Firefox crashes; Windows not listening to the user

[gusl]

Idea for Firefox: before opening a risky URL, give a crash warning: "Are you sure?". You could learn from experience which are safe URLs or plugin types are safe... you could even explain to the user why it thinks it's a crash risk.

Another idea for Firefox: make each tab its own sandbox!

Windows: The program stops responding.
Step 1: Try to exit by clicking "x" and/or File menu. This fails, pointer turns into an hourglass.
Step 2: Ctrl-Alt-Del and "End Now". This fails.
Step 3: Wait, try again, wait, try again, like 30 times. This fails.
Step 4: Right-click, select "End Process Tree" and accept the dire consequences. This fails.
Step 5: Reboot by going to "Restart". Since Windows waits for processes to shut down, this too fails.
... until magically I notice that it's restarting.

It feels like Windows gradually forces programs to shut down, by stronger measures. I wonder what's going on.

Why does "End now" not mean anything anymore... IMHO, we should go no further than Step 2.

Comments

[roseandsigil.livejournal.com]

The problem with your firefox idea is that no body actually reads dialog boxes; they just do whatever they can to make them go away as fast as possible.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I certainly read them, and often avoid URLs that Firefox deems unsafe (in an ordinary sense, e.g. malware).

[roseandsigil.livejournal.com]

That makes you very unusual.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

firefox puts up some very obnoxious warning things for when it's pretty sure it's a terrible idea to visit the page, and tends to let the rest slide -- precisely because of the "just click it away already" instinct.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, I see an offer to "disable scripts", but strangely it's not a security thing.

There are many pages for which I'd like to disable scripts and/or plugins, depending on the warning I get from Firefox.

[demarko (from livejournal.com)]

Another idea for Firefox: make each tab its own sandbox!

Safari runs each plugin in a sandbox, assuming this is what normally crashes browsers, it is a solution. If there is enough content on a page that it crashes the browser, someone designed the page wrong.

Also, if you still have that habit of keeping a bajillion tabs open in Firefox, you might want to work on that for these reasons.

[roseandsigil.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I think Chrome runs a process per tab.

[lordspaz.livejournal.com]

Indeed it does.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

someone designed the page wrong.

That's basically the point of wanting more protection, isn't it?

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

Firefox has a lot of legacy built into it (dating back to early netscape), so it's hard to move it to big structural changes like a sandbox per tab. Your idea for learning plugins and safe URLs sounds hard, particularly given how often plugins and websites tend to get bugfixed (or buggered).

[cow.livejournal.com]

I think the Windows options are the equivalence of the difference between SIG_TERM and SIG_KILL on UNIX; except sometimes SIG_KILL isn't even enough, it seems, and reboot is the only solution.

[nibot.livejournal.com]

Another idea for Firefox: make each tab its own sandbox!

Google Chrome.