Firefox and YouTube videos

[minthaka]

I don't know what's the reason, but Firefox (formerly 2.1, now 3.0) regularly crashes when I try to watch a YouTube video or any Flash related content. After restarting the browser I can watch the video, but this freezing makes me angry. I have installed the most recent version of flash plugin, but no use of it. Opera also crashes. Why?

[Grandebasta]

Hi Mintaka
In the Firefox browser, in Edit, Preferences, etc., you can change the Java settings:
Within the extra settings (pop up window) you can restrict the rights of Java. Take a few hooks out, and see if things are better, after.

[fingal]

I've had similar problems with Flash content. It's closed source so I suppose there are compatibility issues there... It usually happens with no warning: the browser will simply freeze and need to be shut down/restarted.

[Artesia]

I also experience some weirdness with FF and Flash videos. Most of the time they work fine, but sometimes, seemingly at random, the Flash content stops displaying. When I open a page with a video on it, instead of seeing its play button or a preview image, the whole thing is grayed out. Once I see this, it will be the case for every other Flash video I browse to. FF doesn't lock up, however. And all I have to do is restart FF and it works again.

[bigtomrodney]

I installed the Flash 10 beta player. The first beta was as bad but it seems a lot better with the second.

I've heard that Flash doesn't deal well with cleaning up its own memory usage and just fills up until it dies. I'm not a programmer though so I wouldn't take me too seriously on that.

[Freston]

Same problem here. Sometimes while watching YouTube FF(3) just freezes and does nothing. After some annoying 15 seconds (or 10 very long seconds, I never counted) a dialog springs up asking me if FF needs to be killed. Full heartedly I say yes, and after that I can run FF again without problems.

[fingal]

I've heard that Flash doesn't deal well with cleaning up its own memory usage and just fills up until it dies. I'm not a programmer though so I wouldn't take me too seriously on that.

That makes sense to me, because when my browser crashes it's usually after I've spent quite some time watching Flash media. It never happens immediately.

I watch a lot of Flash stuff (how geeky!) and FF will crash at least once every day that I use it. Worse still, the problem hasn't gone away between FF releases. I don't blame the browser one bit, just the plugin.

[Oxygen]

Regually while watching YouTube videos... it crashes... and only killin firefox and restarting makes it work.