Having been recently burned, I've been eyeing these kind of "the sky is falling" reports with a bit more scrutiny.  So I was intrigued to come across this jewel of a headline "I Want To Love Firefox 3.5, But It Keeps Crashing On Me" written by TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld and reprinted in The Washington Post.  That's a potential blockbuster piece, if it's true!

Except it really isn't.  I've been using Firefox extensively (4+ hours a day) since at least 2.0, on both Fedora Linux (6-9 editions over the past few years), Windows XP, Windows Vista, and most recently Windows 7.  My experience across a number of systems is that since 2.0 Firefox's stability has been steadily increasing. 

Up until the 2.5 release, flash advertisements on my Fedora install would common pop up strange phantom windows.  If you attempted to close these windows, without warning, it would exit all of Firefox.  These problems mostly disappeared with 2.5, and with 3.0 they've been long gone.  All around 3.5 is very stable.  If anything, I love Firefox more because it doesn't crash on me!

So that's just my own personal experience.  Let's look at other users.  Mr. Schonfield cites a Twitter search for "firefox 3.5 crash" (is that a source?) -- of 14 posts, one is referencing his article.  Great -- I can find at least 30 (twice as many!) positive comments about Firefox 3.5 in my two articles on it I wrote at launch time (though I'd hardly call that a conclusive source).

In such cases, the best option would be to launch into a complete and exhaustive survey, along with thorough testing.  But let's face it -- for most news writers that's not feasible in terms of money and time.  Barring such an approach, the next best option is logic.  The logical conclusion would have been to note that one of the users on the Twitter feed admitted that their incompatibility was due to a add-on (and that the crashes were reproducible).  With that in mind I returned to launch articles and found this comment by user slider169: "[Firefox] crashed right after the update because 50% of my add-on aren't compatible."

A clue, Sherlock!  So there's your likely culprit -- if your Firefox is crashing, its likely due the add-ons you have.  With a wealth of add-ons on most users installs its no wonder some such problems arise.  Mozilla could opt like Microsoft not to allow add-ons, but instead they allow them and conscientiously work with add-on developers to fix such problems when they're reported.

Mr. Schonfeld however, failed to report what add-ons were installed on his crash-prone install, and even what OS he was on, making it hard to figure out why exactly his particular install was so glitchy (my bets are on his add-ons). 

Still that didn't stop him from writing, "[T]here is one persistent bug that might push me to another browser: it keeps crashing on me.  This usually happens when I have too many tabs open (like 15 or 20, which is not unusual for me towards the end of the day). The whole thing will just freeze and I'll have to force the browser to quit. When I relaunch I get a message like the one above, sheepishly saying, 'Well, this is embarrassing.' Yes, it is embarrassing. A modern browser should be able to handle dozens of open tabs, and if there is a problem with one, it should be able to isolate it and allow you to carry with your business in the other tabs."

It's okay, Mr. Schonfeld, I've been there before.  You think that you have a big story on your hands of a glaring problem in a marquee product.  However, you live and you learn -- when the problem turns out to be exaggerated and your piece is criticized, you'll be a bit wiser next time.  For now, though, we can rest assured -- the sky isn't falling and unless you have incompatible add-ons, your Firefox should be nice and stable -- and ready for your love.