Showing posts with label V27.0.1. Show all posts
Showing posts with label V27.0.1. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Noscript, Cleaning up Firefox

Firefox has been getting flaky.  It will get stuck in loops, sucking up all CPU time, hogging humungous amounts of memory, and slowing to a crawl.  Plus opening unasked for ad windows.  That last is scary, if Firefox will open an ad window just 'cause a website asked it too, it can plant a virus, or do anything else bad that you can imagine. Standard Firefox allows websites to load code into your browser and execute it on your computer.  Which is a gaping security hole.  This code is called "a script" which doesn't sound so bad, but it is bad. 
   There is a fix.  Get NoScript, a Firefox "extension".  Google will find it for you.  NoScript blocks all scripts, along with other flaky things like Java.  Properly coded websites will continue to work properly.  Cheap ass websites, such as blogger,  stop working 'cause they rely on scripts to make 'em work.  Noscript allows you to re enable scripts for the websites that have to have scripts. 
   Since installing NoScript on both Trusty Desktop and Antique Laptop the Firefox lockups have ceased, the unasked for ad windows have gone away.  Re enabling scripts for the low speed websites that rely upon them is easy.
   The Mozilla help pages say good things about Noscript, clearly the Firefox programmers know about NoScript and consider it a good thing.