Question

Makes no difference, I'm afraid.

A possible cause is security software (firewall,anti-virus) that blocks or restricts Firefox or the plugin-container process without informing you, possibly after detecting changes (update) to the Firefox program.

Remove all rules for Firefox and the plugin-container from the permissions list in the firewall and let your firewall ask again for permission to get full unrestricted access to internet for Firefox and the plugin-container process and the updater process.

See:

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Server+not+found
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Firewalls

Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.

See "Creating a profile":

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox#Profile_issues

If the new profile works then you can transfer some files from an existing profile to the new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox

Look at my original post. A new profile has already been tried. And even though I fail to see how disabling the firewall could affect building and traversing Firefox's menus (which is where the slowness is most annoying), I switched off iptables just to be sure. No change of course.

Sorry about those suggestions. I appear to have missed that you are on Linux.

Any luck with disabling IPv6?

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Error_loading_websites
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Error_loading_websites#IPv6

The setting network.dns.disableIPv6 has been set to true for ages.

It's JavaScript/Flash. I just tried 18.0.1 and it seemed acceptable at first. But after the first Flash movie the same slowness crept in (bookmark menu taking seconds to open, traversing the menu with the highlighted item lagging up to five items behind the mouse pointer). Could be that new JavaScript engine is broken in some way or simply requires much more 'horse power'. Back to 17...

hello, maybe it's an issue with the protected mode in the flash plugin - you could try if downgrading to flash 10.3 (which is still supported) or disabling protected mode makes a difference.

Downgrading didn't make any difference and neither did disabling protected mode (assuming adding the command mentioned to /etc/adobe/mms.cgf did the trick).

Thanks for your suggestions anyway.

I have same problem, firefox 17 was fine, firefox 18 crawls on my Ubuntu 12.10 system. On many actions. At first I thought I was having DNS issues. But now see that many others are reporting same slow response.

Enter a URL and it takes forever to respond with the web page.

Click on a field to enter some kind of data and it can take 5-10 seconds before the keystrokes appear in the web form.

Sometimes my system's display actually dims briefly waiting for responses.

Chrome has NO problems like this on the same system.

I guess I'll downgrade back to v17 Firefox until I see some indication the current v18 problem(s) are resolved.

I too have this problem, and it is only since the update. no other setting has changed on my PC. I am running Win XP32 on this PC.

It is infuriating to the point of thinking about the I word (Internet Explorer)

I should state that I see the same "slowness" on Windows so this is NOT a Firefox on LInux problem... at least from what I can see from multiple machines I use that are a mix of firefox on windows or linux.

I am more than a little annoyed to find this thread somehow got marked as 'solved'. Apparently the reply by madperson was entered as 'chosen solution'. I did NOT do that and I have removed this 'solution' as this issue is by no means solved!

You did try a clean profile with out modifications and not by using a reset?
A reset still tries to import some data from the old profile and can cause problems.

Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.

See "Creating a profile":

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox#Profile_issues

If the new profile works then you can transfer some files from an existing profile to the new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox

There is definitely something wrong with the Menu / Bookmark code. After "upgrading" to 18.0 the Bookmarks menu became incredibly slow. I find it's pretty easy to replicate this issue: All you have to do is open the Bookmarks menu and navigate around for a bit - you don't even have to open anything. After a while the Bookmarks menu will take 3 seconds to open and also there is a ton of lag when you're navigating around the bookmarks - IOW the highlighted selection is nowhere near where the mouse is and it takes a while for it to catch up. It even does this in Safe Mode so it's definitely not related to any plug-in. I hate to say it, but it might be time to start using Google Chrome full-time... My coworkers and I already have to use it (Chrome) at work due to the heavy use of JavaScript with the tools we use and FF is just too slow in comparison.

Hi Inc0gnit0

Did you try to delete the places.sqlite database file?

You can check for problems with the places.sqlite database file in the Firefox Profile Folder.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bookmarks_history_and_toolbar_buttons_not_working_-_Firefox
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Bookmarks+not+saved#w_fix-the-bookmarks-file

It's definitely Firefox 18.0 that's broken, not our profiles. Fedora 17 64bit here - all I have to do is start Firefox, go to Pandora and let it play and my Bookmarks/menus get stupid slow. I tried every suggestion under the sun (listed here and Googling), nothing helped.

