Browser Keeps Crashing

[Dani]

Hi,

I'm completely desperate for some help. I am getting a handful of reports that DaniWeb keeps crashing the web browser. Most of these reports are coming in from Firefox. Supposedly the problem is fairly consistent.

I cannot duplicate the problem no matter how hard I've tried.

I spend a lot of money advertising with Google AdWords, and the amount of visitors purchased from AdWords is about 25% more than the amount of AdWords visitors that Google Analytics reports. What this means is that there's a good chance that 25% of traffic just crashes the browser before the page loads.

I'm completely at a loss. Is there anyone who is experienced with Javascript and is able to reproduce this error?! Please :(

[LastMitch]

Hi Dani, I browse your site and there was no problem with the ads. What kind of report you need? I have like 5 or 6 report from Mozilla. Everything will be fine Dani.

[Dani]

It seems like a lot of users are affected, but I cannot figure out what part of the javascript keeps crashing. I need to be able to pinpoint what the problem is :(

[LastMitch]

Hi Dani,

I don't want you get upset again. I think it's the fade hovering ads script.

[veedeoo]

Yes, the report is true.. daniweb is crashing in firefox 13.0 beta. Users should be advice not to use firefox 13.0 beta, if they are part of the Beta channel users from April 26, 2012 and on. Users must use firefox stable release, regardless of OS they currently have on their computers. I tested it on windows 7, ubuntu, and zorin os. All of these OS's are running firefox 13.0 beta.

I suspect, the crashes occur during the mouseover on the right column banner ad and on the header ad. The crashes does not occur all the time, but it will crash 3 out of 10 visits to daniweb.

The text editor is also acting up at times in firefox, but not all the time. The problem with the text editor is that the cursor is not inline with the text being type. Just like what I am doing right now. My cursur is on top line, while the typed text is apearing below.

[|-|x]

With the number of different versions of firefox available over the last 12 months, it could be specific to any one of them. I am running v10 and v12 and have not experienced any issues viewing the site.

I'm not sure what level of detail you are getting in your logs, but if you can narrow it down to 1 or more versions of FF or and OS platform, I'm sure there are folks on here that would be willing to help test on the applicable systems for you.

Is there any chance it could be an alternative browser, like from a mobile platform or some such, that might be a fork or derivative and reports as FF to the webserver?

[Dani]

The problem is that I don't have ANY logs. All I have is a handful of complaints on the forums, over Twitter, and emailed to me. From what I have been able to put together, everyone is using some variation of Firefox. However, the problem appears to be common enough that it's affecting a SIGNIFICANT portion of users.

[LastMitch]

Hi veedeoo,

I'm using Firefox 12 and it's still crashing.

[Dani]

I am not able to reproduce any crashes in 12.0 :(

[|-|x]

I get this, doesn't seem to cause an actual problem though.

--
[13:36:09.444] Use of getAttributeNodeNS() is deprecated. Use getAttributeNS() instead. @ http://www.daniweb.com/

[Dani]

Hearth, that function call doesn't seem to be in any of the code I wrote, so it must be in one of the ads. Oh well.

[LastMitch]

Hi Dani,

Forget about what Firefox verison crashes, just put the old javascript back, the one before the your post this:

http://www.daniweb.com/community-center/daniweb-community-feedback/threads/423090/fade-effect-when-hovering-over-ads

[Dani]

Also, we can't expect users to not use a specific browser. We have to make sure that WE work in all browsers. Beta or not.

In any case ... soooo many things were changed recently. Do you think it's definitely related to hovering over the ad? Could it possibly be the javascript that was recently added to animate the medium rectangle ad down the page for long posts?

[LastMitch]

Hi Dani,

I wasn't really here on Daniweb during the 11th, 12th, and 14th.

[veedeoo]

That's true, people will always have their own preferred browser.

[|-|x]

Just installed the v13 beta... no problems, I'm writing this post in it now.

[harinath_2007]

I am using firefox 3.6 and there's no problem .. Everything looks fine..

[Dani]

Maybe everyone affected happens to be using the same Firefox plug-in that is messing something up? What plugins are you using?

[dfrignito]

no problems here using Windows 7 and Firefox 12.0

[|-|x]

I don't have many 3rd party addons installed

• Adobe Acrobat 10.1.3.23
• Google Update 1.3.21.111
• MS Office 2010 14.0.4730.1010/14.0.4761.1000
• Silverlight 1.0.10111.0
• Firebug 1.9.2
• Web Developer 1.1.9

I'm completely on Windows 7 at the moment. Maybe its an issue in XP or another platform?

[veedeoo]

On my laptop, I only have the flash plugin running on Windows 7. This is the unit that crashes the most. While the others have java and other stuffs in it.

I have been observing this for almost a week now, and most of the crashes occurs when my cursor moves over somewhere near the right column ad, the login/logout text link and the header ad.

[Dani]

I am starting to think it's a hardware / video card problem trying to render the fade-in with the diagonal lines when an ad is hovered over. I removed the diagonal effect so let's see if that helps a bit .......

Can you browse around a bunch and see if you're still experiencing issues?

[|-|x]

I can observe that the background fading happens a lot slower on FF than in other browsers. not sure if that will help you or not :/

[Dani]

That definitely helps!

[veedeoo]

ok, I hovered on them many times...aiming my cursor back and forth right on the spot where crashes always occur, I think it is ok now...I've reloaded the page many times and ff won't crash..It must been fixed ( fingers crossed).

Let's give it another day or two.. If it crashes again, I will definitely post an update.

Thanks,

[neatric]

I am on Windows xp using Fire Fox 13.0. My first experience with the problem was when i tried opening a link that Dani provided on twitter. Firefox crashed immediately. This means the bugy script crashes on loading and not in response of user activity on the site, this eliminates hover script on ads. Therefore the problem could be caused by a script that loads with the ads.

[Dani]

I'm still pretty convinced it's ad-related ... Let me know if it still happens :)

[neatric]

It just crashed again :( I think the crashes are not consistent, it might or it might not. This time round I opened a link in a new tab and as soon as my cursor touched the ad on the right, FF crashed. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. What we should establish now is if it is a specific ad or if it is random. I didnt get to see the ad cause it happened so fast. Let me try to recreate it again.

[DavidB]

I use Firefox 12.0 on a Windows 7 computer. No plug-ins or add-ons.
It does seem to crash once per session, although I had not made the connection to either Javascript or ads. In fact, it just crashed 2 minutes ago, so now I am using IE.

[Dani]

Does it happen if you disable ads in your member profile?