as I look at it
> right now, it shows: Window, Help, Firefox, File, Edit, View, History,
> Bookmarks, Tools, Window, and Help ...in that order. Soon, there will be more
> menu items! They just keep getting added in until Firefox crashes. Whoops!
> Now a new "Tools" menu has been added, so now there are two of those also.

I'm afraid it has to be a glitch in your system configuration.. Maybe a
stray add-on FireFox can't cope with (although FireFox 3 did disable add-ons
which weren't compatible...)

I installed the very first release on my (German) 10.4.11. I never had any
problems, all bookmarks, all password entries made the move into the version
3 FireFox.

Udo

Regarding the behavior of Firefox to not allow you to control the update (or install) process, perhaps you should check the Firefox preferences. My guess is that you actually have Firefox set to do exactly what it's doing. In Firefox preferences, under the Advanced tab, there is a "radio button" which, if checked, will (if updates are available) "Automatically download and install the update." If you have that option selected, Firefox may behave as you have experienced.

My menu issue is acknowledged and confirmed by the developer of Grammarian. However, there may well be other software developers who have used the same menu bar methods as used by Grammarian. It's possible other software may cause the "multiple menus" in Firefox 3. In my experience, the menu bar is not good to "mess with." If I recall correctly, when OS X was quite new, Apple tried to dissuade software developers from making changes there. Personally, I've had poor luck with software that made heavy use of the menu bar. As it now stands, I use only one non-Apple item in my menu bar - and that is Magical 1.1r1. (My Grammarian menu bar item is disabled waiting for a fix.)

It's actually pretty easy to determine whether your existing menu bar items might be causing an issue with Firefox 3. The chances are most, if not all the extra menu items you have are part of software that starts when you log in as a user. That is, you can simply use the Accounts preference pane (in System Preferences) and check what is automatically starting in Login Items tab. It's a simple matter to remove them one at a time to check.

On 5-Sep-2008, at 09:36, younkint wrote:
> It's actually pretty easy to determine whether your existing menu
> bar items might be causing an issue with Firefox 3. The chances are
> most, if not all the extra menu items you have are part of software
> that starts when you log in as a user. That is, you can simply use
> the Accounts preference pane (in System Preferences) and check what
> is automatically starting in Login Items tab. It's a simple matter
> to remove them one at a time to check.

I'd recommend that the first step to anyone who is having issues is to
create a new account, login to it, and see if the issue remains. Try
to setup your system (that is, the stuff Apple supplied) the same on
the new account, but don't install any third party stuff.

If it does, report it to the developer.

If it doesn't it's either something you did, or something some other
program did.

Really, this is a great 'first line' action for tracking down issues.