As the old joke goes, if it hurts, you shouldn't do it.
So why did I keep going back to the WRC home page? Especially when the browser just crashed every time?
Because I'd just loaded Firefox 3, the real thing, after all the betas and all the hype, and wanted to see how it worked out. And every time I tried the link back to the home page of www.wrc.com, the entire application just disappeared from the screen (taking all and any other tabs I might have opened en route), asking me if I wanted to send a report to the Firefox team. If this sort of thing is happening to even a small percentage of the downloads (3 million or so in the first four hours, according to Wikipedia, although I can't find confirmation of this figure on the spreadfirefox site itself), then they are going to be one very busy bunch of developers.
The WRC site looked like a good test - not entirely straightforward, lots of internal links, and video. It plays like a dream on IE, but Firefox won't recognise or play half the videos, and keeps on crashing. I had been having a similar problem with IE, but eventually tracked it down to injudicious use of the pre-fetch function in IEPro, something I've now given up. However, I can't find a similar reason in Firefox, and I'm reluctant to switch back to the pretender unless something concrete turns up. IE has been growing on me recently - I'm no fan of a monoculture from a security point of view, but the integration and just pure and simple ease of use and dependability are too good to pass up just on a point of principle.
Anyone want to buy a slightly tatty, one owner only, copy of Firefox 3?
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