The Battle of Two Softwares: Microsoft vs Firefox!

[UPDATE: As interesting as the development between Microsoft and Mozilla Firefox may be, see below, it does NOT correct for the occasional blinking and dis-funcionality of the Minimize, Restore, and Close buttons in Firefox. Bookmark the page about workarounds for the Close Button Blinking problem or FOLLOW through Google Friends Connect below to stay updated.]

The plot thickens. According to the analytics data from this and a few other blogs, the usage of Microsoft Internet Explorer had another few % drop in September. Firefox is holding its ground while Chrome gained about 2-3%. It looks like a Battle of the Browser, the Battle for Your attention among the "giants"! But back to the case at hand:


Several Firefox users Matt, Jae, and Hanna among others have recently reported their Firefox browsers misbehaving badly. The symptom was a blinking (flashing) Close, Minimize or Restore Button in the window frame of Firefox. The blinking buttons flashed on and off upon pressing them. The functionality of the buttons was nil. They didn't work.

Today, a pop-up has appeared through my Firefox. I had never before received such a pop-up from Firefox! Quoting:
FIREFOX:
These Add-ons Have been blocked:
  • Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant 1.1 [Blocked add-on]
  • Windows Presentation Foundation 3.5.30729.1 [Blocked add-on]
These Add-ons have a high risk of causing stability or security problems and have been blocked. Restart is required.
Incredible! I checked and yes, I had .NET Framework Assistant 1.1 Extension installed in my Firefox. And yes, I had the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Plugin installed in my Firefox. You can indeed find the .NET Framework Assistant and WPF in my original problem report to Firefox. I have yet to see if this will be a solid workaround for the problem described. Firefox is quiet about the details.

Let me know in a comment if you had a similar problem with your Firefox and if this workaround (Workaround #4) of disabling the two Microsoft Add-ons or if any other 3 workarounds given here helped you or maybe NOT! Let me know either way! Just leave a comment below.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had this and have noticed no difference, not sure I use the two items anyway.
Anthony

Disclosure said...

Anthony, Thanks for writing. This is just a possible workaround, it is not clear that this will fix your blinking buttons problem. Here are 3 other workarounds:

Here are 3 other workarounds for the blinking buttons: http://annoyances-resolved.blogspot.com/2009/10/firefox-vista-close-button-blinking.html

Anonymous said...

I did not have any problems, but I had a similar popup today, saying that this NET Framework thing might cause stability problems (without saying that it has been blocked). This was while I was watching a video on lovemeow.com which was indeed running like a stop-and-go-thing (what often happens when watching videos online, though). I just clicked the popup away and did NOT restart the browser. Instead a Java update appeared a while later, and after I had done this, the add-on-box in Firefox appeared telling me that a new add-on had been installed (which most likely was the Java Quick Starter Add-On). On that occasion I saw that the NET Framework thing had been disabled with a red exclamation mark over the symbol. I never had a WPF add-on, though.
I hope this could help. I just would like to know, whether I can deinstall this NET Framework thing or whether I have to do something else after having clicked on deinstall.

Disclosure said...

Anonymous, thanks for your contribution. Online reports agree with you that the uninstall .NET button is greyed out. With no obvious way to uninstall it. So .NET Framework is disabled but not uninstalled. There are more complicated ways to totally uninstall it. However, if you think about it, it may be better to keep it, disabled. Reason: At least it won't get secretly installed again, and even if it does get installed, it may still stay disabled!

Anonymous said...

The pop up from Microsoft's framework error message or the "Just in Time Debugging" from Microsoft is annoying but a very easy fix.

Go to the control panel under the Start Button. Click on Internet Options Turn off the Microsoft Debuggers and your Firefox will never have any more issues. :-)

Matt @ firefox window close, min, max buttons blinking problem still unresolved said...

Thanks Anonymous. In other news, Microsoft on Thursday released a fix to the Firefox WPF plug in. It is funny how they recommend to apply the patch "if you do not have [WPF] disabled".

From msfn.org:

``Firefox users who are running the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) plug-in and do not have it disabled should also apply this security update. For more information regarding this issue, please see the FAQ section for HTML Component Handling Vulnerability – CVE-2009-2529.''

Kainsmoney said...

Microsoft cant be trust . I wonder if i should keep updating everything with Windows update or not .

Disclosure said...

Kainsmoney, that is up to you to decide. I have not had any problems with regular Vista updates for Vista Home Premium for the past two and a half years.

Anonymous said...

JCB in East TN My Issue: Win7 vs AdBlock Plus

For several years I'd been using Vista on a HP Pavilion a6217c machine with virtually no complaints. I browsed with Firefox and had AdBlock Plus installed, and my computing life was fine!

I recently upgraded by purchasing a new HP Pavilion Elite HPE-140f with Win7, Firefox 3.6.3 as my browser, and AdBlock Plus would simply not load and function. I kept getting 'Installation Error -203' which, when you search, means nothing - at least that's what I could determine. I'm not the local village idiot, but I am not the sharpest computer geek either. The Mozilla site is not intuitively helpful and neither is the AdBlock Plus site. Several hours of determined Googling later, I located this site, and behold! A useful answer!

Microsoft .Net Framework Assistant was indeed the problem culprit. I disabled it, restarted Firefox, reloaded AdBlock Plus's most current version, restarted Firefox again, and now it works as well as it did on my older Vista machine! As a test, I re-enabled MS Net Framework Assistant, and AdBlock still operated just fine. And the rest of the Add-Ons haven't given me problems either. My sincere thanks - and maybe this will help someone else, too!

Anonymous said...

I acquired a Palm Pre Plus, downloaded the software from 3rd party Chapura (especially for hotsyncing), and got the message that "Microsoft.NET Framework Assistant 1.0 not compatible with Firefox 3.6.3." How do I work around this problem?

Disclosure said...

JCB in East TN, THANK YOU for your praise and very glad that this was helpful to you. And yes, I am positive your comment will help countless others! I'm thinking you should do a separate "guest post" on this blog! Let me know!

Disclosure said...

Anonymous with a Palm Pre, not sure how to get around... but I doubt that Microsoft.Net Framework Assistant 1.0 is necessary for your needs. So I see several things you could do...

1) Disable The Microsoft.NET Framework Assistant in your Firefox

2) Downgrade Firefox to 3.5.

See if any of these work and let us know!

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