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DKN117
Participant
August 16, 2013
Question

Lag/Performance Problems With Firefox

  • August 16, 2013
  • 1 reply
  • 1124 views

Whenever I watch anything requiring Adobe Flash (a YouTube vid, an anime episode on Crunchyroll, the latest episode of a show on RoosterTeeth's website, etc) on my Firefox (Version 22), it's horribly laggy and slow, with the picture AND sound lagging and 'skipping', and occasionally for YouTube the image will 'pixellate' and/or the sound quality will nosedive. According to the right-click option, my Firefox uses Flash 11.8. However, watching a vid on my Internet Explorer 7, which uses Flash 10.0, produces no such problems; the picture and sound are excellent. This problem has persisted ever since shortly after I first installed and began using Firefox earlier this year, when I (apparently mistakenly) accepted the offer to update my Firefox's Adobe Flash to Version 11 (it kept giving me "your Flash is outdated" messages that I had to click away to watch a vid, and that annoyed me so I wanted to make it stop).

This problem has been plaguing me for several months, and now that RoosterTeeth no longer supports IE7, I am unable to properly watch their new episodes. I have tried nearly everything - disabling Hardware Acceleration (with Firefox AND with Adobe Flash), having other tabs closed, several Flash updates as they become available since this problem's inception, upgrading my graphics driver, desperate prayer to God (and I'm a fairly secular man), EVERYTHING.

Could someone please tell me what is causing this months-running problem and how I could possibly hope to fix it?

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

C_F_McBlob
C_F_McBlob
Inspiring
August 17, 2013

IE7 was an abomination and is Microsoft's shortest lived build of their terrible browser. Even if you're running XP (you didn't specify your OS), you should be running IE 8. That would at least take care of one issue. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/internet-explorer-8-details.aspx

Usually the pixelation is cause by outdated or bad video drivers. Since you've updated those, it may be a matter of not enough VRAM.

You may want to try a "clean install" of your FF Flash Player plugin.How do I do a clean install of Flash Player?

D
DKN117Author
Participant
August 17, 2013

I have Windows Vista.

Also, I'm scared that upgrading to IE8 will bring with it the Flash update and then proceed to give me the same problems that I already get in Firefox. Right now, my IE7 is the only place I can reliably watch YouTube and stuff, and I'm afraid of losing that.

C_F_McBlob
C_F_McBlob
Inspiring
August 17, 2013

The thing is: the ability to watch videos and access Flash content IS NOT determined by your browser nearly as much as it is by the content itself and the encoding in it. As a web designer I have experience with this. There's code that determines what version of Flash Player is being used to access the content and if it meets or exceeds a minimum setting determined by the designer.

Example:

<!-- This param tag prompts users with Flash Player 6.0 r65 and lower to download the latest version of Flash Player. Delete it if you don't want users to see the prompt. -->

      <param name="expressinstall" value="scripts/expressInstall.swf">

That SWF File has actionscript code in it to check if the Flash Player version is 6.0 or higher, and if it isn't, it shows the "update your Flash Player" link. Here's where this will affect you if you keep using IE 7.

IE 7 will soon run out of compatibility with newer versions of Flash Player, and when the site managers update their code the require Flash Player 12 or 13 or whatever it will be when IE 7 is no longer supported, your ONLY option will be to upgrade your browser to 8. Of course by then, IE 8 may not be supported anymore and since you CAN'T use 9 or anything higher with Vista, then you'll be out of luck altogether without upgrading to Windows 7 or 8. So, afraid or not, you're getting closer to losing that anyway.

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