All I had to do was go get the older 17.0.1 RPMs from koji.fedoraproject.org, do a quick downgrade and boom - everything is fast again. No other changes, it's that easy and quick to get rid of this problem.

rpm -Uhv --oldpackage firefox-17.0.1-1.fc17.x86_64.rpm xulrunner-17.0.1-3.fc17.x86_64.rpm

Now everything is back to normal and I've blacklisted the upgrade until someone at Mozilla figures out what they broke and fixes it.

I have the same problem: Firefox 18.0.1 on a Ubuntu 10.04 has gone incredibly slow. _ONLY_ system change: upgrade to 18.0.1.

The system (2.4GHz single cpu, 1Gb RAM) goes from about 2% CPU load to 100% as soon as i click on 'bookmarks'. The response time on a bookmark is between 3 seconds on a freshly started browser, up to 20 sek at 100% CPU load, when the browser have been in operation for roughly an hour+ Memory use remain unchainged around 400Mb.

Sorry lads, i guess this lemon belongs in your lap. I am an absolutely abysmal programmer, so i cannot look into the code myself.

Just tried 18.0.2 and like 18.0.1 it seemed to be a little less slow at first, but as soon as I started to do some serious browsing and opening bookmark (sub)menus, it started to crawl again. And I'm still running with only a minimal add-on set-up. So, still broken... :(

Confirmed. 18.0.2 has the same issue.

Confirmed again. 18.0.2 still broken.

It is beyond me, how a simple drop-down menu can load _any_ CPU to 100%.... I mean... a drop-down menu?

you could try the following (this will remove your browser history though):

go to firefox > help > troubleshooting information and click on profile folder/show folder. a windows explorer window should open up, close firefox - in the folder rename the file named places.sqlite to something like oldplaces. afterwards restart firefox, go to firefox > bookmarks > import & backup > restore & choose the latest backup...

Madperson, i have already tried a completely clean install: remove firefox, purge all files ("apt-get purge firefox"), afterwards reinstalling and restoring bookmarks... Shouldn't that wipe the installation pretty good?

...Besides: Windows Explorer? On a Linux system? Please.

There is absolutely no doubt that Firefox is the problem and not our installations / profiles. I installed Firefox 18.0.2 on my HTPC which just had Windows 8 installed (from scratch, to a formatted HD) two weeks ago and has absolutely nothing extra installed on except the Windows updates and Microsoft Windows Media Center. It's as fresh and pristine as a PC can be because I use it for nothing except as a DVR using WMC. Anyway, after installing Firefox 18.0.2 and importing my bookmarks I was able to recreate the issue within seconds. I've switched to Chrome because FF has become too frustrating to use because of this. Hopefully the devs will fix it in the next update or two - if not, I'll delete FF and stick with Chrome.

It seems like the developers have their head in the sand on this issue or just really don't care...

It would definitely seem so. Extremely unpleasant, as I don't like Chrome at all, because it doesn't allow me to organise my bookmarks the way I want. I looked at Opera and that doesn't suit me either (for other reasons).

I have yet to try a couple of other browsers, like Midori, but I really want to stay with Firefox. However, anything past 17.0.1 is unusable.

it should be fixed in firefox 19 which is going to be released on tuesday feb.19. if you'd like you can also test it right now by switching to the beta version: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/channel/

edit: and just for reference, this appears to be bug #832641 (please don't post in bug reports)

Seems to work, I have been on 19 beta for a couple of weeks now

I guess what I'd like to know is how a bug like this ever got out of beta.

I don't utilize the beta versions myself but this problem was just so obvious the minute I started using Firefox 18 that its hard to believe someone didn't bring it up during the Beta and Mozilla then hold release of v18 ??

Is there anything to improve the Beta process that could be learned by this event for the future releases ?

The beta of 19 is looking good. It's still marginally slower than 17 on some actions, but the problem with the bookmark menu seems to have been fixed. I'll mark this as solved after the final release of 19.

Some notes

• FLASH This thread is about Firefox on Linux
  Flash will be different versions to Wndows users, support for Flash on Linux is being deprecated by Adobe
  The Flash protected mode issue may be ignored because it relates to Windows versions Vista and later NOT Linux.
• PLACESdo NOT delete places.sqlite unless you wish to risk loosing history and bookmarks. Instead as a troubleshooting method use a new additional profile, possibly with a copy of the current 'places.sqlite
• VERSIONS please sate clearly which Firefox version is being used, and whether it is a Mozilla version or your Distro's version, and of course what the distro is. (This thread has posts by multiple users, also note Firefox 19 will be released shortly)

Just thought I would add that Firefox 20 (Ubuntu canonical) seems to be working ok for me.

