Why Are Browser Crashes/Hangs More Frequent Now?

[Jason Dunn]

<p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com//dht/auto/1250111853.usr1.png" style="border: 0;" /></p><p>You'd think that with all the browser development out there, browser stability problems would be a thing of the past - but perhaps any advances in stability are being offset by the increasingly broad range of technologies that browsers are required to support. The above is a screen shot from Google Chrome - about 90% of the time, when I go to a Facebook status update page, typically to respond to a comment someone else made about my status update, Google Chrome will hang. My CPU usage spikes and that browser tab becomes non-responsive. Thankfully, I can keep using other tabs and eventually Chrome will either process my request to kill that tab, or finally acknowledge that there's a problem with the content in that tab and show me the above messag. I&nbsp;wrote about my problems with <a href="http://www.jasondunn.com/flash-banners-browser-crash-1886" target="_blank">certain Flash banners crashing my browser over on my personal blog</a>, so me having with browsers isn't a new issue. Is anyone else out there using Google Chrome and seeing the same sort of problem with Facebook status pages? The good news here is that <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=657879dff55fdcc1&amp;hl=en" target="_blank">Google is apparently aware of the problem</a>...but who knows how long it will take to get fixed.</p>

[Don Tolson]

I've noticed the same thing on the ThoughtsMedia pages (and the local newspaper pages) on Firefox 3.5. Severe slowdowns and hangs -- all seemingly related to flash banners, etc. It's getting to the point where I want to go back to the simple text days...sheesh.

I'm not sure it's entirely the browsers' fault. Maybe the banners people are trying to cram too much animation, etc. into them in order to be flashy and it's taking too much time to download enough info to render them....

[mrozema]

I've experienced the same things happening with Windows 7 and IE8. There will be several cases a day of web pages that stop responding and need to be closed. It can be very frustrating because half the time I didn't know anything was wrong... :confused:

[Macguy59]

I quit using Chrome because of the constant crashes due to Flash

[asims]

Firefox 3.0.12 has been crashing on me quite often lately as well. I've been attributing it to Facebook because that's the only "new" website I've been going to regularly. FF hasn't crashed any other time than when I'm on FB.

[EscapePod]

My IE8 has been doing that (several PCs) a lot, and on many different sites. Sometimes, when starting the browser, it seems to hang. If I look down in the lower left corner, at the status line, I will see the IP address (maybe of the site I'm trying to go to) rather than a domain name. At that point, the only thing to do is close the browser, wait a moment, and open it again. Usually, the domain name shows up (eg.: "loading thoughtsmedia.com..."), and I know I'm good to go. Maybe its a DNS issue -- maybe the DNS servers around the world are getting too hammered and can't handle the traffic (especially to all the social sites <img src="http://forums.thoughtsmedia.com/images/smilies/smile.gif" border="0" alt="" title="Smile" class="inlineimg" /> )

[jeffd]

I rarly crashed in firefox until 3.5. Now not only do I get more crashes, but the news service I use, easynews.com, will actually hang firefox unless you mess with the default security settings, or use the secure web pages. Theres a few new bugs in this sucker. Saddly they havnt been worked out and its been out for a while now.

[Jason Dunn]

Wow...glad (sad?) to hear I'm not alone. :eek:

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

I must be the odd one out then. In fact the browsers I'm using are getting more and more stable. Odd!

[jeffd]

james, most of my crashes would be flash related...but the easynews hang is purly firefox's 3.5.

[Tony Rylow]

I experience this CPU spiking frequently on my work laptop using Chrome. And just to spite me, as I was attempting to log in to post this reply, Firefox decided to crash on me. Not that I think this site caused it, more likely related to the 4 windows and about 20 tabs I had open.

[Michael Knutson]

Nothing seems immune. Safari (Mac) has been really stable in the past, but since the v4.0 release, it crashes with great regularity (I'm getting tired of sending daily crash reports to Apple). I have seen v4.01, V4.02 and V4.03 released in rapid succession, so the problem hopefully will be resolved soon (allowing the next problem or problems to appear!). Haven't seen much on the Mac with Firefox 3.5 or 3.5.1.