From MozillaZine Knowledge Base

Revision as of 02:12, 11 May 2012

Safe Mode in Firefox 1.5

1.5 has improved Safe Mode [1] --asqueella 04:48, 19 September 2005 (PDT)

Reset all user preferences to Firefox defaults

I think Reset all user preferences to Firefox defaults will reset extension prefs to thier defaults that are stored in user.js too but I would like confirmation. --Kbrosnan 08:39, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I tested the "Reset all user preferences to Firefox defaults" Safe Mode option in a Firefox 1.5 test profile where I had set the browser.bookmarks.file preference to a new location in the user.js file. Other preferences were reset to default values, but the "browser.bookmarks.file" preference remained the same and the user.js file itself remained untouched. I added the user.js exception to the article. Alice Wyman 23:42, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Screenshot of safe mode dialog

I am testing a screenshot of the safe mode dialogue. Hao2lian suggested using wikimedia commons. I attempted to link the image via the cross wiki scripting but that did not seem to work. The image page is Safe Mode PNG. --Kbrosnan 02:05, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Article name

I think this article should be renamed to safe-mode (instead of the current outrageous Safe Mode) to be consistent with the Linux invocation. --FatJohn 23:31, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Why? We name the articles after the feature's name, not after the how it's invoked. You could always set up safe-mode as a redirect.--Np 15:14, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Given how picky the search function is I think the last thing we want to do is make it even harder to find. People talk about safe mode, not -safe-mode. Tanstaafl 20:51, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Modified program preferences remain in effect in Safe Mode

Copied from Talk:Problematic_extensions Alice 11:22, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

More Information

There is nothing to tie this article into additional trouble-shooting, or what to do after finding that Safe Mode does make things better, or a worse case where Safe Mode does not solve problem. Added a "What's next" at end keeping it very brief so as not to disturb crisp nature of this page. DMcRitchie 2007-07-09

Generally users will be directed here by either another article or by someone pointing to it from the forums, and they'll usually get their answers there. I don't really want to point people to the standard diagnostic because if safe mode solved their problem, then there's only a limited number of things it could be, and it's usually extensions.--Np 13:03, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Safe Mode never solves the problem, it is a starting point and either things looked better in Safe Mode or they did not. A newsgroup posting often smply says "did you try Safe Mode" with no indication as to why and what to do next. If the problem still appears in Safe Mode then they should have an idea of where to continue and why and that is continuing in Standard Diagnostics rather than continuous back and forth did you try this, otherwise known as pulling teeth to get more information. (How do you make the standard wiki signature timestamp). DMcRitchie 2007-07-09

I added a "see also" section in place of "What's next" and linked to the Standard diagnostic articles for Tbird and Firefox. How is that? David, just hit the signature button above the text box to add a signature with time stamp, or use four tilde (~~~~). --Alice 19:03, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Well much better than having it completely removed, but I think it lacks sense of a progressive solution path, but for experienced users probably sufficient as they will recognized the topic. I was wondering how someone would show how to include signature in wiki without being converted to wiki, nowiki tag is cool. dmcritchie 22:34, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Restore default search engines

There was no detail in the article about the " Restore default search engines" option that was added in Firefox 2 and it wasn't clear whether or not added search engines would be removed, so I tested it. First I deleted the "Creative Commons" default search engine (in "Manage Search Engines") then I restarted Firefox to make sure it was gone. Next I restarted in Firefox Safe Mode, checked "Restore default search engines" and "Make Changes and Restart". The default Creative Commons engine was restored and none of my added search engines (Google Groups, Wikipedia, Webster) were touched. I'll add that information to the article to avoid confusion. Alice 12:07, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite of Safe Mode options in Firefox section required?

Reading this section as it is, does seem to suggest that safemode will reset just about all preferences that a user has made, on a temporary basis for testing. But...as I forgot today, it doesn't touch or affect userChrome.css or userContent.css. Luckily, I remembered very quickly after trying safemode and found the fault in userContent.css. However, if I hadn't remembered then this section would not have reminded me, or indeed, have informed a new user as to the exact limitations of safemode. This really is just a question, does this section need to be expanded with more details?--Frank Lion 23:19, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I added the sentence, Selecting any of these options and choosing the "Make changes and restart" button will result in changes that will persist in normal mode. to make it clearer that these are not temporary changes. I also added that the " Reset all user preferences to Firefox defaults " option does not affect userChrome.css or userContent.css changes. How's that? Alice 01:44, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I think that looks fine now. Many thanks. :)--Frank Lion 14:15, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

