[Eagle9]

Mozilla.org

Long-title temporary startup unresponsiveness

Web pages with extremely long titles (the posted proof of concept used 2.5 million characters) can cause Mozilla Firefox and the Mozilla Suite to appear to "hang" on startup when reading the browsing history data. The browser will eventually continue normally although this can take up to several minutes on a slower computer. The unresponsive starts will continue until the item with the long title is removed from the history file or eventually expires.

We have investigated this issue and can find no basis for claims that variants of this denial-of-service attack can cause an exploitable crash, and no evidence for this claim has been offered. There does not appear to be any risk to users or their computers beyond the temporary unresponsiveness at startup.

Should the user encounter this problem the slow starts can be fixed by deleting the item from history.

Deleting the item from history

1. Open History from the Go menu
2. Select the item with the long title
3. Press the delete button

Clearing all history data

• In Firefox 1.5
  1. Select "Clear Private Data" from the Tools menu
  2. Check the "Browsing History" box and press the "Clear Private Data Now" button
• In Firefox 1.0 (also works in 1.5)
  1. Select "Options" from the "Tools" menu
  2. On the "Privacy" tab select "History"
  3. Press the Clear button in the History section

[D-fendr]

My policy is not to open websites with names longer than one million characters.

[Revolting cat!]

It's certainly not like the series of series bugs in that other product from Redmond in a blue state!

[BallyBill]

I started having problems with Firefox last week on ALL my PC's. If I open another site using tabs the system comes to a near halt.

I've been trying out Opera since and it ain't bad, but I'd still like to use FireFox.

I will try this fix and see what happens.
Be Back later.

[ShadowAce]

[M0sby]

Hi there..
Thanks for the post..
I am NOT a techno person here..so forgive my "less-than-educated" question...
But...has anyone else noticed Firefox slowing WAY DOWN..or not loading recently?
And..IS THIS what this article is talking about?

Sorry if this is a STUPID question..
I try not to be stupid very often!

[Hank Rearden]

Any experts out there have an explanation for this one?

When I use Control-B to bring up the Bookmarks sidebar, it takes maybe 2-3 seconds to appear.

Yet, if I click on the "Bookmarks" Menu title at the top of the Firefox window, it freezes Firefox for about 20 seconds while it works to open the drop-down window.

What's the deal there? I do have a lot of Bookmarks saved over the years; I'm just thinking the two routines load the file differently.

[tubebender]

I have a similar experience in Fire Fox 1.0.6 but it still beats IE and I always have Safari to fall back on...

[JerseyHighlander]

Im experiencing really random bugs in ff 1.5
The address bar dropdown won't work, disappears, or locks in the down position, the quicktime plug in won't install, there are random resets to default configurations(this is from 2 extensions fighting over some resource or something).

Overall, it's a great improvement, but some serious UI flaws still exist.

[Eagle9]

I've been using Firefox since the 0.7 version when it was named Firebird. I have no technical training or background other than what little I've been able to learn from others when they were using terms that I understood. This 1.5 version of Firefox has some major changes, which the developers tried to test and have most of the wrinkles ironed out before releasing it out of beta. The real acid test is to release it to the average Internet user and then resolve the remaining issues that are reported by way of complaints, either with a work around or a patch. Those of you here who haven't visited the Mozilla Firefox Forum might want to consider doing so and maybe you'll see a topic that fits your particular problem. You can read without registering, or register and ask specific questions. It's no different than posting here at FR. I would help if I could but those who worked on the developement of this version of Firefox are who I would post my questions to if I were having problems. Fortunately for me, 1.5 is running fast with no major problems. Below is the link to the Mozilla Firefox Forum.

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=38

I'm not saying don't post questions here, just giving those who don't know another place to look for answers if none are found here at FR.

[BallyBill]

It worked for a few hours.