13982 - WebFree (html filter)'s block blinking text causes layout to "cut off"

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: DOM: HTML Parser, defect, P3)

Description

[bugzilla]

I f you check "Block Blinking Text" in WebFree (a popular ad filter for mac),
somepages will fail to display properly. The most common symptom I've had (with
pages at cnn.com, mozilla.org, and mozillazine.org) is that the page seems to
"stop" cold, truncating after a banner or header. Viewing the source often
reveals "cut off" source (missing the end)

The same button in WebFree, when used with Navigator 4.x, displays fine. I
haven't compared the other buttons:

*  Suppress Web Cookies
*  Stop GIF animation s
*  Block the following tags

to see what havoc they may cause with mozilla's rendering...

You can find WebFree at http://www.falken.net/webfree/

Thanks to Mike Pinkerton, sford, kurz, and especially the genius smfr for
identifying and figuring out the problem.

Comment 1

[troy]

The fact that view source shows cut off text indicates it could be a parser
problem

Comment 2

[rickg]

Petersen -- help! Can you set this up for testing on your mac? Thanks.

Comment 3

[john]

I'm also seeing this on linux.
Add "127.0.0.1       www.burstnet.com" to your /etc/hostsfile, then visit
mozillazine.

Comment 4

[Chris Petersen]

With the April 12th Mac build and webfree installed, I can reproduce this problem 
with the Mozilla.org site. Only the top banner and a portion of a table is 
rendered in the window. See the attachments.

Comment 5

[Chris Petersen]

Back to rick.

Comment 6

[Chris Petersen]

Attachment: This is what mozilla.org looks like with WebFree

Comment 7

[Chris Petersen]

Attachment: Page source window at mozilla.org.

Comment 8

[rickg]

Petersen: ack! I was hoping that you would give me a testcase.

Comment 9

[Chris Petersen]

Rick,

I saved mozilla.org from NS 4.7 as a html file and have attached it. This file 
renders correctly in NS6. The problem only occurs for me when going to the actual 
url (www.mozilla.org).

Comment 10

[Chris Petersen]

Attachment: A html copy of mozilla.org

Comment 11

[moshev]

How come this is still M14? M14 is already out!

Comment 12

[David Krause]

Mass moving old milestone bugs to M16

Comment 13

[Mike]

M16 has been out for a while now, these bugs target milestones need to be 
updated.

Comment 14

[darkle]

This sounds like the problem I was having in <a 

href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30012">bug 30012</a> and its duplicates 

(recently marked a WORKSFORME)--the 'this is what mozilla.org looks like with WebFree' image 

is an exact duplicate of the layout I  was getting if I visited moz.org, down to the truncated source.

Comment 15

[Waldo]

Yep, I'm pretty sure this is the same as bug 30012 -  hopefully if this isn't 

taken care of by beta2 that at least there will be some big warning somewhere not 

to use this with WebFree on.

Comment 16

[Guillaume Filion]

I was able to reproduce this bug on a PowerMac and I can confirm that 

this is a problem with WebFree.



Reproducable: Always



Steps to reproduce:

1. Install WebFree and restart.

2. Open webfree and uncheck everything except "Block Blinking Text"

3. Open Mozilla and surf  some web pages. For example BugZilla.

4. After about 10 pages visited you'll end up with incompletes pages.



Actual result:

The page doesn't load completely.



Expected result:

The page loads completely.



Proof:

Go in WebFree and uncheck Block Blinking Text -- everything is now 

unchecked.

Reload the page that didn't load right; it will load right.

You don't even need to restart Mozilla.

Comment 17

[Guillaume Filion]

*** Bug 30012 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 18

[Guillaume Filion]

Setting severity to Blocker, since this is the severity of bug 30012 which is 
a DUP of this bug.

