Barb many people use different browsers. Lot of opinions as to what is best. I tried them all and keep going back to Opera. In fact haven't used anything else for the last couple years. Doesn't necessary make it the best but for me it is and my choice to use full time.

I don't need all those so called add ons but do know they have a good add blocker and some others available.

I have an older laptop that I ran Firefox on for many years.  At some point Firefox just got too slow, so I installed PaleMoon (a fork of the Firefox code that's lighter weight and faster) and used it for a few more years.  Then I started having problems with PaleMoon, so I installed Opera, and have been using it with no problems for the last couple of years.

On my main gaming machine I still use PaleMoon, but have Opera installed and use it occasionally.

issue with gpu drivers? is browser using hardware acceleration?

(i don't know the fix.. but those could be the areas to look at)

Yes, modern browsers (all browsers really except those that aren't updated) rely more and more on hardware acceleration. This must be provided by the GPU (graphics card) driver. I recently had the problem that Youtube didn't work in some browsers, because my graphics driver didn't provide adequate hardware acceleration.

I tried to install a newer driver, but they all failed installing. This was on Windows 7. I didn't care too much about this machine so I decided to try the free upgrade to Windows 10. It worked and solved my driver problems. Most browsers provide troubleshooting info so that way I knew the problem was driver related. In most cases a reinstall or upgrade of GPU driver should solve video problems in browsers.

Thanks everyone! 

Since my skype video, videos on my pc, and when using slimjet...  they all work fine.  I thought it was going to be the video card... but then I assumed because skype, etc. worked, it couldn't be.  Firefox is still a mess... and Chrome does run laggy...well actually my mouse does on Chrome.  But using paint software, making fractals, there does not seem to be a problem.  I have Windows7.... not changing yet...I think!  

In Firefox menu bar click Help then Troubleshooting Information. It will open a new tab with info. There is a section called Graphics. You may find error messages in that section. If so that would likely be caused by the GPU driver not being good enough.

The newest version of Firefox has very detailed Graphics info so I guess hardware acceleration plays a bigger and bigger role.

You mention Firefox is a mess and if that's the case you should try starting it with add-ons disabled. Menu Bar > Help > Restart with Add-ons disabled

The reason some browsers may work fine despite faulty (less than ideal) GPU driver is that they have  fallback options such as using the CPU if GPU hardware acceleration is unavailable.

Despite my GPU driver being faulty according to Firefox, Firefox did still work on Youtube. It was my preferred browser Pale Moon that for some reason didn't fallback to CPU rendering when GPU acceleration didn't work.

Worth to mention is that I had no other issues whatsoever. Pale Moon didn't work on Youtube and the driver was marked as non-working in both Firefox and Pale Moon, that was it.

Since I've used Firefox since version 3 and Pale Moon since Firefox switched to Australis UI (Firefox 29), I don't feel like using another browser even if that means Windows 10 instead of Windows 7. Chrome lacks the UI customization I'm used to so I only use it as a reference for bad sites that don't conform to web standards, but Chrome standards. Thankfully very few sites are Chrome only.

That was my firefox after it upgraded.  Then I uninstalled and reinstalled and had the same thing. No way to check anything.  I've uninstalled it again.  

Unfortunately your picture isn't visible. Firefox and WB don't play nicely together I've heard so that could explain Firefox UI problems.

I was having similar problems, teddybear , I got so fed up with all the seemingly weird problems I was having ,  I decided to dump ALL my browsers and try something new. I've been using Opera for quite a while now and to date have not experienced any of those weird issues I used to have. Best change I ever made. It's stunning to me why Opera Browser doesn't get more recognition. It's by far the best browser out there in my opinion, and I'm not an easy person to please.     -- Ace --

Leave Firefox alone...it's a classic for having issues....and while you are at it Skype has a mem leak and [on mine] needs to be killed [end process] and restarted every day or three [I do leave my machine on 24/7 so it's not getting a kill on shutdowns].

Most [but not all] browsing is on Chrome which needs to be killed every few months too...

If you don't need to handle PDF's within your browser, TBC, consider giving Brave browser a try.  I would use it in preference to all the other browsers I've tried (all of them - you name it) if it handled PDF's natively the way Opera & Chrome do.  Brave has been the quickest I've used, with flawless page rendering everywhere I've gone, but that PDF Achilles heel led me to use Opera for my daily driver since my workflow involves handling & printing PDF's within the browser & Brave's native PDF handler is seriously crippled in that regard (so far, anyway).

Good luck!

There is a brand new version of Firefox with a completely new engine, exactly like Opera's browser. I have both of those. Check it out it works great. Opera is a little better had more time to develop it Than Firefox's new version.

I had uninstalled Firefox after this post, but then reinstalled it for my sister to use when she was her for moms funeral.  It worked for a day or two, then poof, it is back to like it was before., in December. I took another screenshot, I should be able to show it here.  Thank you for any thoughts.

I've had very similar issues as Barb's. I'm trying Slimjet right now and it is a lot better! Thanks for that info. CCleaner doesn't see Slimjet however so I'm cleaning the history manually.

Good to know Chas, as I was hoping it wasn't a problem with a video card or something.  I'm using slimjet also, which works quite well.  Haven't used CC cleaner for awhile, but I clean the history manually also.