1436123 - Clicking on some webpages closes the page (or goes "back")

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[Bill Gates, Fool]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:58.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/58.0
Build ID: 20180128191252

Steps to reproduce:

I am a "civilian" user so forgive me if I make an error in protocol or duplication or incorrect forum location.  I have been on Quantum since about early December (2 months). Currently 58.0.1 (64-bit).

This may relate to 1403187 but that says right-clicking is a problem. For me it's left-clicking.

In the past week or so I have been suffering webpages "closing" from a single click. I horribly regret that it does not seem to be 100% reproducible, but MAYBE I can isolate it. When I say closing, I don't mean Control-W behavior; I mean, they return to the previous webpage. It seems to go "Back."

I use Outlook web-browser email for hotmail, at outlook.live.com:
- Often (recently) I'll be in an email message and wish to double click a word for copy/paste elsewhere, or scrape text while holding shift and left click and dragging or anchoring start and finish, to then go Ctrl-C. The bug (whose ever it is) is that the email closes (goes back to the page that opened the message) upon the first click.
- If I click in *some* text, I get an up-and-down positioning cursor and proceed normally. But some other text, boom as soon as I touch it. If I click in whitespace off to the right of all text, that very, very often closes (goes back). BTW this is not acting in another window such as you get when you choose "reply" at outlook.live.com; this is the same window that had Inbox or Sent which I clicked on a message withing. FYI I have the option for "Outlook keyboard shortcuts" turned off.

I was at a stock market site. I clicked on hypertext to "make a trade." As always it opened a window in the same browser window (i.e., does not open a new window). But (sometimes, grrr) when I just click in whitespace on the page, it goes back to the page with the link. (Imagine how upsetting that is)

It SEEMS to be remedied "temporarily" by F5 page reload ... but eventually it happens again.

If this is something new to the bugs team, how can I better communicate specifics? For example, I am willing to forward an email that has the malady.

Windows 7 Professional 64, FX 58.0.1

TIA

-----------------------
P.S. Setting up an account here with other than a passphrase is broken. I used 4 uppers, 4 lowers, 4 numeric digits and 4 # symbols - 16 total. Even THAT (and a dozen other attempts - all obeying the "rules") fails. Huge, irritating waste of time as everything is rejected. Besides that, 12 characters from 3 categories (if it even worked)? What is this, a top secret government website?

Also, there two different sets of "password rules" presented: On the new account page, it says
"You should use a passphrase that consists of at least four words, separated by spaces.
OR
If you want to use a password it must be at least 12 characters long, and contain:
more than two uppercase letters, more than two lowercase letters, and more than two numbers
OR
multiple symbols, numbers, and letters"

If instead you "click this link for more details about passwords" it says something different:
"Our minimum requirements for passwords are:
    must be at least 12 characters in length
    must not contain parts of your email address, or your real name
    must be complex, which means:
        must be a passphrase of at least four words
        OR
        must contain a mixture of letters and symbols, containing characters from 3 out of the following 4 character classes:
            lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers, and other symbols"


Actual results:

Browser went to the "back" page (I'm not sure if it went forward to it or backwards; I will monitor)


Expected results:

If you click on non hyperlinked text on a webpage, nothing should happen other than to give the browser focus, if unfocused, or other than to select a both of text if it's a double click. This is about clicking on non-linked areas of a webpage, even whitespace.

Comment 1

[Cristina Badescu [:cbadescu], Experiments QA]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:58.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/58.0
Build ID: 20180206200532

Hello,

I have tested this issue on latest Firefox release 58.0.2 and could not reproduce it. I have logged into my Outlook account on www.outloook.live.com (both beta and standard version). I was able to select text from emails, both by double click and by using "Shift" key and left click mouse, and copy it without any problems. 

I have also navigated to several websites, but didn't encounter this issue when I clicked on random non-hyperlinked text.

Can you please mention on what stock market site have you encounter this issue?

Also, can you please retest this using latest Firefox release and report back the results? When doing this, please use a new clean Firefox profile (https://goo.gl/AWo6h8), maybe even safe mode (https://goo.gl/AR5o9d), to eliminate custom settings as a possible cause.

Comment 2

[Bill Gates, Fool]

Thank you for your followup! First, I identified a hotmail message with the problem. (This is in outlook.live.com, the Microsoft browser page for email. Cristina, note your outloook link.) Going Back and re clicking to open the message did not "fix" it. Note earlier that I have found that F5 sometimes "fixes" but I did not hit F5 this time. I just closed FX 58 in order to create a new profile as suggested by your link.

I did firefox.exe -P and it did not open the Profile Manager. I saw a quick blurb that "Firefox is being updated"; it then just reopened the windows that were in the last session. Help-about now says 58.0.2 The hotmail message that was recently consistently failing is, for the moment, responding correctly (but reloading sometimes gives a temp fix as noted before).

The stock site that showed this problem is https://invest.ameritrade.com where you click on "reuse". Per Inspect Element
Inner and outer HTML:
Reuse
<a href="#" onclick="reUse(['1234554321'],'standard',false);return false;">Reuse</a>
Now, note that this is something that at this time is working correctly; I'm just setting up the scenario for when it fails. It opens a new page in the current window. Now, SOMETIMES, when the problem is active, you can only successfully click on text hyperlinks. Clicking the white on green button, or innocent text on the page, or even innocent white space, sends you back to the page with "Reuse." OTHER times (sorry, it's not happening 100% of the time), all is proper: when you click text, you get an up-and-down cursor (and can select text), and clicking nondescript white space does nothing.

One SEEMINGLY consistent aspect of the problem pages is that they so far all have a colored button somewhere on the page, like white-on-red, that does not function when the problem is happening; non hyperlinked text is not clickable or of course double clickable; but hyperlinked text DOES always function. It's as though the only thing that you can give focus to, and see a cursor icon change upon, is hyperlinked text; and clicking anything else sends to back to the page that you came from. For ameritrade.com that's the page where I clicked the Reuse hyperlink; for a hotmail email, it's the inbox page. The sensation, when this %^&%^&%ing maddeningly not-reproducible-on-demand condition occurs, is like everything on the webpage is a "giant 'Back' button" but with 2 differences: text hyperlinks work, but nothing surrounding them can be clicked; and the cursor never changes (except when over text hyperlinks). All of this is just expanding on my first report in the hope that more narrative inspires someone to recognize something.

At the moment I'm not seeing a problem page, but that's happened before and it always has eventually come back. Meanwhile the 58.0.2 bump alone might solve it. I'll keep watching.

Comment 3

[Cristina Badescu [:cbadescu], Experiments QA]

Hello Bill,

Thanks for the additional information. If I understood correctly, you haven't encountered this issue on the latest Firefox release version 58.0.2.

Can you please confirm this?

Comment 4

[Cristina Badescu [:cbadescu], Experiments QA]

Due to the fact that I did not manage to reproduce this issue and the fact that the reporter didn't answer to my request until now, I'm going to close this issue as Resolved-Incomplete.

If anyone can still reproduce it on the latest versions, feel free to reopen the issue and provide more information.

Comment 5

[Bill Gates, Fool]

I have been trying to reproduce this and I hesitated to say anything because the issue has been unpredictably inconsistent. Since I have not impelled the behavior since 58.0.2, it may be that the issue no longer exists. That's all I can say, until or unless it reappears. Sorry for the delay in saying that. I've just been continuing to wait for it to reoccur - and it hasn't.