Why is Firefox suddenly extremely slow or altogether unresponsive in a way that seems to be affecting the speed of other programs on my Macbook as well?
Sometime between 7 and 8 pm EST on 7/7/11, Firefox went from speedy to an absolute standstill. After trying to force-quit, the entire Mac froze. I turned it off and it would not reboot (not clear the gray apple screen with the clockwise light pattern). Left it shut-down for the entire night and it started up again properly this morning, but there are still problems with Firefox. When I run it, it lags very slowly for a maybe a minute, then quits responding. I tried twice to clear caches and this only prompted more non-response.
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I have a very similar problem except it's not freezing my Mac. Safari is running at lightening speed - Firefox is running as though I had gone back in time to a 28 baud modem!! Another post indicated that Mozilla had destroyed a wonderful product. If they don't get this fixed asap, I'm afraid the other individual is correct. I'm running Firefox 5.0 and it is supposedly up to date. Guess I'm going to have to revert back to Safari. Won't be using Firefox again unless/until Mozilla fixes this!
I've finally HAD IT with Firefox. I've been an avid supporter of Firefox since it came out. But now the developers trying to keep busy are just changing the program for the sake of changing it and totally screwing it up. 5.0 is f*cking useless. I installed it on all the computers on our network only to have to un-install it and upload Chrome.
Firefox has lost the race to Chrome. Firefox 5.0 is unusable. Hell, even IE works better than 5.0 and that's just plain wrong.
So Mozilla. Hope you get your shit together sometime and fix this monster. It's gotten out of hand and the programmers currently working on 5.0 should all be shot in the head.
Dear Mozilla,
I have been an avid Firefox user since day one.... it has out paced and out ran every browser out there. Now? As per the users above FIREFOX is so slow and struggling to function that i cant even use it.
I need to be able to have a stable platform and it bogs down in my Mac SO bad it takes my system down to a crawl.... its totally unacceptable.
Whatever you Changed with 5.0 its the worst i have ever seen from you guys.. and i am terribly disappointed.
PLEASE FIX IT... I am resorting to using IE and Chrome and thats just BULL****...
ok.. rant over
I was having the same problem for about 6 months and have been trying to find the solution to this annoying lag problem.
I found a post that suggested that it was a Java problem so I Googled Java and my OS which is 10.4.11 and installed the version provided by Apple and VOILA, it is running smooth and fast again.
I hope it does the trick for you too. Try it!
Sadly, Mozilla seems more interested in changing things just to change them, these days, than to have what they ONCE had, which was, as you guys state, the fastest, most stable, reliable browser around.
Now, they are releasing updates just to mix things up and drive up the version numbers without fixing things - and they're making things much worse.
If they don't become what they once were, I think Mozilla has lost most of its former loyal users. I know I am a once-loyal user who is about ready to become a Chrome user - as long as these reckless updates keep coming out.
Modified by RonQ
I had a similar problem. Every step I would make would cause a lag (type a status, open a new tab, move to a new tab, scroll, etc.)
Go to Tools -> Add-ons -> PlugIns -> check to see if your plugins are up to date -> update anything that needs to be
Also make sure your software is up to date (Apple Menu -> Software Update)
Mine seemed to be Java and Flash that were out of date and causing me to lag. After doing both of the above and restarting the computer, I'm running smoothly (so far)