I may have had an intermittent occasional problem with marking bookmarks sometimes, but nothing I can reliably reproduce, and I have not yet checked CPU use when the problem occurs.

If you have problems with bookmarks it may be worth trying this add-on

• https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/places-maintenance/

Right; the problem is solved, my stay here has ended. One problem remain.

How the heck do i delete my user profile - not in FF, RIGHT HERE on the forum?

I have searched now for half an hour. There is no "delete profile" button anywhere, there is no options to remove it to be found. It is not possible to email the webmaster - or anyone else, for that matter.

It is bloody easier to get in touch with a lifetime prisoner.

The only place i can post anything, seem to be here - the very place i want to leave for good!

Can someone delete my profile, please?

How the heck do i delete my user profile - not in FF, RIGHT HERE on the forum?

There is no real need to delete your profile. Just adjust your settings and if you get emails from this thread use the link in the email to unsubscribe to this also.

If you have a strong wish for the profile to be deactivated you will need to post in the contributors forum and mark the thread for the attention of administrators, by putting [Attn Admin] in front of the thread title.

I am having the EXACT same problem. I have tried every proposed solution out there and nothing seems to work. The only thing I have not tried is downgrading to Firefox 17 which I am about to try right now. It is ridiculous how slow Firefox 18 is especially when dealing with posting and bookmarks. I have considered switching to I.E. which is a horrible solution to me but I cannot get IE to import my bookmarks properly so that is the only reason I have not switched yet.

Another problem I having is all of my settings on Mozilla forums and my account is set to English and yet almost all of the menus are in Arabic. What is up with that?

N.

OMG Amazing!!!! I just uninstalled v18 and reinstalled v17 and it is like night and day instantly. It runs beautifully with no problems whatsoever. I will not be upgrading until I read there has been a fix.

Thank you to the Users that suggested downgrading. You are a life saver

Now if I could just get this site to recognize I am a US user and not Arabic.!

N.

Darkfae,

Please start a new thread about the Arabic problem. That should be easy to solve. (post back hereto confirm you have done it I will look for the question tomorrow).

It is risky downgrading to fx17 (less so on Linux possibly) but you will have already seem comments up thread.

HELP please, Everyone / Anyone
Lets quickly add I hope you all as a matter of course turn on the telemetry monitoring. That was introduced precisely because of the problem with delays in spotting some regressions in the wild even when they hit large numbers of users.

• Send performance data to Mozilla to help improve Firefox

Sorry I think I was thinking about another thread when I posted this but

• Turning on telemetry still helps find problems
• It is useful to know if it is a mozilla or Distro version being used
• The bookmarks submenu problem is fixed in the bug, and the fix was impotant enough to include in Firefox 19

Is anyone able to demonstrate and
convince me that Firefox18 is slow but Firefox 17 is not ?

If that is the case it is a regression and a bug may need to be filed once we can demonstrate this.

Firstly are users with this problem using Mozilla builds of Firefox or builds from your distro ?

• I am mostly interested in the Mozilla builds,
  • if it is a distro please always state when posting what distro you use
  • for comparison purposed why not also install the Mozilla build temporarily as an additional browser
    Install Firefox on Linux

Secondly we need some Steps To Reproduce, for instance

1. install Multiple versions fx17, fx18, (& fx19 fx21 later this week)
   Include Nightly & current releases to check if this is still a problem or already resolved
2. set up a clean profile for each
3. run each in turn with some specified test on each and report results
4. may also need to repeat 2 above & test with a populated places.sqlite
   that complicates matters if the bug only shows up depending on profile/places content, because that is highly individual, but does explain why only a tiny percentage of users see this.

hello Darkfae, since other posters in this thread have already confirmed that they could solve the slow menus by updating to firefox 19 (which will be released later today), it think this is a better path to pursue than to downgrade...

John99, I honestly don't know what you're going on about. Read the thread and particularly the bits about this bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=832641. This problem has already been identified (and apparently fixed) by the developers.

Thank you for the reply to my post. I saw that there was a new update today. Since downgrading my browser has been working so beautifully that I am very hesitant to upgrade again but for posterity sake I will do so just to see if the issue has been resolved in the newer version.

Thank you again for your response.

Also, the Arabic problem that I mentioned seems to have fixed itself. I think maybe it had to do with the link that I clicked on to get here. Coming to the site directly from the FF link in Help seems to have fixed the issue.

N.