Firefox problems/questions

[DanDiver]

I just switched over to Firefox from IE7 and multiple TABS keep opening and I can't find my old IE FAVORITES.... Help!!!!! Seems if I go from one web site to another a "TAB" is opened and does not want to close! All of my IE favorites have disappeared. How do I get them back? ?

[Rockdoc]

Firefox and IE don't share the same bookmarks file so you have to import them from one to the other. Help is at hand, though! The tool you need is called XMarks (formerly FoxMarks) and it works by storing your bookmarks on a server. Your account is free and there are applications to run with both browsers so that you would beging by uploading your IE bookmarks to the server and then download them to Firefox. Whenever you add, move or delete a bookmark, XMarks will upload the new version and download it to any other browser using the application. It's all protected by a username and password so your info is as safe as you choose to make it.

What's very handy, if you're clumsy as I was, is that it keeps several versions of your bookmarks file so that you can revert to an earlier version very easily.

You can find this very useful tool at https://www.xmarks.com/

Keith

[DanDiver]

sounds like I'm sort of screwed! I converted over to Firefox before I knew I would have to store my favorites.... Really wish I had know this was going to be a problem as I had 10's of so called important favorites! DAMN....... Maybe a restore might work.

Seems important enough that many would complain about it and the fix would have been offered. Maybe I just didn't see it.

[Rockdoc]

It's only a few minutes' work.

Keith

[Ted Shred]

sounds like I'm sort of screwed! I converted over to Firefox before I knew I would have to store my favorites.... Really wish I had know this was going to be a problem as I had 10's of so called important favorites! DAMN....... Maybe a restore might work.

Seems important enough that many would complain about it and the fix would have been offered. Maybe I just didn't see it.

If you go to the bookmarks pull down menu at the top of FF the last folder should say "From Internet Explorer" They're all in there.

[Ted Shred]

I just switched over to Firefox from IE7 and multiple TABS keep opening and I can't find my old IE FAVORITES.... Help!!!!! Seems if I go from one web site to another a "TAB" is opened and does not want to close! All of my IE favorites have disappeared. How do I get them back? ?

As far as the "TABS" are concerned. Go to "tools" "options" then "tabs" and change the settings.

[DanDiver]

If you go to the bookmarks pull down menu at the top of FF the last folder should say "From Internet Explorer" They're all in there.

I must be missing something because following your instructions, the last item under bookmarks is my home page. Nothing in the folder says "From Internet Explorer." Still haven't been able to locate the old web sites! Can't be this hard.... Can it?

[Ted Shred]

I must be missing something because following your instructions, the last item under bookmarks is my home page. Nothing in the folder says "From Internet Explorer." Still haven't been able to locate the old web sites! Can't be this hard.... Can it?

In FF go to "FILE" and then "Import"

[DanDiver]

In FF go to "FILE" and then "Import"


BIG SMILE ! :-) YAHOO !!!! Thanks Ted... very much!

[DanDiver]

Guess I'll have to start paying for IT support....

Got another situation! Seems my CPU usage ( I did a cont-alt-del) is running about 99 to 100% when browsing in Firefox. Only Firefox is running. Didn't think that IX 7 used this much. Is this normal?

[Ted Shred]

Guess I'll have to start paying for IT support....

Got another situation! Seems my CPU usage ( I did a cont-alt-del) is running about 99 to 100% when browsing in Firefox. Only Firefox is running. Didn't think that IX 7 used this much. Is this normal?

That one's above my pay-grade, sorry. Andy?

[DanDiver]

That one's above my pay-grade, sorry. Andy?

Maybe I panicked too quickly as it seems to be back to normal. Must have been something going on the in the background that did not appear. Think It's time to do a pest scrub. Thanks again for all of the hand holding and help. I think I'm going to like Firefox...

[astuber]

Guess I'll have to start paying for IT support....

Got another situation! Seems my CPU usage ( I did a cont-alt-del) is running about 99 to 100% when browsing in Firefox. Only Firefox is running. Didn't think that IX 7 used this much. Is this normal?

I occasionally have the same problem if I leave Firefox open for a long period of time. I found that when I increased the offline cache that things got better. I would bet that when Firefox was opening multiple tabs that it reached the cache limit. You can increase the cache size fairly easily. Tools->Options->Advanced-Network.

