Get Around Flash Videos that Crash Firefox

Day 48

I blogged on day 24 the woes of watching flash videos with Firefox. Every third video or so will cause Firefox (and sometimes the entire Eee) to freeze for about a minute before presenting a pop up asking if you want to terminate the program. Conveniently, when Firefox restarts it asks if you'd like to restore tabs from the previous session. I could live with this if I didn't have to wait for the error message - it feels like forever when you're anxiously waiting to Barry Maniroll yourself.


Here's a simple workaround. Instead of starting Firefox by double clicking on the icon or choosing it from the launch menu, open it using the console. In easy mode, press ctrl+alt+t, or in advanced mode select it from launch-->applications-->systems (I actually have it added to my desktop for quick access). Simply type "Firefox" and hit enter. You can even add a web address in the console to save a step once Firefox is open.

The advantage to this is that if/when a flash video freezes, you don't have to wait for the termination message to display. Simply close the console, and Firefox will terminate. When you reload it, it will ask if you want to continue from where you left off.

This doesn't fix the Linux/Flash problem, but using the console does make it a bit more tolerable.