firefox issues

[joe90]

apologies if someone has posted about this before but i did a quick search of the forums and nothing came up.

i have latest version of firefox and am running mac 10.3.8. problem arises when i am downloading something with the manager open and i close all the browser windows. firefox won't let me open a new browser window. when i click on firefox icon in the dock the download manager comes to the front and when i click on 'file' the drop-down menu doesn't appear, sometimes after a few clicks it does and then 'file > new window' has no effect! the only way i can seem to get the firefox browser is by quitting the app entirely and restarting (only then i lose whatever i was downloading!)

is this a known issue or am i being stupid (have been using os x for just over a week)? any advice would be greatly appreciated. thanks

 

[MisterMe]

apologies if someone has posted about this before but i did a quick search of the forums and nothing came up.

i have latest version of firefox and am running mac 10.3.8. problem arises when i am downloading something with the manager open and i close all the browser windows. firefox won't let me open a new browser window. when i click on firefox icon in the dock the download manager comes to the front and when i click on 'file' the drop-down menu doesn't appear, sometimes after a few clicks it does and then 'file > new window' has no effect! the only way i can seem to get the firefox browser is by quitting the app entirely and restarting (only then i lose whatever i was downloading!)

is this a known issue or am i being stupid (have been using os x for just over a week)? any advice would be greatly appreciated. thanks

I'm tempted to ask why would you close all of your browser windows, but I won't. At any rate, when you close all of your browser windows, you disable every menu except the Firefox menu. You cannot regain control of your menus until you dismiss the Download manager. This is a slightly worse behavior that Firefox inherited from its big brother, Mozilla. In the case of Mozilla, you lose your menus until your file finishes. You regain control of your menus when the download progress bar disappears, even though the Download manager remains open. The bottomline is that your discovery is not unique to Firefox. It is a characteristic of Mozilla browsers. Because I am using Camino to post this response, I have not tested this rather odd behavior in Camino.

 

[alex_ant]

The workaround to this problem is to make another program open a Firefox window (click on a link in Mail.app, or double-click an html file in the finder, etc.) That will give you a new window.

 

[MisterMe]

The workaround to this problem is to make another program open a Firefox window (click on a link in Mail.app, or double-click an html file in the finder, etc.) That will give you a new window.

It would be easier not to close all of your browser windows in the first place.