Firefox 3 Beta 5 -- Brownout

Hi David. The gray color just means that Firefox is taking awhile to respond, perhaps due to flash issues. If you can provide more details on what exactly triggers this issue, that could be helpful. Does the issue happen without Compiz running? Was Compiz enabled by default or did you manually enable it? Does functionality return after a short period of time? Have you tried installing Firefox 2 in Hardy and seeing if it performs better? I am not aware of any widespread issue and I have been following Firefox in Hardy since Alpha 5.

In regards to your Beta complaint, a more valid question may be to consider why a release that is going to be supported for 3-5 years would ship with a browser which is about to be deprecated (Firefox 2). Beta is an arbitrary term and in Firefox 3's case, it doesn't mean much, especially when you consider it has had thorough testing in Hardy Alpha's and the Beta for months, with patches being applied to address any issues and bring to stablity. Firefox 3 is a HUGE improvement over 2 in regards to memory usage, security, usability, functionality, and the list goes on. It isn't really valid to compare the "Beta" status of one version of software to the non-beta status of another. In fact, Beta 5's tagline from Mozilla was "ready for prime time!"

Straight from the Ubuntu release notes: "Ubuntu 8.04 includes Firefox 3.0 beta 5. This was felt to be the best option despite its pre-release status, in light of the extended support lifetime of Ubuntu 8.04 and the importance and complexity of Firefox security updates. Further release candidates and the final release may be considered for post-release updates. " Personally, not taking the time, strenuous testing, (and flak) to bring the latest developments in software to the user is on my list of why not to use other distributions. To each his own.

I am unable to reproduce this without compiz being enabled. I cant run compiz on this pc and i use you tube and cnn.com everyday. you tube to try and confirm bugs and cnn for news.
I am changing package to compiz as stock firefox 3 b5 works as expected here.
Firefox 3.0 will be final in ~2months firefox-2.0 will reach EOS before Hardy reaches EOS is why the decitions was made to ship with almost done package instead of changing package mid life of Hardy and introducing 100 extra bugs due to profile and plugins changes, this was not something that was easy to decide on but we took the less of the 2 evils.

Seeing as this works without compiz i have a hard time blaming firefox for this issue, I assigned it to compiz because there is nothing that tells me it is firefox at fault. Please send screenshots of it with and without compiz so we can see if it is the same and we can than ask for more info.

screenshot of youtube.com

cnn.com

Not compiz, if firefox goes gray then firefox stopped responding.

Could this be just a symptom of bug 221842?

Travis im seeing it compiz using so much mem+proc causes firefox to not respond knowing cant be fixed in either if this is the case, if it was firefox it would happen without compiz and it doesnt as per screenshots.

David can you please give us useage info from firefox and compiz whne you see this issue and possibly a strace or valgrind output,

strace instructions at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Strace

valgrind instructions at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Valgrind

>>if it was firefox it would happen without compiz and it doesnt as per screenshots.<<

This cannot occur without compiz running because compiz is what grays the non-responding window.

alexrudd yes that i know but firefox kept responding for me but this looks alot like a dup of bug #215728

the greying out is not really the bug since compiz feature so i was going on the rtesponsive part of bug.

@Mike Rooney - I understand why the idea to use the newer browser would be a good idea. However for us users Firefox3 is still beta now. Piclens, firebug, and a bunch of other plugins I use on a day-to-day basis keep crashing Firefox3. I needed to downgrade to FF2 at home to do more web devel.

@John Vivirito - My usage is normal, with nothing (out of the normal) running in the background.

Attached is a screenshot (for what it's worth) of the start.ubuntu.com page locking up firefox. After turning off compiz it seemed to be working much better. After enabling compiz it started the "greyouts" again. And it wasn't like it was taking it's sweet time loading a page without compiz.

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dave

Yes it does appear to be that bug.