1186734 - Tab and URL bar freeze/hang, cannot change tabs

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Porcelain Mouse]

Attachment: Screenshot from 2015-07-22 17-59-13.new.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Fedora; Linux x86_64; rv:39.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/39.0
Build ID: 20150708165822

Steps to reproduce:

Problem recurs occasionally, but I do not yet have minimum set of reproducing steps.

(Rather than a script, it would be better if you tell me now to produce a corefile for you the next time this happens.)


Actual results:

Tab bar freezes or hangs as well as the URL bar.  The entire window becomes unusable, but the visible page seems operational.  It's just that only one tab works and the others are unreachable.  It is not possible to switch tabs using groups view either.  Although it is possible to go to the groups view and select another tab, it shows only the old tabs bar and the one page that works.  Other windows from the same FF session are not affected and work fine.

See the attaches screenshot.  It shows the tab bar from an affected window.  See several unreachable new tabs on the right, which is just one more symptom of the same problem.

This is a long standing problem, but has been happening more frequently of late.  I believe it is the same as bug 344416 that never got fixed, but I don't know how to reopen a closed bug.


Expected results:

The affected window has some rendering bug that needs to be located and fixed.

Comment 1

[Porcelain Mouse]

The problem has recurred.  And, there are two additional strange symptoms.

1) I cannot add tags to bookmarks.  When I click on the bookmark star button, the bookmark metadata pop-up window shows, but I cannot focus on the 'tags' text field to add any text.

2) When I click the new tab button, I get a new tab but cannot type in the URL text field, just as reported originally when I opened the bug.  However, when I git "CTRL-T", a new tab opens up *in a different window.*  Very strange.

Comment 2

[Porcelain Mouse]

Oh, I *am* still able to change tabs.  But, this really smells like the same bug.

I'd love to send you a crash file or something.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Does it happen in safe mode?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Safe+Mode

Comment 4

[Porcelain Mouse]

Gosh, this hasn't happened in a while, but I've been rebooting a lot, recently.  It seems to happen after running the same session for a while.

I haven't tested in safe mode.  I suspect it could be hardware acceleration, though.  I use proprietary video drivers and I've seen small artifacts in other programs, here and there, regularly, over the years.

If it recurs, I will try a safe-mode window.  Will that be worth trying?  That's the best I can promise.  I can't think of a way to test a session with a large number of windows but not use it normally, and I can't see any way for me to do that without some plugins.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Sounds good. Given you haven't seen it in a long while let's declare this WFM for now.