Comment 19

[John Bafford]

I did some testing with 2000082520 on the Mac. I think the problem is a bit
deeper than just the blinking text checkbox. I have all of WebFree's options
disabled and web pages are still refusing to load. I have had better success
with it with the options disabled, but it's still not doing as well as it should.

Comment 20

[Guillaume Filion]

It's probably true, my testings were not very extensive. 



Maibe someone at netscape should contact Steve Falken (WebFree's creator) and 

have to look at WebFree's source code. WebFree is not opensource, this is why I 

think they should contact Steve. 



Also there should be a note in the next Milestone release notes warning people to 

disable WebFree. I will contact Sammy Ford (the editor of the release notes) 

about this in the near future.

Comment 21

[Guillaume Filion]

I contacted Sammy Ford and he told me that he would add a comment 
about it in M18's release notes.

Comment 22

[Guillaume Filion]

I'm pretty sure that it's a network problem instead of a parser problem 
since the problem occurs during the communication with WebFree.
What do you think?

Comment 23

[Guillaume Filion]

Nominating for rtm. Also changed Target Milestone as M16 has been out 
for months now...

Comment 24

[ekrock's old account (dead)]

rtm- not top crasher.

Comment 25

[Guillaume Filion]

Nominating for mozilla1.0 milestone.

Comment 26

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

just wonderin, is this really a blocker? there is a workaround (don't use
webfree). i assume you are still seeing this bug though?

Comment 27

[John Bafford]

Unless Mozilla is going to pick up the functionality of WebFree, then yes, I 
think it's still a blocker. This (and other reasons) is why I don't use Mozilla 
on my home machine.
After all, if Netscape 4.x works with it, and Mozilla doesn't, then Mozilla is 
clearly doing something different that's probably incorrect.

Comment 28

[Peter Lubczynski]

Petersen, are you going to fix this? I think it got away from you.

Re-assigning to default owner and cc:ing rickg. 

Comment 29

[harishd]

Setting to 1.0 since 0.9.2 hasn't been scheduled yet.

Comment 30

[Waldo]

As of 9.1, the Release Notes for Macintosh still don't mention this bug.  I think 
it would be a good idea to let mac users know to disable webfree, because a lot 
of them are out on the chat boards bashing mozilla as not working.

Comment 31

[Guillaume Filion]

Sammy Ford used to be responsible for the Release Notes but this 
appears to have changed. 

Anyone knows who I should contact to have this bug explained in 0.9.2 
release notes?

Comment 32

[timeless]

relnote keyword, and contacting endico or someone else @mozilla.org should 
work.

Comment 33

[Dawn Endico]

Here is a new release note item for Junkbuster. Is this the same problem? Does
disabling http 1.1 fix the problem?


"Mozilla needs to be configured to work properly with proxies such as Junkbuster
that do not support the most recent HTTP specification. By default, Mozilla
tries to use HTTP 1.1. To use Mozilla with a proxy that only supports HTTP 1.0,
edit the HTTP Version from 1.1 to 1.0 in Edit | Preferences | Debug |
Networking. (Bug 38488)"

Comment 34

[Guillaume Filion]

Oops, from the 0.9.2 relnotes:
-----
Mozilla needs to be configured to work properly with proxies such as 
Junkbuster and Webfree that do not support the most recent HTTP 
specification. By default, Mozilla tries to use HTTP 1.1. To use Mozilla with 
a proxy that only supports HTTP 1.0, edit the HTTP Version from 1.1 to 1.0 
in Edit | Preferences | Debug | Networking. (Bug 38488) (Bug 13982) 
-----
WebFree is not a Proxy, it's a Mac Control Panel (cdev) that transparently 
removes offending HTML tags that pass into the TCP/IP stack. When 
using webfree, you do not need to configure your browser to use a proxy, 
and you can't correct the problem by modifying an option in Mozilla.

Someone should correct the next relnotes saying not to use webfree at all 
when using Mozilla.

