By 
Mozilla was one of the first companies to offer a user-friendly, customizable browser with extensions and add-ons. It was able to rival Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in popularity. Lately, the browser has been plagued by crashes due to the beloved add-ons. In order to make their browser more user-friendly again, Mozilla has finally added Crash Protection with the recent release of Firefox 3.6.4. It protects against crashes from Adobe Flash, Apple QuickTime, and Microsoft SilverLight plugins for the Linux and Windows versions of Firefox. However, crash Protection will not be implemented for the Mac OS X version until Firefox 4, which does not have its first release candidate scheduled until October.
Mozilla is hoping to stop the trend that “as many as one in three browser crashes are currently caused by problems with various third-party plugins.” In order to do this, Firefox now has plugin isolation, meaning that the video playback plugins are sandboxed away from the browser. This is accomplished by running the plugins as a separate process. Therefore, any crashes caused by the plugins will not force the browser to crash. Instead, a gray box will appear indicating that a plugin has crashed. This way you only have to refresh the tab as opposed to restarting the whole browser.
This is great for Linux users. If my experience has been like others’, I often had to “xkill” Firefox if it crashed while loading a Flash intensive webpage or video. The only redeeming quality was that the browser would remember the last opened tabs, so that when it was restarted, I would not lose all the tabs I had opened. It would have been nice if Crash Protection included the same type of sandboxing for tabs as well, similar to how Google Chrome handles tabs. Then, if a page crashes, only the tab would crash and need to be closed as opposed to the entire browser needing to be.
It is disappointing that it took Mozilla so long to include features that have been in Safari and Chrome for so long. Both browsers have had crash protection for a while, and Chrome has had tab isolation since its advent. Mozilla is just about the last holdout to include such a feature. Currently, there is no schedule for other plugins to be included in Crash Protection. The feature also does help ensure that users are running the latest versions of the popular video plugins by forcing users to update to the most recent versions. Mozilla, in essence, is helping users to decrease the likelihood of being the victim of a malicious attack or crash.
Links: Mozilla’s Release Notes
3.6.4 has a major issue with flash content, where the the browser freezes.
It seems the problem stems from the Shockwave Flash plugin. As long as that plugin is disabled, Firefox will no longer hang. However, this doesn’t allow any flash content to be viewed. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled both Firefox and Shockwave Flash but this did not solve the problem.
awfull always stops
Agreed. This is bad for their rep. I have always used FF but find it hard to use this if they don’t fix it fast.
This has caused such a problem. My flash player is constantly crashing now. I never had this problem before I updated Firefox to 3.6.4.
Same here Savannah. I’ve never had trouble with my flash player until now and it is getting very aggravating!
I installed FF 3.6.4 a few days ago and flash player has gone haywire, freezing, crashing, and not loading. Firefox has a major problem, and they had better resolve it pronto.
Do you have the latest version of Flash? It should have asked you to upgrade. But 10.1 is available.
P.S. I’m switching over entirely to Chrome soon!
It’s terrible. Someone suggested updating my flash, which I did and now it crashes and/or freezes all the time. Even hitting that refresh does nothing, goes right back to it!
if this doesn’t get fixed soon, i will stop using firefox
I agree with most of these posts, I updated my flash but it didn’t help, still crashes constantly. Guess I will stop using Firefox,never had these problems before I started using Firefox.
same problem :(
I got a link with the update that said upload flash now- my problem is that since updating to 3.6.4 Firefox won’t open any websites at all! I’ve done everything they suggest (that I can understand) and still no browser capabilities. Asked the question on the forum- no replies- they give you about 2 hours a day to catch a “live chat”- have used for years and love Firefox features but this is becoming a deal breaker
Ok, this article is implying that the 3.6.4 version is to give us crash protection. At the moment it is almost a month later, and I’m using fucking 3.6.8 and having this unbearable issue. What if I’m typing something into a text field that is fairly long and that I’ve put plenty of thought into, then having to restart Firefox?! Usually I get a message at the top of the page that says Adobe Flash has crashed and to press the reload page button to fix it. Sometimes it shuts down the browser without warning (it still tells me that it’s due to the Flash plug-in, not because of other issues). WTFIUWTS?!
It’s October and this problem still hasn’t been resolved. I’m the type of person to stick with what I like, even if it’s a pain in the ass, and that’s what I’ve done with Mozilla. I’ve eschewed other browsers, but this flash issue is going to be what sends me running to find a new browser. This is ridiculous.