October 13, 2004

Curious frustrated George Ok guys, I have a problem, with FireFox, I can't seem to figure out...

I was surfing along, minding my own business, when I noticed the little icon in the top right hand corner of my browser was red. So, I hovered my cursor over it. I got a little window that said critical updates are available. So, wanting my FireFox browser to be up to date and all I clicked the little red icon. The updates downloaded and installed. Only now when I try to open the FireFox browser I get the error message : Error launching browser window: no XBL binding for browser I opened my Netscape and went to the forums for FireFox, but being the newbie that I am, I am frustrated trying to figure this out and searching the forums is giving me a headache. I can't seem to find anything that helps. I uninstalled the browser and reinstalled it, that didn't fix the problem either. My antivirus program was able to open FireFox when I prompted it to get updated virus info. Yet I can't open it thru the desktop shortcut or the start menu. A window opens but its all grey no pages load, no tool bars, nothing but the FIreFox icon on the top bar loads. Please some monkey smarter than me, help.

posted by bratcat 20 years ago
  • Uninstall Firefox again, browse to the folder where it was installed, if the bookmark file is still there, move it somewhere where you can remember it, then delete the firefox folder and try to reinstall. If that works, then you can put the bookmarks file back in there and not loose your bookmarks.
  • How to fix this problem.
  • Rolypolyman, thank you. I never thought to type in the error message to search for a solution to the problem. I typed in FireFox browser, then from that page tried to navigate that site for an answer. Thanks again for helping a newbie with only a few clues. :)
  • And also thanks to you fuyugare and jccalhoun.
  • OK that was extremely cool, am doing a happy dance. FireFox is back. Thanks again, you smart monkeys. Bananas all around.
  • I'm glad you brought this up, because I have another Firefox question. At one point, I was using a "nightly build" version between .8 and .9, and it seemed to be the fastest browser available for my 733 mhz G4 Mac. Then I upgraded to .9 and foolishly deleted my earlier version, and .9 is noticably slower. Any tips on where to find a pre .9 nightly build, and which one to go back to?
  • Mozilla says archives of older nightlys are available here: http://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nightly/ Not all of those are listed by release number, instead some are catalogued by date. finally, do you know about using "about: config" to tweak the hidden settings in Mozilla, firefox, and safari? They increase browser speed immensely. http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/8007.htm (from that usenet article)
    "...To get started, type "about:config" in your FireFox address bar. The settings you're looking for are: 1.) network.http.pipelining 2.) network.http.pipelining.firstrequest 3.) network.http.pipelining.maxrequests 4.) network.http.proxy.pipelining 5.) nglayout.ititialpaint.delay Set #1, #2, and #4 to "true". Set #3 to a high number, like 32. Set #5 to 0. Enabling the pipelining features allows the browser to make multiple requests to the server at the same time. The "maxrequests" is the maximum number of requests it will send at once. I've heard that 8 is the most it will send at once, but setting it higher won't hurt, just in case. The initialpaint.delay is the length of time (in milliseconds) after the server response before the browser begins to paint the page."
  • jacobw, have you tried fiddling with network.http.max-connections on the about:config-page? Higher number of connections might increase the speed. You can also try setting network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining to true and increasing network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to 32
  • If only I had computer. I am sure that would be a very cool thing. Especially if I had a Mac.
  • Also, I could make unhelpful comments just to annoy people. All hail Xerox technology!
  • I have another firefox problem, although it's much less serious. Not serious enough for it's own thread, so I'll tag it on the end of this one: All my bookmarks keep losing their icons and get the generic icons back. A little google work explains this: when firefox (IE too) gets them it puts them in your cache, and when the cache is cleared out, the icons go too. OK, fine. Stupid system, but MS started it, and mozilla just added it to keep up. But IE lets you manually set the icons yourself if you want, to any icon file on your PC. As far as I can tell, firefox does not let me do this, and google isn't helping. Any help from the monkeys? How to help firefox remember my icons, or let me set them myself to icons on my hd- either will do.
  • Try this Firefox extension that allows you to choose an icon for a bookmark when you right click and select properties.
  • ThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyouThankyou. I <3 extensions. This is one more to add to the must-have list.
  • Saint monkey and varj, thanks greatly for the tips. I made the suggested changes, and it seems to make a real difference. (FYI, the "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and "network.http.pipelining.firstrequest" don't exist in .9--apparently they went away after .8.) Anybody know if it's possible to access those preferences in Safari?