No problem :) Alice 14:56, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Safe Mode in SeaMonkey 2

Just wanted to mention that SeaMonkey 2 can also be started with the "-safe-mode" argument, which starts it with all add-ons disabled, similar to how it works in Thunderbird. (I tried it with yesterday's SeaMonkey 2.0a1pre latest-trunk build). At some point we should add something to the Intro like, Safe Mode is not available in Mozilla Suite or SeaMonkey 1.x but it will be in the upcoming SeaMonkey 2 version. (A few KB articles already mention SeaMonkey 2, including Profile folder - SeaMonkey, profiles.ini file, and Moving your profile folder.) Alice 14:57, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Added to the intro: Note: SeaMonkey 2 (not yet released) can also be started in Safe Mode. Alice 14:53, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Just-in-time (JIT) JavaScript compiler

The Critical JavaScript vulnerability in Firefox 3.5 post in the Mozilla Security blog states that safe mode disables the Just-in-time (JIT) JavaScript compiler just as if you set javascript.options.jit.content false. Are there any other 3.5 specific features that are disabled by safe mode? I'm used to thinking safe mode just disables the themes and add-ons. Tanstaafl 16:31, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

New features disabled in Safe Mode

I searched bugzilla and found Bug 453642 - Safe mode should disable JIT which was fixed for Firefox 3.5. That bug report linked to Bug 333808 - safe mode should disable userContent.css and userChrome.css , which is marked fixed in 1.9.2 / Firefox 3.6. Disabling plugins while in Safe Mode is a pending bug, not yet fixed (bug 342333) but that was already referenced in the article. That's all I know that's changed or in the works for any additional features disabled when you run in Safe Mode, besides extensions, themes, and localstore. I've updated the article with the new information. Alice 23:11, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Need reference on JIT being disabled by default in Firefox 10 and then removed in Firefox 11

A recent change to the intro changed the following: Also disabled was the Just-in-time (JIT) JavaScript compiler (until Firefox 10, when JIT was disabled by default and then removed from Firefox 11 versions onwards). Is there a reference for this? I couldn't find one ... and Bug 478846 - Safe mode should not disable JIT is still open. Alice 10:35, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

It is accurate info, just by observation. But no, I couldn't find a reference either. I'll PM a few Builds Forum contacts, who know their way around Bugzilla blindfold - they'll find a ref. :) --Frank Lion 11:04, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Frank. I figured just to remove the whole sentence from the intro, for now. Only thing, we still mention that the JIT JavaScript compiler is disabled in Firefox Safe Mode in other places ... I just came across it here, Firefox crashes#JIT_compiler ... which suggests setting the javascript.options.methodjit.* preferences to false. I also come across this at SUMO (recent example). I checked in Firefox 12 about:config and I found that the javascript.options.methodjit.chrome and javascript.options.methodjit.content preferences still exist and both are set to true by default. Same with Firefox 13 Beta. I don't claim to understand most of this but I just did another search and found http://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2011/11/23/memshrink-progress-report-week-23/ which says, David Anderson removed TraceMonkey, the tracing JIT compiler. In fact, TraceMonkey was disabled a while ago with links to related bugs. The blog then went on to talk about the current "JaegerMonkey" JIT compiler. Wikipedia describes both here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpiderMonkey_%28JavaScript_engine%29#Internals Alice 02:12, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Too many historical details

This article contains too many accurate but distracting details about when features were added. It also refers to a non-existent version of Thunderbird (3.3 never shipped) and several shortcuts that are no longer provided. The tip about holding down the shift key while double clicking the Firefox 4 or later icon also works with recent versions of Thunderbird (but not the 3.1.* branch). Perhaps even SeaMonkey 2.

Perhaps the wording could be changed to downplay exactly when certain features were added, made more generic, and just mention in passing that older versions don't have all of those features. If detailed historical information is needed about older versions (its just going to get worse over time) perhaps that could be moved to a single table in a version history section at the end of the article to make the article easier to read. Its good to support users with obsolete but still popular versions, but the text should be optimized for recent versions. Tanstaafl 17:17, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I made an edit to remove a lot of the historical details. I kept what I thought was important. Alice 22:39, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Looks good. Tanstaafl 01:40, 26 November 2011 (UTC)