I use Firefox as my main browser because Safari crashes a lot and it really pisses me off. But, Firefox ain't perfect either.

Say for instance I have it open and am browsing around the web.. if I leave it open and step away from my computer (anytime 5 mins upwards).. by the time I return, while I am still able to navigate, it is impossible for me to type anything.. like my keyboard won't respond. The only way I can fix this is by closing one window and opening a new one.

Has anybody else experienced this?

Oh and it's firefox version 1.0

Thats odd - i've never had issues with firefox, and rare issues with Safari.

Do you repair permissions on a regular basis?

umm.. I don't even know what that means h34r:

so I guess.. no

Okay, well what I (and many OS X users) do is every once in a while open up Disk Utility, which is located at /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app on your hard drive. select your hard drive in the left pane of the utility and then click the "repair disk permissions" button that will appear in the main area.

Not sure if that will solve your firefox issue - but it's a good habit to be in.

sorry to sound a bit green disko, but could you explain what doing that actually does? i've heard others suggest it as a fix for other problems posted on the forum, but i'd like to know what it actually does to your machine/OS.. i've never done and am interested as to why you suggest it as 'a good habit' or good practice.

thanks in advance

I'd suggest you'd fix your firefox problems by starting with a fresh profile. Though note your settings, bookmarks and everything would be linked to it so make sure you backup.

I can vouch that it is unusual for either Safari of FFox to crash frequently. In my case at least, FireFox crashes maybe twice a week, if that.

I use Macaroni, which automates disk permissions repairing; among other things. Hence I never do the disk permissions repairing thing manually.

I second the use of Macaroni! I used to do the permissions thing from Disk Utility but haven't looked back since downloading Macaroni.
My only issue with Firefox is that I cannot get it to download at anything above 4kbs when I am on a satellite connection where I normally get 60plus KBS. The same downloads work at the speed they should when using Safari.

I think that maybe Safari has crashed on me twice maybe but as it was, at the time, struggling away with 40 active tabs in 5 windows with mail running as well; all in 196 MB I feel that this was reasonable. Firefox by contrast keeled over multiple times in the first half hour I tried to use it so I gave up on it. Recently I was forced to use IE a few times but ANZ fixed up their internet banking to support Safari again so its all good.

I have no idea what issue is afflicting you. Not only have I not experienced it, it is the first time I have heard of such an issue.

I don't remember the last time I had any problems with Safari in regards to crashing. I downloaded Firefox maybe a week after it was released and then got rid of it because it's a resource hog. If you want a quality browser, I suggest you try Camino, which is also produced by Mozilla. I found that it is just as fast, if not faster than Safari.