What's the Deal with Firefox?

Maryn

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I've used Firefox as my main browser for a lot of years. It's familiar and comfortable for me, not a very tech person. But in the last two years I've had increasing difficulties with Firefox on desktops and laptops both. I keep it up to date. I use McAfee at the paid level to protect the desktop and Avast paid level on the laptop.

Yesterday I discovered that a picture posted here at AW would not display on Firefox, but displayed just fine on Chrome and Avast. This morning I had yet another iteration of a previous problem with retail sites, that my credit card information or the order itself will not go through on Firefox but works just fine on Chrome or Avast. At first it was two small retailers that seemed well behind the tech curve, but now it's happening with major retailers with a big online presence.

Besides abandoning the familiar Firefox, is there something I should or could be doing to allow it to function as before? Could both McAfee and Avast protections (on two different machines) be blocking something on Firefox that isn't blocked on Chrome or Avast?

Maryn, who'd rather not just have to suck it up and switch
 

ChaseJxyz

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So since you use Firefox as your main browser, it's possible that it's accumulated junk over time, which didn't happen with Chrome or Avast. You can install extensions or toolbars onto your browser which can keep things from working. I use Chrome and I have multiple extensions added that block trackers but sometimes it breaks websites and I have to turn them off (turns out blocking Google Analytics tracking makes it impossible to use Google Analytics reporting! Which I have to do for my day job).

Check out this help article. If there's anything you don't remember installing or don't know what it does, remove it. Here's also one about toolbars, which usually take over what you use for search, but can do other naughty things, too. You could also uninstall and then reinstall Firefox, sometimes programs get weird/damaged for whatever reason and doing a fresh install can fix it.
 

Maryn

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Thanks, Chase. I've got some reading to do.
 

AW Admin

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First, don't install two anti-virus/malware apps on a single device; they'll step on each other.

Second; Firefox is vigilant about privacy; that means not allowing third party cookies and tracking cookies; I suspect part of your issue is tied to that. You may want to try again paying close attention to cookie settings for those sites.

Third; the image issue is in part to do with whether or not browsers respect a site's instructions about hot linking, (DreamWidth doesn't like hot linking).
 

talktidy

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First, don't install two anti-virus/malware apps on a single device; they'll step on each other.

Second; Firefox is vigilant about privacy; that means not allowing third party cookies and tracking cookies; I suspect part of your issue is tied to that. You may want to try again paying close attention to cookie settings for those sites.

Third; the image issue is in part to do with whether or not browsers respect a site's instructions about hot linking, (DreamWidth doesn't like hot linking).

Er, I thought Maryn said she used one anti-virus for each device?
 

dpaterso

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I use Firefox too, if it's not super private, post or PM the image URL or the site it's on? I just wanna see if I can see it.

-Derek
 

Maryn

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It's an image that was posted publicly here. Gimme a second and I'll find the link.

(Sound of receding footsteps.)

Okay, here we go. It's Liz_V's image, linked in two places:
https://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?346978-Help-with-image-linking
and
https://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?345941-Small-Cheerful-Things

(Edit: it's post 40 in Cheerful Things. Although it'll do no harm to see them all, right?)

It's maybe worth noting that I have one add-on/extension on Firefox, AdBlocker at the free level. It's not great, allowing some ads through, but it helps and the price is right. I have to wonder if it's involved.

Maryn, who skips ads on TV, too
 
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Ari Meermans

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Firefox has a sort of wonky relationship with LiveJournal; google "Firefox relationship to LiveJournal" to see the link issues wrt Firefox extensions and LiveJournal. There may be a fix or workaround but, since I'm a Chrome girl, I ain't looking it up. :greenie

But . . . but, Ari, the image is on Dreamwidth; what's that got to do with LiveJournal? Well, hereya go from Dreamwidth's FAQ: "How do I use Dreamwidth's image hosting?"

You can embed images you've hosted on Dreamwidth in your own journal, in other journals, in communities, in comments, and on other Livejournal and Livejournal-based sites like InsaneJournal, but Dreamwidth does not allow images to be embedded on other non LJ-related sites.

In other words, there's a relationship there, too.

ETA: *sigh* What I'm saying is there is a related extension on Firefox that you either have to have enabled or disabled to see the image when you copy & paste the link in your address bar . . . but, again, I ain't looking it up. AND, the reason the image cannot be posted here on AW is right there in Dreamwidth's FAQ—AW is not a LiveJournal-related site. That's it; that's all.
 
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Bing Z

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It's an image that was posted publicly here. Gimme a second and I'll find the link.

(Sound of receding footsteps.)

Okay, here we go. It's Liz_V's image, linked in two places:
https://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?346978-Help-with-image-linking
and
https://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?345941-Small-Cheerful-Things

(Edit: it's post 40 in Cheerful Things. Although it'll do no harm to see them all, right?)

It's maybe worth noting that I have one add-on/extension on Firefox, AdBlocker at the free level. It's not great, allowing some ads through, but it helps and the price is right. I have to wonder if it's involved.

