My Geek Notes

After searching and searching for some sort of solution to fix the crashing that happens with Firefox on Linux when exiting a page with Flash 9 content, I finally found a good workaround that will get me by until someone at Mozilla or Adobe gets it fixed for good. I found this solution while digging through a couple of threads on some message boards. Once I saw it posted a couple of times I figured I’d give it a try myself, and go figure, it’s working!

1. Open up a browser window to some web page that has Flash 9 content on it - Yahoo, Digg, MSN, CNN or whatever - they all have ads in Flash (most times).
2. Move that browser to another desktop or minimize it - make sure not to close it.
3. Open a new browser and use that as your primary browser.

The key seems to be that when you close the only page with Flash on it, it crashes and kills Firefox at the same time. If you have another browser window open then it keeps the Flash alive there and anything you open or close on your primary window doesn’t crash. Simple and stupid, but I’m game until someone finds something better.