Opera crashing or freezing? May be out-of-process plugins

By Martin Brinkmann on August 16, 2012 - Tags:opera-tips

Opera Software introduced out of process plugins in Opera 12.00 to increase the browser’s overall stability when plugins were used to display contents on web pages. The basic idea behind out of process plugins is to move plugins in their own process so that they do not affect the web browser itself when they crash, freeze or cause other issues.

If you have been experiencing stability issues like crashes or freezes in Opera 12.0x recently you may want to try and disable out of process plugins to see if it resolves the issue when using the browser. A recent Opera Desktop Team blog post reveals that Opera Software noticed an increase in Opera freezing on pages with plug-in content on the Windows platform.

The out of process plugins feature seems the culprit, and Opera recommends to disable the feature in the browser for the time being until a proper fix is released in one of the future versions of the web browser. The issue is only affecting Windows versions of the web browser, with Mac and Linux users not experiencing the issues in their versions.

Whenever you open a web page with plugin contents, you will notice the opera_plugin_wrapper.exe process pop up on your system. It is this process the plugins are running in.

There does not seem to be a way to disable out-of-process plugins in the web browser directly. I could not find a setting to do so in the regular options nor under opera:config.

The only available fix as of now is a new Opera 12.02 snapshot build in which the developers have disabled the out of process plugins feature. Please note that this is only true for the 32-bit version under Windows. The reason why the feature is not deactivated in 64-bit versions of Opera is that these versions require the feature to run 32-bit plugins.

So, if you run a 32-bit Windows version of Opera and experience crashes or freezes, you may want to download and install the snapshot build to see if it resolves the issue. Keep in mind that it is a development build and not necessarily suitable for productive environments.

You can alternatively try and enable on-demand plug-ins in Opera. Click on Opera > Settings > Preferences to open the configuration window. Switch to Advanced > Content and check the enable plug-ins only on demand option there.  This may block some plugin content on websites, advertisement for instance, which in turn may reduce the chance of Opera freezing or crashing because of the issue.

Firefox for Windows 8 making progress, no Flash in sight

By Martin Brinkmann on August 15, 2012 - Tags:mozilla, startup, Windows 8

Okay so Mozilla is moving ahead with Firefox as an app that you can run on Windows 8′s start page just like any other app you can install from the store. The developers currently aim for a first release preview in this quarter of the year, and a beta release in the fourth. This alone indicates that the Firefox app will not be ready when the new Microsoft operating system gets released come October 26.

Brian Bondy’s latest report highlights some of the recent additions and improvements that the team implemented into the Firefox app for Windows 8. Among the improvements are the inclusion of the pdf.js PDF viewer that works without plugin, better handling of mouse input, various keyboard shortcut support and other minor feature additions to the browser.

The initial release will not support add-ons, one of the browser’s strongest selling points. But support will be added to a later version, so that all add-ons that support the Add-on SDK will be compatible with the app version of the Firefox browser. The change has no impact on the desktop version of Firefox.

The Firefox app will support syncing data with the desktop interface, although it is not clear at this point in time what you will be able to synchronize. The team is currently waiting for a single bug to be completed before the builds are merged with Mozilla-Central.

Mozilla has not yet addressed the Flash issue as I’d like to call it. Both app versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 10 and Google Chrome support Flash natively, giving them an edge over browser apps that do not. While that may not be a deciding factor for all Windows 8 users, especially since it usually just takes a click to switch to the desktop version, missing Flash support could irritate users who have made Firefox the default browser on the system. If their favorite sites stop working because of it, it may lead to users switching to another browser that does not have that issue. It is certainly too early to tell how big of an issue that will become.

Do you think that the disadvantage could affect the browser’s market share as a whole?

Mozilla adds old Java plugins to blocklist

By Melanie Gross on August 14, 2012 - Tags:java, mozilla

Mozilla maintains a blacklist for add-ons and plugins that are either a security risk for users of Mozilla products they are compatible with, or cause stability issues when they are installed in a product. The blacklist acts like a global filter that blocks plugins and add-ons on it from being run in the Firefox web browser or other Mozilla products.

Today Mozilla announced that it has added old Java plugin versions to the blocklist to protect users from a critical vulnerability. The vulnerability is present in older versions of the Java Development Kit (JDK) and the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). To be precise, it is affecting the Java plugin version 6 update 32 and earlier, and the Java plugin version 7 update 4 and earlier. All newer versions are not affected by the vulnerability as it has been fixed in both products with the June 2012 update.

Firefox and other Mozilla product users are asked to check their version of Java to make sure the plugin is up to date. This is done by loading about:addons in the browser, switching to plugins on the left sidebar, and looking for Java plugin versions there. Another option is to open the Mozilla Plugin Check website to verify the installed Java version this way. The plugin check service works with other browsers as well.

Affected versions of the Java plugin are automatically disabled, unless users actively choose to keep the plugin enabled despite the risk  of being targeted by exploits of the vulnerability. Firefox users can however enable or disable the plugin at any time in the add-ons manager.

New versions of the JRE can be downloaded from the official Java website. Mozilla recommends to update Java as soon as possible and disable the plugin in the meantime to protect the browser from exploits.

You can read the full announcement here at the official Mozilla blog. You can access a list of plugins and add-ons that have been added to the blocklist here.