Frequent failure to connect to random Web sites is a frequent source of
noisy complaints on the Firefox Support forum. There are many claims that
Fx fails to connect between 30% and 70% of the time. User support for even
one user with this problem is difficult, and user support for 100 million +
users is unfeasible.
Some users also claim that other browsers have no problem. I don't think
there's an actual Firefox bug here, but there needs to be a way of resolving
user complaints, since almost all of them blame Firefox. Either Firefox
needs to be more robust about connecting, or users need a useful error
message.
Based on experience supporting users on the MozillaZine Firefox Support
Forum, I'm sure at least part of the problem is domain-name resolution.
Some users report that a second try always succeeds. One user replaced his
DNS, with spectacular success. Two users reported that both Fx and IE had
serious problems loading 20 random sites each, but that IE did slightly
better. Some users claim that Fx fails frequently while other browsers work
all the time. I have only one partial confirmation: one reported that Fx
failed for 10 of 20 sites, but another browser failed 0 of 20.
I'm thinking of two bug reports. The first would be to simply repeat the
domain-resolution attempt (doing automatically what the user does manually).
There's even a possible patch for this in an obscure bug report. The
second report would be to notify users of a failed lookup. Is either one
likely to be helpful and something that's likely to get fixed?
_________________________________________________________________
From photos to predictions, The MSN Entertainment Guide to Golden Globes has
it all. http://tv.msn.com/tv/globes2007/
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