1213607 - [REPRODUCIBLE BUG] Google notification pane (notification bell) fails to open on specific google pages

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1177582

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect)

Description

[Karl Wester-Ebbinghaus]

Attachment: errorneous behaviour and affected pages.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:41.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/41.0
Build ID: 20150929144111

Steps to reproduce:

Use Firefox e.g. 41 or later. Please know this issues is persistent for a very long time and may even effect me since FF 30 or later. My "firefoxmakes me unhappy" reports did not handle the problem.

Operating systems: Windows 8.0 / 8.1 / 10. No other OS tested.

How to reproduce:
go to www.google.de (I cannot say if the error will affect other than the german google pages).

Being logged in to your google account on the top right pane.
Click on the notifications bell (if you have any)



Actual results:

After clicking on the notification bell, either the content is not shown but a box is drawn, OR later an error is shown that "While loading notfications an error occoured. Please load the page again or try again later" but this does not work.
(refer screenshot)

Reseting FF profile / new installation of OS does not work.

Here is another filed bug which I assume to be the same. 
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1177582


Expected results:

Actually clicking on the bell should show my google notifications, which DOES work from some of google pages (refer screenshot)

Comment 1

[Karl Wester-Ebbinghaus]

I have talked to a Google support agent but he cannot find anyone that he can pass this issue on (from his position) towards any google devs, as I also assumed there could be a a scripting error on the specific pages that affect FF. 

We talked a long time and he really tried hard to help me. At the end he confirmed that Google Chrome does not have any issues but had no opportunity to test if with FF himself.

Comment 2

[Dirkjan Ochtman (:djc)]

Do you have tracking protection enabled? (E.g. privacy.trackingprotection.enabled is set to true in about:config.)

It seems to work for me, on google.nl, with tracking protection enabled (I am logged) in, so cannot reproduce with latest Firefox Nightly.

Comment 3

[Karl Wester-Ebbinghaus]

Hello Dirkjan,
thanks for looing into it. I have Firefox "Do not track" enabled and the tracking prevention of Adblock Plus. Both seemed not to be the issue.

I tried the following steps now:

1. disable all addons
2. restart FF
Result: issue still exists

1. renaming Appdata\Mozilla
2. not importing anything from other browsers upon first start
Result: issue is gone

3. connected FF with my FF Sync, transferring back all settings and addons
Results: issue is gone

I have no idea why it was actually needed create a new FF profile - again - but this solved the issue.
From the given steps I cannot blame any tracking setting nor a specific plugin / addon to cause the issue, strange enough.

As this issue was persistant for a very very long time, even across OS and so depending FF profile resets, I am not sure I should simply close this case.

However a profile reset based on 41.0.1 does the job. I have tested this right away on a seperate computer with same results.

I can only guess that there must have been something wrong with my FF profile in junction with older FF releases.

Comment 4

[Karl Wester-Ebbinghaus]

Hello again DirkJan,

I have seriously found the issue and it is reproducible:

The setting > privacy > tell websites to not track my activities does NOT set 

privacy.trackingprotection.enabled

but alters

privacy.donottrackheader.enabled

It was my mistake in the previous post that I thought it is the same.

---

Assumingly from FF Sync I have found this option set:
services.sync.prefs.sync.privacy.trackingprotection.enabled = true

but this has no effect on the issue.

As soon set 

privacy.trackingprotection.enabled = true

The google notification issue comes up reproducibly as described. I can also reproducibly remove the issue by setting this value to false.

I have never experimented to alter these settings manually in about:config, but it seems that my affected FF profile had this setting enabled. I wonder why.

So in this case 

privacy.trackingprotection.enabled = true

causes the issue, again on just some pages. Shall I repost this as a bug, or is this an intended behaviour?

Comment 5

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Do we have contacts at Google that we can report this to? The DNT header shouldn't affect the notification portion of their website (and/or if it does, its effect should be universal, and there should probably be a message of sorts describing why it's "not working").

Comment 6

[Kohei Yoshino]

:karlcow might know someone.

Comment 7

[Kohei Yoshino]

I have already added the site compatibility doc for such cases:
https://www.fxsitecompat.com/en-US/docs/2015/private-browsing-now-comes-with-tracking-protection/

Comment 8

[Karl Wester-Ebbinghaus]

(In reply to :Gijs Kruitbosch (PTO oct 9) from comment #5)
> Do we have contacts at Google that we can report this to? The DNT header
> shouldn't affect the notification portion of their website (and/or if it
> does, its effect should be universal, and there should probably be a message
> of sorts describing why it's "not working").

Can you reproduce the issue aswell? 

Please make sure not to mix the DNT header and the tracking protection. I am no expert here but I think they have different ways how they work. DNT setting (gracefully DNT Protection) have no influence, while the forced tracking protection causes the issue on some pages as described. I still suspect a Google script error, as the behaviour is not consistent for all of their sites.

Comment 9

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Karl Heinz from comment #8)
> (In reply to :Gijs Kruitbosch (PTO oct 9) from comment #5)
> > Do we have contacts at Google that we can report this to? The DNT header
> > shouldn't affect the notification portion of their website (and/or if it
> > does, its effect should be universal, and there should probably be a message
> > of sorts describing why it's "not working").
> 
> Can you reproduce the issue aswell? 

I have not had time to try.


> Please make sure not to mix the DNT header and the tracking protection. I am
> no expert here but I think they have different ways how they work. DNT
> setting (gracefully DNT Protection) have no influence, while the forced
> tracking protection causes the issue on some pages as described. I still
> suspect a Google script error, as the behaviour is not consistent for all of
> their sites.

I am really confused by your comment vis-a-vis comment #4, which implies that the privacy.donottrackheader.enabled pref is what triggers the issue here. That preference has nothing to do with tracking protection, and only involves the DNT header. If just that preference triggers the issue here, then clearly this is about DNT rather than tracking protection.

If you're saying this needs *both* tracking protectin *and* the DNT header to be enabled, then that would change things.

I'm also not sure whether or not this is then a dupe of bug 1177582 or not. Maybe Loic can help.

Comment 10

[Karl Wester-Ebbinghaus]

Sorry for the late reply. I was on a short trip.

@Gijs:

The setting:
privacy.trackingprotection.enabled = true 
will cause the issue. Setting it to false will fix the issue. 

The setting
privacy.donottrackheader.enabled = true or = false

has no influence on the behaviour in regard of the issue.

Comment 12

[Karl Wester-Ebbinghaus]

this is not longer an issue. Google has reworked the notification window and it does not inflict with the FF privacy.trackingprotection.enabled = true  anymore!

Hurray!