Skip to main content

How to add crash protection for custom plugins in Firefox 3.6.4

Firefox 3.6.4 was released yesterday, and as already published, brought added stability to the browser with the so called “out of process plugin” (OOP) architecture that allows plugins to run on their own process. This improve the overall Firefox stability and security.

With OOP, if a plugin crashes or stops working, it wouldn’t bring down the whole session as before because the plugin runs on its own process. By default, the crash protection is enabled for some of the most notorious plugins in existence, namely Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime and Microsoft Silverlight.

While Silverlight, Flash, and QuickTime are supported out of the box, you can actually run any plugin on its own process. So if a particular plugin is unstable and causing problems, you can force it run on a separate process and avoid browser crashes.

To do this first you have to find out the name of the plugin library. You can get the name by typing about:plugins in Firefox’s address bar and sifting through the data. Alternatively, you can open the browser’s plugin folder under Firefox installation directory and get the name of the DLL file inside it. On a typical Firefox installation you will find several DLL files under this folder. If you are unsure which is what, Google the names to identify them.

Once you have got the correct name of the plugin DLL file, create a boolean preference in about:config and name it dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.filename. Replace “filename” with the filename of the DLL file.

For example, if the DLL file is called nppdf32.dll (Adobe Reader plugin), name the boolean preference dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.nppdf32.dll

firefox-new-boolean

firefox-new-boolean2

Now set this preference to true and restart Firefox.

firefox-new-boolean3

This will force the Adobe Reader plugin to run on its own process. So if the Reader plugin crashes, Firefox will survive. Similarly, for Java, the preference must be named  dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npjp2.dll, and set to true. Remember to always use lowercase alphabets.

Conversely, you can disable OOPP for the enabled plugins by creating and setting their respective preference to false.

[via Mozilla Links]

Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 5, 2011 at 3:37 AM

    It crashes as much as before and as quickly as before and as with the other previous Firefox versions! Get the heck out of here!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Schedule Changes to Your Facebook Page Cover Photo

Facebook’s current layout, the so called Timeline, features a prominent, large cover photo that some people are using in a lot of different creative ways. Timeline is also available for Facebook Pages that people can use to promote their website or business or event. Although you can change the cover photo as often as you like, it’s meant to be static – something which you design and leave it for at least a few weeks or months like a redesigned website. However, there are times when you may want to change the cover photo frequently and periodically to match event dates or some special promotion that you are running or plan to run. So, here is how you can do that.
1 comment
Read more

69 alternatives to the default Facebook profile picture

If you have changed the default Facebook profile picture and uploaded your own, it’s fine. But if not, then why not replace that boring picture of the guy with a wisp of hair sticking out of his head with something different and funny?
332 comments
Read more

How to remove watermark from an image or picture

A watermark is any recognizable text, logo or pattern that appears over an image to identify the owner of the image and generally used to prevent unauthorized reuse of the image. Watermarks are usually transparent and can be difficult to remove. The difficulty or ease of removal depends on the content of the image and the position, color, size etc of the watermark.
210 comments
Read more