[axamax]

If you really want to play around with Firefox type "about:config" in the address bar, but be careful what you change.

[DanDiver]

Everyone - Thanks...

I'm getting a Firefox education and liking it. Some real nice features and as I get more comfortable, I'm sure I'll find more. I really appreciated the quick help. I could probably do away with all of my web sites except for this on. Definitely my favorite, making the loss of "favorites" ironic!....

[dshealey]

I have been using FF for about 3 years now, like it quite a bit, but as in any application there are things which are better in others. I have found a few sites that will not work well with FF.

I was at my daughters last month waiting for our 7th grandchild to be born (it was another girl, now she has 5!). I had put Firefox on her system due to IE being sloooooow. I noticed after a couple days that when opened, it would come up with all the tabs open that it were open when previously closed. A setting I was not aware of until I did some looking, you can set it to open with either "home page", "blank", or "previously open". I set it back from "previously open" to "home page". That was a little disconcerting, to start it up and have pages that my daughter, or grandaughter had previously opened come up.

On my laptop I installed Google Chrome. Playing with it a little, so far I like it. It is faster than either IE or FF, but that may change as Google adds fluff to it over time.

[DanDiver]

With all of my requests for help, maybe we should have an IT section? I get better IT help on this site than any other I've tried. Thanks for the tab tip. I have all of the previous tabs coming up and now know how to get it to stop.

[sbrown]

David, There is a Firefox Add On called "IE Tab" that you can install in Firefox that will allow you to switch the the IE engine inside of Firefox. This will allow you to work with those sites that do not play well with Firefox.

Sherman

[sbrown]

Dan, Firefox has something they call "Add-ons". These are small custom applications that you can download and install into Firefox to add specific capabilities to the browser. You can search the list of apps at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox . They can be a little addictive. There are thousands of them. Just be aware that each one you add will increase the memory used by Firefox. So if you try one and it does not do exactly what you want it is best to uninstall it and reduce the memory used.

Sherman

[nelson61]

Dan, Firefox has something they call "Add-ons". These are small custom applications that you can download and install into Firefox to add specific capabilities to the browser. You can search the list of apps at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox . They can be a little addictive. There are thousands of them. Just be aware that each one you add will increase the memory used by Firefox. So if you try one and it does not do exactly what you want it is best to uninstall it and reduce the memory used.

Sherman

Heres one of my favorites
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2592
I use 2560x1600 resolution and reading text can be tough. Installing this will increase text size and more.

[PMitchell]

Everyone - Thanks...

I'm getting a Firefox education and liking it. Some real nice features and as I get more comfortable, I'm sure I'll find more. I really appreciated the quick help. I could probably do away with all of my web sites except for this on. Definitely my favorite, making the loss of "favorites" ironic!....

Dan,
Another nice FF feature is that you can do a search right from the address window. I get the right hit 90% of the time. Not sure if it defaults to a specific search engine or has one built in.

For example, if you are at your home page and type bmwlt you will get to this site

[Razmataz]

A little tip on reading small print pages. If you hold down the Ctrl key & hit the + key until you like it, it will increase the font for that page. Of course the minus key does the opposite. Helps my old eyes a lot.

[DanDiver]

Nice features - I Like both the "search" and type size. Sort of reminds me of DOS in the old days. Simply function keys.... DOS NEVER crashed, did everything I wanted it to do and it was simple....

Something that I have found that I really like ( don't know where it came from) is that all of my misspellings are underlined in a broken red line and are very easy to correct. Must be a function of Firefox, as it just started... I am really liking it.. THANKS FOR THE PUSH.

[SilverBuffalo]

I'm happy to hear you got your questions answered and you're enjoying Firefox.

I didn't fully realize "how much" I liked it until I used it long enough to get used to it
and then for some reason went back to IE to do something else.

Instead of "you don't know what you've got till it's gone"
it was more like "you don't know what annoyances you've put up with till you got something better".

I like Firefox!

