Closed Bug 13982 Opened 25 years ago Closed 21 years ago

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

Categories

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

PowerPC
Mac System 8.6
defect

Tracking

()

RESOLVED WONTFIX
mozilla1.4alpha

People

(Reporter: bugzilla, Assigned: harishd)

References

Details

(Keywords: qawanted, relnote)

Attachments

(3 files)

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.
Assignee: troy → rickg
Component: Layout → Parser
The fact that view source shows cut off text indicates it could be a parser
problem
Assignee: rickg → petersen
Petersen -- help! Can you set this up for testing on your mac? Thanks.
I'm also seeing this on linux.
Add "127.0.0.1       www.burstnet.com" to your /etc/hostsfile, then visit
mozillazine.
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.
Back to rick.
Assignee: petersen → rickg
Petersen: ack! I was hoping that you would give me a testcase.
Assignee: rickg → 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).
How come this is still M14? M14 is already out!
Mass moving old milestone bugs to M16
Target Milestone: M14 → M16
M16 has been out for a while now, these bugs target milestones need to be 
updated.
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.
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.

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.
*** Bug 30012 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Setting severity to Blocker, since this is the severity of bug 30012 which is 
a DUP of this bug.
Severity: normal → blocker
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.
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.

I contacted Sammy Ford and he told me that he would add a comment 
about it in M18's release notes.
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?
Nominating for rtm. Also changed Target Milestone as M16 has been out 
for months now...
Keywords: rtm
Target Milestone: M16 → mozilla0.9
rtm- not top crasher.
Whiteboard: [rtm-]
Nominating for mozilla1.0 milestone.
Keywords: mozilla1.0
just wonderin, is this really a blocker? there is a workaround (don't use
webfree). i assume you are still seeing this bug though?
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.
Petersen, are you going to fix this? I think it got away from you.

Re-assigning to default owner and cc:ing rickg. 
Assignee: petersen → harishd
QA Contact: petersen → bsharma
Whiteboard: [rtm-]
Target Milestone: mozilla0.9 → mozilla0.9.2
Setting to 1.0 since 0.9.2 hasn't been scheduled yet.
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Target Milestone: mozilla0.9.2 → mozilla1.0
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.
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?
relnote keyword, and contacting endico or someone else @mozilla.org should 
work.
Keywords: relnote
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)"
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.
Depends on: 12985
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. 
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.
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.
just updated the prototype release note doc with waldo's comment. This change
should show up in the next version of the release notes.
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!
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.
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.
Blocks: 93858
No longer blocks: 93858
*** Bug 93858 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Is the problem with WebFree something we will fix, or is it hacking tags to
obtriusively?
Blocks: 93858
No longer depends on: 12985
Blocks: 12985
QA Contact: bsharma → moied
*** Bug 116928 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
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 adt@netscape.com.  You can search for
"Moving bugs not scheduled for a project" to quickly delete this bugmail.
Target Milestone: mozilla1.0 → mozilla1.2
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.
*** Bug 123840 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
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...
Keywords: qawanted
Whiteboard: [wontfix?]
Target Milestone: mozilla1.2alpha → mozilla1.2beta
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.
Target Milestone: mozilla1.2beta → mozilla1.3alpha
Target Milestone: mozilla1.3alpha → mozilla1.4alpha
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
Severity: blocker → major
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 21 years ago
Keywords: mozilla1.0
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
Whiteboard: [wontfix?]
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