1427535 - Address bar/Location bar/urlbar drops first few letters when typing immediately after opening a new tab with a custom new-tab URL

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect, P5)

Description

[wojtek]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.13; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
Build ID: 20171226083017

Steps to reproduce:

* Hit cmd+T to open new tab
* start typing new address



Actual results:

* most of the times first couple of letters are removed because it looks like the time Firefox needs to fully open the new tab is longer-ish and the letters of the address I manage to type are removed (address bar is cleared).
This is quite annoying as I am heavy keyboard user and tend to type quickly so hitting cmd+t and then waiting for the Fx to actually catch up is kinda annoying and most of the time I have to remove what I've typed and start again.
This wasn't an issue with previous versions of the browser nor with other browsers whatsoever...


Expected results:

I should be able to open new tab and immediately type the address without any part of it being removed

Comment 1

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

This kind of sounds like bug 1421503.

Could you please try reproducing the problem in safe mode with all add-ons disabled? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode

If it still happens in safe mode, please then try with a new profile: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles

Comment 2

[wojtek]

OK, after playing with SafeMode and eliminating addons I narrowed it down to single one: New Tab Override (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/new-tab-override/) and when to think about it - it makes sense: tab is being opened, I start typing, addon loads and then address changes.

Motivation to use the addon? I want to have completely blank page when browser starts up or I open new tab. I'm aware, that users may prefer to have a search bar there (because the one in the addressbar is not visible enough ::rolls_eyes::) but for me having anything there is distracting and, to put it VERY MILDLY, annoying at the very least (I completely don't care about the contents of that page…). And there is no way to setup firefox like that but that's separate issue I guess.

Comment 3

[wojtek]

Related bug 1179593

Comment 4

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

Hmm, this bug deserves some investigation I think.  I don't know whether you're right about the cause.  I kind of doubt it because that add-on is a WebExtension, and the WebExtension API for setting the new-tab URL just sets the newTabURL property on the new-tab service as far as I can tell [1].  The contents of the urlbar textbox aren't dynamically changed every time you open a new tab, I don't think.  (... Or maybe they are since with the default new-tab URL, no URL is shown at all in the textbox -- when you change the new-tab URL with that add-on, does a URL appear in the textbox when you open a new tab?)

[1] https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/extensions/ext-url-overrides.js

Comment 5

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

I installed that add-on and couldn't reproduce the problem.  But, there's an ugly flickering of the "Extension (New Tab Override)" urlbar-display-box every time I open a new tab.  And when I set the new-tab URL to nytimes.com and then open a new tab and quickly start typing, sometimes "https://www.nytimes.com/" ends up getting appended to what I'm typing.  (That doesn't happen when I set the new-tab URL to about:blank since in that case no URL is shown in the urlbar.)  So I don't doubt there might also be the problem you're describing, even if I can't confirm it.

Comment 6

[wojtek]

I had it set to "Custom URL" without setting URL. But I've tried to use "Blank page (about:blank)" in extension preferences with same result.
I'm not really sure why it may be happening, but I've disabled it and removed as much as possible form default start page so it's not that annoying to use now so for me problem is gone ;)

If you want me to run some tests/collect logs I could help though.

Comment 7

[Thomas Murphy]

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.12; rv:61.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/61.0
61.0.2 (64-bit)

I have experienced similar problems with the addon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/blank-new-tab/

However, since Firefox now supports a true "Blank Page" setting rather than "Firefox Home (Default)" with everything hidden, my choice of addon is now redundant and disabling it has fixed the text-entry issue for me.

Comment 10

[maricn]

Arch Linux
81.0.1 (64-bit)

I still experience this issue, and hope this thread would focus more on the bug itself instead of workarounds and/or changing user habits.

In my case, I use tridactyl extension which is keyboard heavy (brings vim-style bindings to firefox) and in order to intercept keyboard bindings on a new tab, it overrides the firefox new tab behavior. Opening a new tab will almost always get me in the situation of having to retype. Even worse, as I type fast, I can easily end up on an unexpected (NSFW) webpage from my history.

I have opened an issue on the extension project where you can see more details - https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl/issues/2840.

Thank you for your assistance!

Comment 11

[Markus Koller]

I started experiencing this issue too, and can reproduce with both the "Tabliss" and the "New Tab Override" extensions.

I've been using Tabliss for years but this only started happening recently with either Firefox 80 or 81.

To reproduce I copied the string "foobar" into the clipboard, and then quickly hit Ctrl+T and Ctrl+V. I'll attach a screencast for that, you can see the input disappearing as soon as the "Extension" badge on the address bar is rendered.

