Mozilla late last week initiated a "soft-block" of all versions of Skype's Firefox extension after the company's add-on was found to have been the cause of 33,000 browser crashes in a single week. The Skype Toolbar add-on parses webpages for telephone numbers, adding a button to allow users to call a number via its Skype Out system. The soft-block by Mozilla remotely disables a specific add-on, but gives users the option of turning the feature back on manually. 

Other than being the source for a great number of Firefox crashes, it was determined that an internal routine to parse phone numbers in the add-on was apparently invoked after every permutation of the browser's Document Object Model (DOM). These inefficient calls can result in DOM running up to 300 times slower for certain version of the Toolbar. Translation: The browser will render pages slower, and users will likely assume that the fault lies with Firefox.

Justin Scott of the Mozilla add-ons team explained that this drastic move was enacted after it took two weeks to receive a response from the team at Skype responsible for the extension. The fact that the Firefox add-on is automatically inserted as part of a typical Skype installation also does nothing to help improve confidence with the company. For now, Mozilla says it will remove the soft-block once the bugs in the add-on are identified and fixed.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Ars Technica
- check out this article at ZDNet
- check out this article at The Inquirer

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