My website crashes Firefox. What do I do?

Question

My website doesn't use Flash or any plugins; just javascript (jQuery, Google Maps). It doesn't crash FF 3.6 all the time, but it usually does after a few minutes. It can happen on lots of different pages. Sometimes it crashes when I'm scrolling the page, sometimes when I'm interacting with a control.

Where do I even start debugging? Should I go through the hassle of attaching gdb to Firefox and getting a stack trace, then praying that it sheds some light on the offending code?

Answer 1

You need to do what you can to track down the problem. Test these things:

• Are other browsers other than Firefox affected? i.e. IE, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc.
• Firefox has an Error Console. Usually javascript errors would pop up there. Have a look.
• Have you tried Firebug? It's a really great tool to observe how fast each requests take, and what scripts are doing. You can even set breakpoints and run tests on a console directly in Firebug.
• When's the last time your site didn't crash? Check what you've added, and the error may come from the code you've added, or the plugins.
• Try disable all of your Firefix plugins to see if it still crashes.
• etc.

You can also give us a link here and see if our Foxes crash as well.

Answer 2

Here's what I did that at least gave me a little more information.

When the browser crashes, make sure you send the details to Mozilla. Load up about:crashes in Firefox and click the top link to Mozilla's crash database. It will take a while to load then give you info on your crash.

My particular crash is related to Firebug/Flash. And it's been fixed as of a few weeks ago. Hopefully it'll be out in a point release soon, and I'm going to continue trying to isolate the cause.

Answer 3

Roll back your JavaScript until you can pinpoint the exact bit of code causing the crash.