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Firefox is slow and hangs watching Youtube videos. Safari is OK. What's the word, Developers?

  • 6 replies
  • 51 have this problem
  • 8 views
  • Last reply by Stone

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Since late Oct 2011, my Firefox had been hanging while watching videos on Youtube. Any mouse action while a video is playing causes Firefox to hang (spinning wheel).

It turns out that I had caught the beta release of the new Gray Youtube interface - where the backgrounds of all youtube pages are gray.

I got myself back to the old interface by deleting all Youtube cookies.

I no longer have hangs. Page transitions are also much quicker, as was before.

Is there anyone else who has experienced the "new" interface, and problems?

If you do have the new youtube interface, but no problems, then I have more digging to do.


Update Dec 2, 2011:

I have the problem again now that Youtube has released their "new look" interface to everyone.

The problem is generally slow Firefox responses to mouse actions while watching Youtube videos. Firefox will hang completely 2-4 minutes into any Youtube video. (The video does continue to play a-ok.) FF becomes responsive again when the video ends playing.

Problem doesn't occur when I watch a youtube video right after starting FF after having "quit" it. Problem begins occur after FF has been running for a while (visiting other websites?) Is this a symptom of FF collecting some kind of crud in memory or disk?

My old Safari (3.2.1) doesn't have any problems. As far as I can see, both Firefox and Safari on my system use the same Adobe Flash Player.

So, this isn't a problem with Youtube, Flash Player, or my system, but a problem with Firefox (3.6.24) !?

Anybody (FF developers) have any ideas? I want to keep using FF!

Since late Oct 2011, my Firefox had been hanging while watching videos on Youtube. Any mouse action while a video is playing causes Firefox to hang (spinning wheel). It turns out that I had caught the beta release of the new Gray Youtube interface - where the backgrounds of all youtube pages are gray. I got myself back to the old interface by deleting all Youtube cookies. I no longer have hangs. Page transitions are also much quicker, as was before. Is there anyone else who has experienced the "new" interface, and problems? If you do have the new youtube interface, but no problems, then I have more digging to do. Update Dec 2, 2011: I have the problem again now that Youtube has released their "new look" interface to everyone. The problem is generally slow Firefox responses to mouse actions while watching Youtube videos. Firefox will hang completely 2-4 minutes into any Youtube video. (The video does continue to play a-ok.) FF becomes responsive again when the video ends playing. Problem doesn't occur when I watch a youtube video right after starting FF after having "quit" it. Problem begins occur after FF has been running for a while (visiting other websites?) Is this a symptom of FF collecting some kind of crud in memory or disk? My old Safari (3.2.1) doesn't have any problems. As far as I can see, both Firefox and Safari on my system use the same Adobe Flash Player. So, this isn't a problem with Youtube, Flash Player, or my system, but a problem with Firefox (3.6.24) !? Anybody (FF developers) have any ideas? I want to keep using FF!

Modified by Stone

All Replies (6)

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Start Firefox in Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode to check if one of the extensions or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox (Tools) > Add-ons > Appearance/Themes).

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Thanks Cor-el. The problem existed in safe mode as well. Changing Flash Player hardware acceleration had no effect.

The problem is gone now, after getting the standard youtube interface back.

What I'd like to know is whether any others who are unwitting testers of the new Youtube interface are experiencing problems, and, if not, what is their system? Which versions of Firefox and Flash Player are they using?

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I had the problem with FF hanging in Youtube a month ago when I was an unwitting beta tester of their "New Look" gray interface.

Now that Youtube has released their new look to everyone, I have the problem again.

My Safari 3.2.1 (an old one!) doesn't have the hanging problem.

Any ideas why FF (3.6.24) hangs ?

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yea same here.. Firefox has been extremely slow after the new YouTube update (I am running on a MacBook Pro). I am even having severe lag while surfing in other browser windows if YouTube is up. So annoying....

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one possibility is your extensions are slowing things down. ad-block-plus, for example, has been known to cause some slowdowns and can be fixed by simply uninstalling and re-installing. this may not be what you're dealing with, but might be worth a try.

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John,

The only extension I have is DownloadHelper. I had tried reinstalling that, and FF itself, to no avail.