1367259 - newtabpage speculative connects to hosts even if forbidden via pref

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect)

Description

[Darkspirit]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:55.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/55.0
Build ID: 20170523100217

Steps to reproduce:

network.http.speculative-parallel-limit;0
network.predictor.enable-prefetch;false
network.predictor.enabled;false
network.prefetch-next;false

Normal websites do not make speculative connections on hovering a link. Have I missed something?

Comment 1

[Darkspirit]

STR: open about:networking and hover elements on about:newtab

Comment 2

[Loic]

Connections are probably made to take thumbnails.

Comment 3

[Darkspirit]

(In reply to Loic from comment #2)
> Connections are probably made to take thumbnails.

Thank you for your hint!
I thought thumbnails/screenshots would be made on my first visit of an url (which is present on the newtabpage) and then get saved on the harddisk until a new thumbnail would be made when I revisit that url and some timer has elapsed.
And if I place a bookmark there for which no thumbnail is available, a pref decides wether to load it in the background to make a thumbnail or to let it blank until I visit it (this bug is about that). But this pref, for example, has not that behavior:

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/9ca23d313302#l1.12
> // enables showing basic placeholders for missing thumbnails
> pref("browser.newtabpage.thumbnailPlaceholder", false);

I think this pref should also decide about renewing a thumbnail only on click (uBlock Origin might set this with its disable-all-prefechting option) or on hover (default, current behavior).

Comment 5

[Jessilyn Davis]

Hello!
This bug has been closed due to inactivity and/or the potential for this bug to no longer be an issue with the new Discovery Stream-powered New Tab experience.
Please help us triage by reopening if this issue still persists and should be addressed.
Thanks!