I love Firefox, the open-source web browser with a zillion and one little extensions and options. But there are maddening little quirks – like the way it turns uploading a largish file into an ordeal.
It’s something to do with the way Firefox handles scripts: impatiently. If something hasn’t happened for the last five seconds, Firefox alerts you with an “Unresponsive script” error, and asks you if you want to continue. Five seconds later, another dialog box. And another. And another, until the upload finally completes.
It turns out you don’t have to live with the heartbreak of Firefox’s short attention span. Instead, you can give it a quick dose of digital Ritalin with this handy, easy tip (from Lifehacker, by way of the Computer Vet blog):
- Type about:config in Firefox’s address bar.
- Filter down to the value for dom.max_script_run_time.
- Change the value to something higher than the default (which is 5.) I set mine to 20.
You do the filtering in step 2 by typing “dom.m” in the “Filter” bar that appears at the top of the page. Then double-click on the number that appears in the “Value” column. A dialog box pops up, where you enter your new numerical value; I used 100.
By the way, the dom.max_script_run_time value is the number of seconds Firefox should wait before asking “Are we there yet?” Bear in mind that you probably won’t be able to use Firefox at all while a script is running, so ask yourself how long you want to potentially be shut out of your browser.
If you want, you can set the value to 0, which Firefox takes to mean “Shut up and run the damn thing” – great if you don’t want to be interrupted, but maybe not so great if you run into some buggy Javascript.
God bless you, good sir.
I see I’m not the only one. :)
It’s amazing just how long I can live with a bug, thinking “Well, that’s just the way it is,” before I finally break down and try to do something about it.
And more often than not, it turns out there’s a solution within easy reach.
So far, though, the problem I’m having with WordPress and TinyMCE’s substituting line breaks for paragraph breaks remains unresolved…
Which is the maximum number for the firefox script timeout?
Somewhere I was reading 20, butr firefox permit me to insert biggest numbers..
thank you!! thank you!! waiting is sooo much easier than waiting and clicking continue and waiting some more… ;)
cheers!
Thanks dude :)!
http://www.muzika.dk
There’s more information about the issue at
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Unresponsive_Script_Warning
Alternately, just enter “about:config” in the FF address bar, press “Enter”, scroll down to “dom.max_script_run_time”, double-click the entry, and change its value. Then close the tab. Restart may not be necessary, but I am not sure.
This fix does not help. It just lets the screen sit there longer before you get the script error again. So what?
Two possibilities jump to mind, but I hope others will weigh in:
Good luck!
Worked for me !
I tried setting the value to 0 and the result was that Firefox wouldn’t launch at all!!! Ended up having to restart in Safe Mode and set the value back to the default. A very frustrating exercise!
Yikes! But nice try – that could have been a killer idea!
Hah, I just googled this and guess what the #1 result was! :-) Thanks for the tip, worked great!
This tip also works well for K-Meleon browser, which runs quite well on old slow pc’s except for this annoyance.
Following your instructions can make life livable for those with really slow machines.
I entered “30” for the value, for use on a 233mhz machine, and it reduced that nag to “rare”
There are multiple problems because of the clunky design of Firefox. Even in 2017 these problems remain. Number one problem is that there ought to be a private sandbox and separate thread for every open tab. A non-responsive javascript in one tab should never prevent other tabs from functioning normally. Second issue is that properly written javascript doesn’t saturate a thread (100% of a core, e.g. 13% CPU on my computer). Waiting for a server actually takes essentially zero CPU time. Firefox’s javascript interpreter should be better written to prevent scripts from being “non-responsive”. In the mean time, we still need to kill scripts that hang.
The former default value of max_time of 5 seconds is what I set it to today. The current default value is 0 (never) so scripts hang forever, thus hanging Firefox forever, thus requiring Firefox to be killed in taskmanager. Annoying. Especially since every version update, user settings in about:config get blown away and updates are frequent.
I’ve been looking for ways to completely freeze/block background tabs and scripts completely… and haven’t been able to find anything so had to jump into the code… considering how a browser can bring any machine down, I was really surprised to read the history of the “unresponsive script” bugs. Needless to say, Chrome is out and I’m using Firefox with all about:config script_run_time set to 1. And keeping a hawks eye on the many other “timeout” variables… no more PC fan going ballistic if I leave a few 100 tabs open.
I am having frequent freezes due to this plugin problem which is Shockwave flash. Sometimes, the who operating system freezes to the extent that I am forced to do a hard reboot. My mouse and keyboard freeze and it becomes next to impossible to even navigate to Task Manager to kill the process. Is there a way to tell Firefox that if a script doesn’t respond for say a certain number of seconds, stop it without even bothering to ask the user. I don’t want to be asked whether I want to continue or to stop it. I just want the browser to automatically stop script. Thank you.
How very, very sad. This CRAP has been here for OVER a DECADE! Good grief. Agree with Ramin. Just let me Kill the script after X seconds. Period. When I have identified causes, > 90 % of the time it is garbage I am uninyterested in anyway.
Thank u very much. this working fo me