[williamssam81]

In my opinion, firefox is the best web browser. It is very user friendly. This web browser is faster, more secure, and fully customizable to online life. Firefox includes tabbed browsing, a spell checker, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, and a search system that uses Google. Firefox runs on various versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and many other Unix-like operating systems.

[DanDiver]

I cannot believe how much faster it is that my previous edition of IX7. It has to be multiple times faster as I use to sometime do other thinks waiting for something to load, and I'm on a high speed ISP. It really seems to work well with everything I'm using and as I get more comfortable with the options, I'll probably like it even more. I would not have switched without the encouragement of this forum.

[astuber]

I cannot believe how much faster it is that my previous edition of IX7. It has to be multiple times faster as I use to sometime do other thinks waiting for something to load, and I'm on a high speed ISP. It really seems to work well with everything I'm using and as I get more comfortable with the options, I'll probably like it even more. I would not have switched without the encouragement of this forum.

Google Chrome is even faster than Firefox but at the trade-off of being a much more bare bones browers

[dshealey]

David, There is a Firefox Add On called "IE Tab" that you can install in Firefox that will allow you to switch the the IE engine inside of Firefox. This will allow you to work with those sites that do not play well with Firefox.

Sherman I tried that over a year ago, never was able to get it to work. I just went back to see if there was a later version, and instead downloaded "IE View". It works by re-loading the current page in IE. Just tried it once, will have to see how this works out.

I also see that there is now more than one "IE Tab" add on available.

[DanDiver]

Thanks David - I am just constantly amazed at how much faster Firefox is compared to my old IE 7. Maybe I was doing something wrong, and this is just anecdotal, but Firefox seems to be multiple times faster than IE.

I love the tips from this forum and have eliminated lots of wasted minutes, ( I would read or multi-task) waiting for a page to come up inside different web sites. Can't imagine what Microsoft is doing to IE make it so slow. Or maybe it's something that Firefox is not doing!

Guess the next move is to Google Chrome once the bug are worked out.

[DanDiver]

Just one more thing I've noticed and that is that EVERYTHING on my computer is much faster. I did not realize that switching to Firefox would speed up my computer wake-up.

Previously with IE 7, it seemed to take quite a while for the computer to wake up, (occasionally it seemed to take forever) and allow me to start to "surf" or get into Outlook. Now it is simply fast. Wake-up is very fast.

Even my wife goes to my PC for a quick web site look instead of her's because it is so slow. She is close to switching to Firefox.... but afraid since she has Vista and wonders if it will work OK. Is it really possible that switching to Firefox has caused my entire computer to operate much faster? I thought it only effected the browser.

[SilverBuffalo]

Is it really possible that switching to Firefox has caused my entire computer to operate much faster?
I don't know the answer to your question Dan, it could be.

I can tell you that my LT runs better every time I wash it! :)

Attitude is everything!

[andy]

Is it really possible that switching to Firefox has caused my entire computer to operate much faster? I thought it only effected the browser.

That can be answered with a very clear Yo. The switch to FF most likely did not make your computer faster BUT many, many times malicious sites do drive by, or better click by attacks on IE by downloading malicious spamware, badware, and other crap. Of these many, many are directed against IE, because it has almost NIL defences.

Now with that said, yes it is possible that your PC runs faster because you don't load all the crap software that was downloaded onto yuor computer while running IE, but not because you are no longer running , but much more because you are no longer running the malware that was in your IE profile.

Make sense?

[mtrevelino]

Did you try the following:

Open My Computer
Right click on"C"
Click on properties
Click on "Disk Cleanup"
Click on ok

This will clear out all of the internet's and computers temporary files. Just make sure the "Compress Old Files" is NOT selected, as this will take a long time to do. This make both IE and FF open and operate faster.

[DanDiver]

Did you try the following:

Open My Computer
Right click on"C"
Click on properties
Click on "Disk Cleanup"
Click on ok

This will clear out all of the internet's and computers temporary files. Just make sure the "Compress Old Files" is NOT selected, as this will take a long time to do. This make both IE and FF open and operate faster.

Yep! Really made no difference. Switching to Firefox made everything faster.

[nelson61]

And yes your wife can run FF on Vista..no problems.

[DanDiver]

And yes your wife can run FF on Vista..no problems.


Thanks....