606745 - Skype 5 aggressive add-ons

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Extension Compatibility, defect)

Description

[Dan Fivehouse]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.11) Gecko/20101012 Firefox/3.6.11
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.11) Gecko/20101012 Firefox/3.6.11

The new Skype 5 has a major problem. It compromises the Internet Explorer and Firefox web browsers on computers using Windows XP by aggressively attempting to install its add-ons—regardless of installation instructions to the contrary. So far, it seems to have no such effect on Chrome. I am running a machine with XP and a machine with Windows 7. Windows 7 seems not to be affected by Skype 5.

On the XP system, once Skype 5 is installed any attempt to access IE triggers the generation of hundreds, no...thousands, of tabs addressing:
<http://www.skype.com/go/help.guides.ieaddon?lang=EN> 
This ties up 100% of CPU usage and essentially locks up the machine. Accessing Firefox has a different result: since Firefox processes add-ons first, it never loads. Instead, it generates the “We're sorry...” crash screen.

Please find a solution fast. I use all these programs for different tasks and don't want to lose their functionality.

Dan Fivehouse
[e-mail]
604-885-5998

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[timeless]

https://developer.mozilla.org/En/How_to_get_a_stacktrace_for_a_bug_report

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Dan, what version does about:addons show for the skype add-on?

Comment 3

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Reporter, can you please answer comment 1 and comment 2? Retest with 3.6.13?

Comment 4

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

I'm not able to reproduce this with Skype toolbar version 5.0.0.6906.

Please re-open if you provide the information requested in comment #1.