Firefox is now?five, however if, like many, you've found yourself having to leave your favourite?browser?because of constant crashing there are plenty of ways to get your Firefox groove back and save yourself from Mozilla hell.

Here are three steps to insuring you can surf the Web with the friendly fox once again:

Disable all your apps

With so many Plug-ins available for the browser, one of the reasons you could be experiencing crashes is that one of them has gone rogue. If this is the case, the best way to find out is disable all your apps and then slowly turn them back on to see which one is causing the issue.

Safe Mode

Firefox comes with a Safe Mode for exactly this reason - trying to fix bugs. buried within the inner workings of Firefox is a handy box that when accessed will allow you to reset your browser to its "factory" settings.

On the Mac you can access this via the Terminal application in Utilities (/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -safe-mode) while on the PC you'll find it by accessing the Run command within the Start Bar ("C:Program FilesMozilla Firefoxfirefox.exe" -safe-mode)

Once you've run the application you get to disable all the add-ons in one swoop, reset toolbars and controls, reset bookmarks back to the Firefox defaults, reset all user preferences to Firefox defaults and even restore the default search engine, giving you a fresh start.

Starting from scratch

If none of the above has worked, you've got to take drastic action and make your computer believe that you've never seen or heard of this Firefox browser program. First off you've got to delete it completely.

Unfortunately just deleting or uninstalling the browser from your Mac or PC won't solve your problems, as the browser buries itself into your computers profile and user settings. It's like pulling out a weed, you've got to get right down to the roots to clear out the infection.

Mac

For Mac users drag the Firefox app into the Trash and then remove the Library/Application Support/Firefox folder. This will remove Firefox completely, your bookmarks, browser settings, plug-in details the lot.?

PC

For the PC it's just as simple. First remove the program via the "Add or Remove Programs" tool then delete the Firefox Installation directory located at C:Program filesMozilla Firefox

Reinstall

Now you've removed all the traces of the browser on your computer you simply visit the getfirefox browser website, download the right version for you and reinstall.

If you've done the above, your browser will reinstall and you'll be able to use Firefox like you did before you became a constant crash victim - hopefully for another 5 years.

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Tags: Software PC software Mac software Firefox Browsers Mozilla Quick Guide

Firefox keeps crashing? Here's how to fix it originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:28:53 +0000

Mozilla's internet browser Firefox celebrates its 5th birthday today. "Five years ago today, Mozilla launched Firefox 1.0 with the belief that, as the most significant social and technological development of our time, the Internet is a public resource that must remain open and accessible to all. Within the first four days of launch, more than 1 million people had downloaded a brand new browsing experience", the open source organisation says in a blog post.

"In just five years, that number has swelled to over 330 million users worldwide; almost a quarter of Internet users worldwide choose Firefox. Today, Firefox ships in more than 70 languages and offers users more than 7000 add-ons to help customize their browsing experience".

When Firefox launched Microsoft's Internet Explorer alone controlled a whopping 99% of the browser market. Fast forward 5 years and Firefox enjoys a 23% browser market share, although with increasing competition from the likes of Opera, Apple and Google. Hit play now to see the (slightly indulgent) celebratory video above.

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Tags: Software Online Browsers Firefox Mozilla Statistics Video

VIDEO: Firefox celebrates 5th birthday originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:46:16 +0000

Mozilla has announced an interesting project called Raindrop, which appears massively complicated on the surface but is actually quite a simple idea when you strip it free of buzzwords.

Mozilla (like Google, with its Wave platform) says that "email isn't fun any more". Instead, conversations are taking place all across the Web - in IM, Twitter, blog comment threads, Facebook, and other locations. Raindrop wants to aggregate all that in one place, and sort it so that the useful stuff comes straight to you.

Unimportant messages, like mailing lists, will be relegated to the background whereas the email from your mother telling you she's booked a family holiday to Barbados or the IM conversation from your girlfriend telling you that she's pregnant pops up front and central.

At the moment the project is at version 0.1, so it's only open to developers. You won't be able to download a client just yet, and the team's first task is to create an installer for the application. Still, it sounds like an interesting idea, and we'll keep an eye on it and we'll let you know when it's available to try.

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Tags: Software Online Websites Mozilla Email IM Twitter Video

Mozilla announces Raindrop communcations project originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:47:52 +0100

Mozilla has issued a new beta version of its Firefox browser - version 3.6 is now available to download in RC1 edition. Originally it was due for a mid-September release, but it slipped a little for reasons unknown.

The update includes version 1.9.2 of the Gecko engine - which Firefox uses to render web pages. That means that it should be a little speedier than before. Previous versions of the software have used version 1.9.1 and Mozilla says that it's possible that the browser will stop supporting 1.9.1 entirely with the release of Firefox 3.6.

Tab previews have appeared too - if you use ctrl-tab to switch between tabs (like you might use alt-tab to switch applications) then you'll get a preview window showing you which tabs you have open. Opera has this feature, but Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer don't at the time of writing. There's also the option to get thumbnail previews on the taskbar for Windows 7 users.

The build is available to download right now. You can grab it from the Mozilla Foundation's FTP.

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Tags: Software Software updates Browsers Firefox Mozilla

Firefox 3.6 reaches beta originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:54:02 +0100