Comment 35

[timeless]

Guillaume Filion:
my understanding is that WebFree is a transparent proxy, which is still a 
proxy, the problem and solution are the same for traditional and transparent 
proxies (although it appears that junkbuster now supports http1.1 so the problem
is now limited to WebFree and any other http1.1broken proxies).  I have WebFree
installed on my poor mac and intend to play w/ it.

If you have a better releasenote then please suggest it, however afaik you
merely have nitpickings about technicalities of application types--which are
very much irrelevant for release notes. 

Comment 36

[Waldo]

I dont' think most users think of WebFree as a "proxy" -- more like a "filter" or 
"ad filter" or something.  Maybe it could be reworded simply as follows:

Macintosh Users:

There is a known incompatibility between Mozilla and WebFree, a Control Panel 
commonly used to block HTML-based ads.  When using Mozilla, disable WebFree.

Comment 37

[Guillaume Filion]

Okay, I've done some more testings with WebFree and Mozilla and here 
are my results:
Changing the HTTP version to 1.0 in Mozilla does not change WebFree's 
broken behavior.
Explorer 5 is using HTTP 1.1 and works with WebFree.

I've realised that the problem occurs when the pages are long and the 
web site is slow (for example slashdot.org). I tried it with a server on the 
LAN and the problem occurs much less often. Not sure what this means 
but I hope this can help in solving the problem.

I also remember that WebFree does its works both ways (in upload and 
download) on port 80. I was running WebStar (webserver) on my mac and 
WebFree was removing the ads from the pages I was serving! 8) 

Also, sorry Dawn Endico not to have answered your question when you 
asked it (2001-06-12), this would have reduced the confusion. I wanted to 
do it, but I plain forgot... 8(

Also, Waldo's proposition for a new release note would be very good.

Comment 38

[Dawn Endico]

just updated the prototype release note doc with waldo's comment. This change
should show up in the next version of the release notes.

Comment 39

[Waldo]

Cool, thanks Dawn!  (I don't know if you wanna also specify that this is only for 
Mac OS <= 9.x and the classic environment in OS X.)  Thanks again!

Comment 40

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

I can't get WebFree to install on my Mac OS 9.1 machine (Control panel always 
says that you have to install it and restart to go to the other panels), so I 
can't do any testing here.

Comment 41

[Bob Jacobson]

WebFree must be disabled with Mac OS 9.1 for Mozilla to work properly.  This
having been said, it would nice to have some ad-blocking capabilities available
if one wanted to install them.

Comment 42

[benc]

*** Bug 93858 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 43

[benc]

Is the problem with WebFree something we will fix, or is it hacking tags to
obtriusively?

Comment 44

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

*** Bug 116928 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 45

[scottputterman]

Moving Netscape owned 0.9.9 and 1.0 bugs that don't have an nsbeta1, nsbeta1+,
topembed, topembed+, Mozilla0.9.9+ or Mozilla1.0+ keyword.  Please send any
questions or feedback about this to [e-mail].  You can search for
"Moving bugs not scheduled for a project" to quickly delete this bugmail.

Comment 46

[Guillaume Filion]

Could Bannerblind (http://bannerblind.mozdev.org/) be considered as a 
workaround? It doesn't supports regex like WebFree does but it's not too 
bad either.

Comment 47

[Greg K.]

*** Bug 123840 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 48

[Heikki Toivonen (remove -bugzilla when emailing directly)]

Is this reproduceable in Mac OS X? What is the latest Mac OS where this happens?
We are phasing out support for older Macs which is the reason I am asking...

Comment 49

[John Bafford]

WebFree doesn't work on Mac OS X, so whatever is causing the problem isn't
manifesting on Mac OS X. Which isn't to say that someone in the future won't
create something akin to WebFree that causes the problem to re-manifest itself.

Comment 50

[Frankie]

Mozilla CFM build is dead.
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28855#c26
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=avkj4k%24ihs2%40ripley.netscape.com