Argle bargle gaahgh!
For several weeks, maybe even over a month now, Firefox has been problematic. Sometimes it did not load Google or YouTube, although all other websites worked OK. Sometimes it did not open links or search links, sometimes it did. I had to try to download reader submissions several times before the link finally worked and did not just open a new empty tab. I thought the issue would be resolved with the new version, but it only worsened. Both YouTube and Google worked only sporadically.
I thought initially that the issue might be something else, but nope, it was Firefox. First I tried the usual – clear the cookies, cache, etc. It did not help. Then I tried a clean installation and the problems persisted. I have tried other browsers and those were OK.
So I have to transfer everything to Chrome now, which I hate. It makes my eyes hurt for some reason, the proportions and colors are just not what I am used to seeing.
Screams
So google has been up to no good lately. They managed to get almost all the major browsers to switch to their “Chromium” engine (or whatever the term is), so that everything up to and including Microsoft’s new native browser Edge is wrapped around a Chrome core. Now they’re making it so adblocking extensions don’t work with *any* of those browsers, leaving Firefox as the only marginally competitive browser able to block ads.
Given that background, and that the websites you mention having trouble are both google sites, it makes it feel pretty damn likely google is poison-pilling firefox, making it so their sites don’t play well with it, so they can seal the deal on their monopoly. (I could be getting any and all of this wrong, grains of salt etc.)
Anyway, we live in a cyberpunk dystopia. Next stop, ads that make your head explode like in Max Headroom.
@ GAS
Blipverts!
@ Charly
I am sorry, that is deeeply frustrating.
I’ve been running firefox with noscript and privacy badger add-ons, and while it takes a bit of tinkering to get any given web page to work, I’ve been pretty happy with it, and it generally saves me more ads than I realize are there. It’s always a shock when I visit some site on a work computer that doesn’t have those extensions, and I get to see literal pages of ads for fake articles about some new miracle remedy, putting waterbottles on tires, or whatever the bullshit of the week is.
hope you get something figured out that works for you, this dystopia is boring and it sucks.
My firefox has uBlock Origin and I haven’t noticed a problem like Charlie’s with those google sites, though youtube is generally kinda slow. I have an email address on Outlook and another on Gmail, and of the two Outlook runs worse these days.
apologies on the -ie, my head is bzzzzzzznrk right now. must be the blipverts.
Using Firefox with NoScript and Cookie AutoDelete + running my own DNS which blocks all major ad networks and facebook.
No issues with either google or youtube, although I tend to use DDG for search.
Remember when everyone seemed to think google was going to do good things for the internet? It’s part of what I think of as “the great enshitment” -- how everything was turned to crap.
Perhaps its just me getting older but, seriously, the internet seems to just suck, now.
@GAS, There are people for whom Firefox still works just fine, so I do not think the case for it being deliberately done by google is particularly strong. It might be just some quirk of my particular combination of software.
I do not particularly mind ads,so I am not using adblock. I am occasionally using VPN on, but if anything, having the VPN made the problem less bad, not more. I have tried to completely uninstall Firefox and run it with a clean profile, yet the problem persists. I have given up on trying to find the cause. I will try Firefox again in a month or so, for now I have to uninstall it completely because it ceased to work.
At least Firefox fixed that huge memory leak they had about 6 months ago. My computer always has the performance meter running, and I could watch the memory use climb and climb and climb, to over a gig if I let it. So I just could not leave it up.
Now, I do see what you are talking about, where the URL bar says I’m at a location, but the screen is empty. And reloading just does not work. It got better since their last load, but it still occasionally happens. What I found that worked, though, was to copy the URL, open a new tab, paste that URL into the new tab, and then hit return. You could try that if inclined.
Right now I’m pissed at Thunderbird. Their last load is eating 30% of my processor while sitting there doing nothing. So I have to tear it down when I’m not using it. I’m hoping they are getting complaints and will produce a new load soon that fixes it.
@ahcuah that “copy-paste” method with URL did sometimes help, but oftentimes it did not. Another annoying thing that happened in Firefox was that YouTube has shown me some error message about not being connected to the internet, whilst every single other website worked just fine and I have not been losing any packets.
I noticed that memory leak too. I did not notice any problems with Thunderbird.
I am having the URL up and a blank page from time to time, usually I close the tab, open another try again and get the page. Not always, although we’ve been having problems with our provider so I’m never sure if it’s a Firefox problem or a Virgin one. And no, checking the internet access doeesn’t alwaays tell me the difference because the problem was access stopping sometimes for as short as a second so you only realised if a down or upload was interrupted or you were actually watching the access. Theoretically Virgin have fixed the problem as of a week ago, but as they’ve said that before I’m not holding my breath. Funnily enough we also have several new neighbours, who have all had Virgin vans outside shortly after moving in, so I’m guessing they needed to upgrade the local capacity, but as I don’t know what I’m writng about that could well be balony ;-)