Month: July 2009

All Your Browser Crashes Are Belong to Flash!

Over the past year or so, I’ve been plagued with browser crashes of a specific type: Flash banners. There’s a certain type of Flash animation that gives IE8, Chrome, and Firefox absolute fits. Complete lock-up and eventual crash. Check out the screen shots:

chrome-flash-problems

Above: This is a Windows Live Flash-based banner locking up and crashing Google Chrome. Google seems to resist crashing the best of all the browsers, though when it tanks it takes the whole thing down – not just a single tab like they’d have you believe. I guess nothing works as well as the marketing tells us it does.

firefox-crash

Above: Here’s Firefox crashing on a Microsoft Bing Flash-based banner locking up and crashing Firefox. The behaviour is always the same: Firefox will peg one CPU core, and the memory usage will climb and climb – once it reaches around 1.5 GB, it will finally crash hard. I’ve lost count of the number of crash reports I’ve submitted to Mozilla.

firefox-bud-light-banner-browser-crash

Above: Another Firefox Flash banner crash, this time from Bud Light. Maybe Firefox doesn’t like lime beer.

firefox-crash2

Above: Yet another Firefox crash, this time on another computer, and from Budweiser.

Curious about what the actual crash report looks like when Firefox takes a dump? Dig this:

Description:
A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name:    AppHangB1
Application Name:    firefox.exe
Application Version:    1.9.0.3399
Application Timestamp:    49f1091d
Hang Signature:    cc8e
Hang Type:    0
OS Version:    6.0.6002.2.2.0.256.1
Locale ID:    1033
Additional Hang Signature 1:    2de4e2a1ef83764b153393c7ddb0c147
Additional Hang Signature 2:    75d7
Additional Hang Signature 3:    fdf5d60b2d0319bb6c73afe447f9eeff
Additional Hang Signature 4:    cc8e
Additional Hang Signature 5:    2de4e2a1ef83764b153393c7ddb0c147
Additional Hang Signature 6:    75d7
Additional Hang Signature 7:    fdf5d60b2d0319bb6c73afe447f9eeff

This has happened to me on multiple computers, multiple browsers, and no, it’s not related to extensions on Firefox. The only extensions I’ve had installed for quite a while now is the Canadian dictionary, and Xmarks. But since it crashes both Chrome and IE8, neither of which have add-on extensions, I’m more suspicious of Flash itself – meaning that this problem is related to the Flash plug-in that each of these browsers use. I’ve updated, un-installed, and re-installed Flash more times than I can count and it never helped. I’ve watched as a banner goes through certain animations, and the CPU is pegged, then it transitions to another part of the banner and the CPU calms down. This is all related to the animation that Flash banner designers are using, I’m sure of it.

Because IE8 doesn’t re-open tabs when you close and re-open it – didn’t IE7 do that? – using it for my serious browsing isn’t much of an option. I fire it up when I need to check a site that I know I won’t keep open for more than a few minutes. Chrome is more crash-proof than Firefox 3.1, so I’ve been using that for the past month or so. It’s a nice, fast browser – but doesn’t render everything properly and sometimes acts funky, so I fire up Firefox on a regular basis. It’s weird using three different browsers! I haven’t tried Firefox 3.5 much since it was released recently, so I might switch back and hope that it’s less prone to “Flash Crashes”…

Jackson 5: ABC

Michael Jackson, regardless of what he had become in the latter years of his life, was a talented performer – this medley of several Jackson 5 songs shows just how talented he was, even at a young age.

Three New Amazon.com Features I’d Like To See

I really like shopping from Amazon.ca in Canada – and I’d shop even more from them if they had more products. They’re getting better in Canada, adding some electronics, but by and large Amazon.ca is a pale reflection of Amazon.com. At any rate here are two ideas I wish Amazon would implement:

  • Discount Alert: There are some books and movies that I want, but I’m not willing to pay the current price for them. Case in point: The Shield Season 7 is $49.99 right now. I recently purchased seasons two through five for $29.99, which is a great price. I was holding off on buying seasons six and seven until they dropped in price. I was checking on Amazon.ca for something else a few days ago, and decided to look up The Shield again – and wouldn’t you know, season six dropped in price by $20 and was $29.99. Why doesn’t Amazon have a way for me to flag a particular product, then notify me when that product is on sale? If a product I want to pay less for goes on sale for a few days, but I’m not told about it, Amazon is losing out on a sale. Further, if Amazon had 5000 people who flagged an item and were waiting for it to go on sale, they could go back to the manufacturer of that product and say “Hey, we have 5000 people who will probably buy this product if we can get the price down – what can you do for us?” That’s a powerful market waiting to happen.
  • Softcover Alert: There are numerous books that I’m interested in reading, but not so much that I want to pay extra for the hardcover edition. The extra size and weight of hardcover books means I’ll only buy them if it’s a book that I’m really excited about reading (typically something by Terry Brooks). It’s easy to forget the name of a book you want to read, so I’d like to see Amazon.com allow customers to flag a hardcover book and be alerted when it’s available in softcover. This would be an easy way for Amazon to rack up some extra sales. Or they could go even further and allow the pre-order of the softcover book, months before it comes out. This would be much better than what I do now, which is add the book to my wish list with a note saying that I’m waiting for the softcover version. People don’t seem to read the notes, so I end up with a hardcover version…
  • Series Alerts: More often than not, I’ll buy the first book in a series, read it, and forget about the next books in the series until many months later when they finally come out. It’s not that I don’t want to read the next book in the series, it’s that there’s no easy way for me to be notified about the new book in the series. If Amazon.com allowed me to flag a series and get alerted when a new book is released, or even pre-order the next book, it would simply show up at my door when it comes out. Again, easy sales for Amazon.com and a lot of convinience for me as a customer.

Object Collection: American Coins

I figured the 4th of July was a good day to publish my collection of American coin objects that I’ve scanned over the past week. All the coins are provided in transparent PNG format. Coins are tricky to scan – the edges on some of these coins aren’t perfect, but they should look good when dropped into a layout. I started these scans at 600dpi but had shifted up to 900dpi at the end where I scanned the $1 coin – I’ll be using 900dpi from now on for small object scanning. Enjoy!

American-$1-Coin-Front

US $1 dollar coin front
[Download high-res version, transparent PNG]

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