Comment 12

[Markus Koller]

Attachment: firefox-address-bar-disappearing-input.webm

Comment 13

[Stephan Sokolow]

I wonder if this has any similarities, cause-wise, to the problem I reported a while ago with the findbar scrambling up characters if the browser is bogged down and typing happens too quickly after Ctrl+F.

Comment 14

[Markus Koller]

Also reproduced now on latest nightly 83.0a1.en-US.linux-x86_64 with a blank profile (except for installing Tabliss)

(sorry for the noise, should have put all that in one comment...)

Comment 15

[roman.shevtsov]

I'd like to +1 this, it regressed around Firefox 80.
I haven't changed an addon I use as a custom new tab, also tried different ones now - unless it's a Firefox default one, I lose first few characters I'm typing after doing Cmd+T.
Makes Firefox experience really poor for keyboard-heavy users.

Comment 16

[v]

Same thing for me after updating Firefox from 72 to 82 on ArchLinux, I have to wait about 500 to 1000ms before starting typing in the URL bar or the first chars I typed will disappear and I'll have to retype everything. I'm using tridactyl with about:blank as new tab.

Comment 17

[braham.snyder]

Just adding some search keywords to make this easier to find: URL bar, input lost, first keypresses lost, text lost, inputs deleted, race condition, text typed

Comment 18

[Thom Chiovoloni [:tcsc] (ex-moco)]

This also happens to me on macOS. I've seen it when using the addon "Tabby Cat", and also when using "Tabliss" — it was actually part of why I stopped using that addon (anecdotally, it seemed to be very common with tabliss, and much less common with tabby cat, although it does happen enough for me to take the time to complain about it here file an issue).

I have never experienced this before starting to use a new-tab-page addon.

Frequently, the input is something I'm pasting in, in which case it gets entirely lost, presumably as the events describing the input are dropped — this leads me to believe the input events aren't being handled? E.g, it doesn't seem like a case of stuff getting overwritten or whatever.

Usually when it happens (but not always), I lose focus on the location bar once stuff finishes loading. It's a little hard to explain, but seems correlated with when the grey "Extension (${extensionName})` badge shows up on the left-hand side of the location bar.

---

So, it feels to me like it happens when I've entered the input before the addon finishes initializing, or at least before the aformentioned badge shows up.

My (largely unfounded) hypothesis is that there's some race condition having to do with the addon's initialization (or perhaps the update of the location bar to display that badge). E.g. I suspect tabliss (perhaps due to the more complex functionality) initialized slower, and thus the issue occurred more frequently.

That said, this hypothesis is entirely based on my own anecdotes, so obviously take it with a few grains of salt. It also has no explanation for the focus loss, and if it were just an initialization race, I think the issue would be more frequent (I can certainly reliably use the bar before the addon loads without issues most of the time).

Not to mention, I guess someone here had it happen for an addon providing an entirely blank page (which presumably loads almost instantly, although maybe not if the content had to be loaded from disk), so yah, perhaps my theory is bunk.

Comment 19

[Cristian Comorasu, QA [:ccomorasu], Releae Desktop QA - Please contact [e-mail]]

Based on the previous comments I will update this papercut issue.

Comment 20

[Markus Koller]

I wanted to say that I don't experience this anymore using Tabliss, Linux, and Firefox 98, but it looks like the race condition window has just become shorter and it takes me more tries to reproduce it with my example from https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1427535#c11

So the underlying problem still seems to be there, but at least I stopped noticing it in general daily usage :)

Comment 21

[Stephan Sokolow]

I still experience it commonly on "no Tabliss, Linux, and Firefox 98". Hell, just a few days ago, I was cursing at DuckDuckGo because I'd hit Ctrl+T, type "search keyword", and hit Enter but, because I hit Enter too quickly, I searched for "search keyw".

My "Custom New Tab URL" is the Blank Page option in an effort to maximize browser responsiveness.

Comment 22

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

(In reply to Stephan Sokolow from comment #21)

I still experience it commonly on "no Tabliss, Linux, and Firefox 98". Hell, just a few days ago, I was cursing at DuckDuckGo because I'd hit Ctrl+T, type "search keyword", and hit Enter but, because I hit Enter too quickly, I searched for "search keyw".

This is probably bug 1750317

Comment 23

[Mandy Cheang [:mcheang][she/her]]

I changed the priority to P5, as this bug is not happening as often as before.

Comment 24

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S3. However, the bug has 10 votes and 6 See Also bugs.
:adw, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

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