My daily job involves reading plenty of pdf files on web browser. I am very sick of Adobe Acrobat reader (even with the latest version) because the Acrobat plug-in is crashing very often after opening and reading about a dozen of pdf files, especially when opening multiple pdf files at one time.

K-meleon (as with other web browsers except Google chrome) suffers the problem of crashing when acrobat reader plug-in goes wrong. It is a disaster, shutting down K-meleon while I have multiple tabs, in the middle of editing something on the web browser (e.g. K-Meleon)

Please re-design to isolate the buggy plug-in from K-Meleon process so that the lousy plug-in does not crash K-Meleon.

Below is an interesting note about Firefox Browser.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10378604-2.html Firefox's future features: 3.6, 3.7, and 4.0

Firefox 3.7
For 3.7, the big change will be under the covers: plug-ins such as Flash will be moved to computing processes that are separate from the main browser operation, protecting the latter from problems with the former.

"We've seen more crashing since 3.5 came out, especially in last month or so," Lilly said, pointing to problems from Web-based malware attacks and from issues with Flash. The new design also should help split Firefox up into separate tasks that can take better advantage of all the computing threads offered by multicore processors.

Thanks you very much for implementing and improving a better web browser.

Xcuse my perhaps stupid question, am not an expert, but why don't you simply disable this plugin, if it's so buggy? E.g. by tracking down its path as shown in Help/About-Plugins, then renaming it in the file explorer. I don't have it at all, and when clicking on a pdf-link, am asked whether to open it (externally) or to save it, like with other external file types too...

siria, thanks for your reply, but your idea is not the solution, yours is just a get-around which produces poor productivity.

Separating plug-ins from main browser process is a trend now.
Firefox has a plan to do it.
Google Chrome already implements it.

Separating plug-ins from main browser process brings to K-Meleon numerous advantages
- Robust K-Meleon, not crashing due to lousy plug-ins
- Better reputation. When K-meleon crashes due to buggy plug-in, non-technical users do not understand the cause, they only think that K-Meleon crahses because K-Meleon has bad quality. This will damage K-Meleon's reputation.
- "take better advantage of all the computing threads offered by multicore processors"

Another compelling reason to Separate plug-in from main K-Meleon process: security
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/newbreed-browsers-are-harder-to-hack

If K-Meleon does not implement it, K-Meleon will be left behind in the obsolete unsecure browser group

i think separating the plugin process will probably be relying on the engine itself. i.e. if mozilla implements this, it will naturally be applied to kmeleon when it uses that same trunk.

siria has offered you a solution for your problem..perhaps a temporary one but it would work with your crashes. honestly the pdf plugin is one of the most unstable plugins i've ever encountered and many users have decided against it, either disabling it or opting for different plugins like foxreader... so it's probably best to disable it anyway though your suggestion is a very good idea but it will probably have to wait till mozilla/gecko starts using it(i think it's part of the electrolysis project)

for now, click on eidt menu>mime types>
add new entry: pdf
save to disk or open with any pdf reader you prefer

you can also manipulate the handling from km preferences>browsing>file handling>by type
search for pdf>double click for extra pdf prefs

Quote
anDh
My daily job involves reading plenty of pdf files on web browser.

No job involves opening PDF-files within the web browser.
There is absolute no benefit in doing so, no matter which browser you use. Set your browser to open the files with your default reader.

Chrome is also prone to plug-in based security holes.
The fact that the browser doesn't crash but only a tab doesn't make much of a difference.
However this 'feature' has its prize, namely a much higher resource wastage.
It's definitively not every user's vision.

The idea of sandboxing the plug-ins is neither bad nor new but I'm afraid not feasible without redesigning the engine.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/04/2009 09:52PM by Yogi.