567584 - recent change in google-image search triggers serious FF scroll bug (and advertising revenue loss)

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[tristan savatier]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3 GTB7.0 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3 GTB7.0 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

apparently a couple of days ago google introduced a change in the code of the google-image search.

this change triggers a bug in FireFox, causing the document to scroll in the lower frame of the image search result.

this can cause very significant advertising revenue loss (e.g. adsense) for people who have a banner at the top of their pages and get most of their traffic for image search, since the banner is not visible anymore in the image search result (when viewed with FF 3.6.3). the problem does not seem to happen with IE and Chrome.

it also reduces the usability of many sites (the page navigation menu is hidden unless the user scrolls the page to see its top).  this is a serious issue, and it must be corrected. either google must implement a workaround and/or FF must fix the scrolling bug.

to reproduce the bug:

1) do any google image search with firefox.
2) click on a thumbnail image to bring the split frame
3) the page loaded in the bottom frame will scroll (i.e. the top of the page will be hidden by the google top frame)

(unless the page has a frame-breaker, in which case the frame will disappear of course)


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.do any google image search with firefox
2.click on a thumbnail image to bring the split frame
3.the page loaded in the bottom frame will scroll (i.e. the top of the page will be hidden by the google top frame)

(unless the page has a frame-breaker, in which case the frame will disappear of course)
Actual Results:  
the page loaded in the bottom frame will scroll (i.e. the top of the page will be hidden by the google top frame)

(unless the page has a frame-breaker, in which case the frame will disappear of course)

Expected Results:  
the page in the lower frame should NOT be scrolled, i.e. its top should be visible.

this scrolling bug does not happens with IE7 and Chrome (i have not tested other browsers)

i have posted this report in the google forums:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=16e4acd47b508c6e&hl=en

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/thread?tid=1765dfea6deba5fd&hl=en

Comment 1

[tristan savatier]

note: the spurious scrolling happens in a iframe that has the attribute:
scrolling="auto".

Comment 2

[tristan savatier]

it was suggested that this scrolling happens when some sort of "focus" is given to the image in the web page.

so i suppose that google is able to somehow cause the content of the iframe to scroll. but this does not happen in IE7 and Chrome (google's own browser). so i don't know if this this scrolling is actually intended or the result of a bug in FF.

also, it would be interesting to know if there is a way to prevent "external"  scrolling when the document that is displayed in an iframe. i.e. i don't want my document to scroll, except when the user uses the scroll-bars or when the scrolling originates from the document's own javascript code.

Comment 3

[tristan savatier]

i don't know if there is a way for a site to disallow external scrolling of their pages when they are displayed in an iframe.

there should be a way for the site owner to disallow that.  if not, this can certainly be viewed as a security bug, since it can be exploited.

think of all the security abuses if you can just show part of a page in a frame, without the knowledge of both the viewer and the owner of the framed site.

Comment 4

[tristan savatier]

it's unfortunate - and possibly has security implications) that unwanted scrolling (by an external site owning the iframe) cannot be prevented by the iframed document, e.g. with something like:
document.body.scroll = "no";
(this only works with IE apparently)

Comment 5

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Reporter, are you still seeing this issue with Firefox 3.6.13 or later in safe mode? If not, please close. These links can help you in your testing.
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles

You can also try to reproduce in Firefox 4 Beta 8 or later, there are many improvements in the new version, http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Comment 6

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

No reply, INCOMPLETE. Please retest with Firefox 3.6.13 or later and a new profile (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles). If you continue to see this issue with the newest firefox and a new profile, then please comment on this bug.