Maryn, who skips ads on TV, too
I use Firefox (default browser) and Brave (2nd, chrome substitute browser). Both can display the pink crane image referred to in these threads. On my Firefox, I have Noscript, AdblockPlus, and several other no-this-no-that addons. I'd say, if I can see the images, it is not an inherit Firefox issue. Have you tried clearing your cache or tried the Reset thing (that I mightily hate)? Or try hit F5 when you click on the link and nothing comes out on the screen?
 

Maryn

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I routinely clear my cache and delete cookies. What reset button are you referring to? Because 2020 needs it worse than I do.

Maryn, astonished at how quickly cookies accumulate
 

DMcCunney

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I've been using Mozilla code since Mozilla was still the internal name of a Netscape Communications project to create the next generation browser suite, replacing the venerable Netscape Communicator product. I'm under Win10 Pro at the moment, though I've dual booted Linux in the past. I have Brave, Chrome, MS Edge and a few other things installed to track development, but Firefox is my production browser. (Among other reasons, it makes it easy to put its cache on a RAMdisk, and lets me specify where profiles are created when I spin up new ones. (They all live under a \Mozilla\Profiles\Firefox directory for ease of fiddling.) I have several profiles, customized for different purposes, and choose which to run on invocation.

I don't see the problems cited here, but I don't run third-party A/V, nor do I run AdBlock or NoScript. Windows Defender built-in A/V and anti-malware provides adequate protection. I run an extension called uBlock Origin, which is a generalized blocker for ads and other things. I stopped running NoScript when the maintenance required to get uBlock and NoScript to play nice and not step on each other's toes became more trouble than it's worth. (uBlock Origin is cross-browser, and available for Brave, Chrome and Edge as well as Firefox.) I'm not fanatical about ad blocking. I just want to be able to peruse sites without ads getting in the way. My original ad blocking solution was custom CSS that defined a long list of ad server sites, and simply didn't display content fetched from them. I've had to take more extreme measures in recent years.

I'm not fussy about things like clearing cookies. Sites set cookies on your machine to remember you and your preferences, and that's fine by me. There are sites where I want to be remembered to make life easier, because I visit them all the time.

I also largely don't care about tracking. The things that track me are bots trying to build a profile of what I like and do to better target ads. Fine by me: ads are a way I discover things I might like to buy, and the better targeted the ads, the less time I spend separating wheat from chaff. And what is being tracked isn't me, it's the device I am using to browse the web, from the IP address provided by my ISP. The advertisers don't care who I am, and don't need to. If I actually follow up on an ad and buy something, details about me get provided as part of the purchase. Until that happens, who and what I am is irrelevant. And I have the technology to keep ads from getting in the way of browsing.

The areas where I have genuine privacy concerns are health records, finances, and my sex life. The first two are in the hands of third parties who have legal as well as moral reasons to keep them private, and I am ultimately at their mercy. My sex life never gets on line to begin with. In general, nothing that I do or where I go online would give me heartburn were it to become public. For the odd bit that is (because I'm a cat curiosity hasn't killed and sometime poke around in the Dark Web), I have the technology to remain anonymous. I just seldom have reason to deploy it.

I had an epiphany about A/V back in the WinXP days. I was running Symantec Corporate via an employer site license. It installed with no problem, ran like a top, and consumed few resources. (I would not touch its consumer sibling Norton's with a stick.) The version of Symantec I was using reached EOL and would no longer get signature updates. I no longer worked for that employer, so a new version would be on my dime. The only things Symantec ever caught were false positives. I asked myself if I needed third party A/V and concluded I didn't. I dropped it and didn't miss it.

Viruses and malware are infections. Infections have vectors by which they enter the host body. Ward the vector, and block the infection. The principal vector for viruses is email. I use Gmail. My mail resides online on Google servers, and I read and respond in my browser. I can check email from any place I have decent broadband and a supported browser. And Gmail implements viewers for the vast majority of attachments, so I can view them in my browser without opening them on my PC. Potentially malicious content never reaches my PC. (And Gmail has the best spam filters I've used. Perhaps one spam every two weeks reaches my Inbox, and click Report Spam and I don't see it again.) The vast majority of stuff that might be problematic will also be spam I've never see unless I deliberately look. I don't get viruses. I warded the vector.

The principal vector for malware is the browser. It's one reason I've used Firefox since the days when MS Internet Explorer was the dominant browser. Most attacks tried to target it, and bounced off of Firefox. And most malware requires Admin rights on the PC to do the dirty work. If you are not logged onto Windows as Administrator, they bounce off. Under XP Pro, I created a Power User userid for normal usage, and became administrator only when required by something that needed it. Win7 and later make Power User the default for logins, and prompt you when admin rights are required. I don't get malware. I warded the vector.

I keep Windows fully patched, don't use IE, and am aware that the Internet has bad neighborhoods, so I am careful to know where I go, what I do, and what's going on around me. I have not had a serious virus problem in decades, and have never had an issue with malware. I practice Safe Hex.

I don't assume my strategy will work for everyone, but I do think many folks are going to more trouble than they need to to stay safe online. Safety comes from knowledge, and if you have it, you need to deploy less protective measures that can get in the way of normal usage.

______
Dennis
 
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