Firefox seems permanantly "hung"

[efoto]

Yesterday everything was working fine, and today I can hardly navigate a single internet page (Google, CNN, whatever) without a beachball and (Hung) being displayed in Activity Monitor.

Any ideas on how to proceed? Are other apps possibly causing this?
I was reading on the Free Apps threads yesterday and downloaded a few before heading home, tried them out last night....other than that I have not changed anything on my computer lately.

Thanks in advance, this 'hang' is really annoying since only Firefox works to get online here at work (Safari has no place for AutoConfigProxy and the system one doesn't seem to work )

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

There is a problem with some (badly designed) flash ads/menus that can cause the flash plug-in (and consecently Firefox) to hang...

This had been a very minor issue after I installed Adblock and made a few rules with "*adservers.sitename/*sfw*"...

 

[efoto]

I just found/installed the AdBlock extension, but yesterday everything was working fine. Today it takes me nearly 5 minutes to type a simple response on this forum!
Everything, typing in a field, clicking back, openning a new tab, causes the beachball and a varied 10-40sec delay where seemingly nothing is happening, then it all snaps together and all seems well for about 40seconds.

I have already tried completely removing and reinstalling Firefox, no change.
I tried "fsck -f" in the Unix Command on boot, it says the disk appears fine.
Verified/repaired permissions in Onyx.

I have no more ideas as I am quite new to OSX, so I have no 'tricks' yet

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Yepp... sounds just like a problem I had with the navigation menu on forskning.no, the thing is made whith flash and hangs the whole of FF. I just made the menu go away, and everything works fine...

(I'll try it with the menu again in a while because it used to work just fine, so either the site og my flash plugin had a "bad day"... )

If you go to the site again, choose list all blockable items (from the tools menu), get a cup of coffee or whatever, it will take time, then when the list comes up see if theres one or more swf files mentioned and make a rule to take those out (one rule with a couple of wildcards (*) should do the trick...)

 

[Bear]

I just found/installed the AdBlock extension, but yesterday everything was working fine. Today it takes me nearly 5 minutes to type a simple response on this forum!
...

As discussed on another thread tribalfusion.com can have awfully slow response times.

The ads weren't too much of a pain until they started making the browsing experience awful. And of course once you start blocking some ads, you'll want to block even more.

Several websites were sped up greatly for me by using adblock on the slow sites they were pointing to for the advertising.

 

[iGary]

Being hung isn't necessarily a bad thing.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Being hung isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I think you need a "Well" before it's really a good thing...

 

[Orlando Furioso]

I think you need a "Well" before it's really a good thing...

I dunno, I think "hung" speaks for itself. If the word had been endowed, then use "well" would be applicable. But endowed does not make sense in this context, and it does not make for an interesting title.

I'm so glad someone else went "there" with the title before I did. That was my sole motivator in reading this thread. Ugh, my mind is rubbish this morning.

Hmmm. now that i toss around the phrase in my cabeza, I think Mitthrawnuruodo is right. "Well" does make the phrase more impressive and less ambiguous. Why am I still on this subject? Ugh. hehe.

 

[efoto]

Being hung isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Agreed. I have to say, due to your picture looking quite "angelic" with the overhead lighting and "nice" look on your face, the comment was all the funnier. Thanks.

Of course the size of one's package does not make their computer run any faster. If only....tera-hertz processor here I come!

I have now been on the phone for a little over an hour with Apple Care, and they know nothing as usual for me . He wants me to download and try Omniweb and Shirra for other browsers to see if they hang as well (attempt to figure out if this is a network, application, or hardware issue).
Yesterday was fine....so I don't know. This is such a pain in the ass.

Edit - You said there were issues with particular websites and *.swf files. Even after those sites were closed, was the 'hang' still experienced? I am trying to figure out because the only non-normal site I have been to lately is www.thefacebook.com (silly university thing a girl asked me to account on), the rest of the sites are all pretty usual:
-google, macrumors, my site, versiontracker/macupdate....

 

[efoto]

If you go to the site again, choose list all blockable items (from the tools menu), get a cup of coffee or whatever, it will take time, then when the list comes up see if theres one or more swf files mentioned and make a rule to take those out (one rule with a couple of wildcards (*) should do the trick...)

If you make the stated rule, does it apply to all 'child' sites as well? (sites originating under the parent homepage?) or do you have to click Adblock on each site within the problem site to fully erradicate the problem?

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

If you make the stated rule, does it apply to all 'child' sites as well? (sites originating under the parent homepage?) or do you have to click Adblock on each site within the problem site to fully erradicate the problem?

Yes, a rule (if you make it with wildcards, *, and include the sites url) will work on all objeckts that fit the rule.

When I encounter an annoying flash object, I hit shift-cmd-F, and all flash-content on the site. Then I click the element(s) and make a new rule based on that object, but I cut a way most of the link to make it general. E.g. if I click an object with the address: http://flash.vg.no/annonser/bluecom.../www.bluecom.no/privat/produkter/adsl_privat/ which is one spesific flash object. Then to make it general I replace some of the text with wildcards, like this: *://flash.vg.no/*.swf* Now I don't get those flash-objects when I enter vg.no, and the browser will not hang if one of those flash files are poorly written...

 

[efoto]

Yes, a rule (if you make it with wildcards, *, and include the sites url) will work on all objeckts that fit the rule.

Well that seems to have helped I guess. It was quite strange as two days ago had no problems, yesterday tons, and this morning there seemed to be nothing wrong again. I have had it beachball only a handful of times (knock on wood) all day, and it is nearly time to leave!

Thanks again for the help.
Oh, when FF did 'hang', did is suck nearly all CPU work for the time it was hung up? (curiousity as mine did early today, 97.8% CPU in ActivMon)