To downgrade to Firefox 3.6 first uninstall Firefox 4, but do not select the option to "Remove my Firefox personal data". If you select that option it will delete your bookmarks, passwords and other user data.

You can then install the latest version of Firefox 3.6 available from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-older.html - it will automatically use your current bookmarks, passwords etc.

To avoid possible problems with downgrading, I recommend going to your profile folder and deleting the following files if they exist - extensions.cache, extensions.rdf, extensions.ini, extensions.sqlite and localstore.rdf. Deleting these files will force Firefox to rebuild the list of installed extensions, checking their compatibility, and reset toolbar customizations.

For details of how to find your profile folder see https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Profiles

What problems are you having with Firefox 4?

Thanks very much for the help!

Earlier today, I submitted Firefox 4 bug report # 652357, title= "Zooming via Ctrl+/Ctrl- resizes text but not frames that contain the text":

(I hope that I'm using the correct terminology to describe what's going on). When I zoom in via Ctrl+, the text font size increases, but the frames that contain the text do not increase in size, with the result that either (a) text is truncated, or (b) text in one frame overlaps text in another frame, making text in both frames unreadable. Until this problem has been resolved, I will revert to Firefox 3.X.

Phillip

The instructions and the link to get the older V3.6 is a life saver. THANKS! The upgrade to V4 was an utter and complete disaster. I can't begin to tell you how much time this has cost me. You need to QUIT recommending this upgrade and START publishing serious alerts about it. I personally think that whoever concocted this completely useless abomination should be fired outright. No ...make that hung by their thumbs in public for flogging. Firefox ought to distance themselves from this horrible thing as fast as they can. Maybe like...the devil made me do it or ...I was out to lunch and someone came in and played a really bad joke...or... U get the idea. My guess is people will go to the other browsers in droves after trying V4. Sorry Mozilla...U screwed up on this one big time.

Hi Phillip

Look in the menu options "View"/"Zoom"and you will find an option "Zoom text only". You may have inadvertently switched that option on. If so, just uncheck it and the system frames and text zoom at the same rate when you zoom in/out.

Hope this helps NT

My problems with the new version include lack of the ability to use add-ons that I had downloaded for 3.x but are reported as incompatible with version 4 - such as:

Real Player Downloads e.g. from YouTube. Instead of waiting for the stop/start playing of videos in You Tube etc, I used to download them to my desktop via Real Player and play them without the constant stop/start interruptions. I now can't download them at all with version 4 - it's incompatible!

I also had a decent animated browser-top theme. That has now gone, and most of the available themes are again, incompatible with version 4!

It's also incompatible with my AVG Antivirus system!

It's incompatible with Skype, with security/stability issues!

It's also incompatible with PC Sync 2.

Version 4 reported these incompatibilities and disabled the appropriate facilities.

I'm also getting problems with my Flash Player, which I'm constantly having to uninstall and reinstall!

I'm also getting messages that my screen resolution is less than 1024 on Yahoo, which it decidedly isn't!

I was looking forward so much to a supposedly faster, slicker version 4, but have been thoroughly disappointed so far!

Neillythere

Hi Phillip

I forgot to add that you can also use the control key + mouse-wheel to zoom in and out. I learnt this recently on another website. It's great!

Regards NT

I agree with Mike 100%!!! I abhor this so-called upgrade!

Thanks for the link to down-grade. However, this is only a temporary fix. We can't stay with an old version forever. Eventually, we'll have to move forward.

I found 4.0 to be much slower, YES, slower! I hated the new placement of the tabs - that alone is enough to make me switch browsers!!! And, who killed the "back button?" In older versions, you could go back one page at a time, or use drop down to go back to a specific point very quickly.

I could go on, but I won't. I didn't like much about 4.0 at all, and I lost too much time trying to figure this out, and then getting everything back in order. Ahhhhh. :-)

Someone, please fix 4.0 so it's customizable to look and run like old versions.

Thanks again for link!

When I go to a new page it freezes

Hi Dixiecharm

You can easily revert back to the old position of the tabs by right clicking on the menu bar and deselecting "tabs on top".

Regards NT

I like Firefox, and usually have liked the upgrades, but this 4.0 seems like a step backwards. The 'save and quit' option was removed, but I used that as a reminder, if there was something I wanted to look at in the morning I used 'save and quit'. With 4.0 I need to put a sticky note on the computer to remind myself to use the 'recover previous session' which is silly.

Minor problems are the bookmarks on the right, which hides my clock and makes the sub bookmarks show on the left. It may be reasonable to move the tabs to the top and put most menu items in the Firefox box, but there was very little documentation about customizing toolbar and tab positions.

It seems like someone got enthusiastic for having a new look and didn't want to think about what people would lose. So I want to go back to 3.6 and maybe will need to try out some other browsers.

Thanks for trying

My daughter prefers Firefox 3.6.16 over version 4.0 because the older version remembers the tabs that were open at the time it was last closed and automatically reopens those tabs.