1608646 - "Pay with PayPal" button on merchant sites doesn't function due to browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction = 0

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect)

Description

[Chris Elmquist]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:72.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/72.0

Steps to reproduce:

when a merchant website (eBay, gigaparts, many others) presents a "Pay with PayPal" button on their checkout/cart page, clicking the button causes a brief spinner to appear but the browser does not redirect to the PayPal payment system.

This is Firefox 72.0.1 on Linux, Mac and Windows. All platforms fail. I have removed all content blockers and even followed instructions here,

https://support.mozilla.org/bm/questions/1246618

which fail to resolve the issue. Those instructions are very old and very stale since the settings dialogs in a current version of Firefox do not even match the instructions.
I have had this problem since Firefox 69.0 roughly-- for at least 6 months. Merchants are aware as they tell customers to use Chrome or Safari since Firefox is not working for a majority of their customers. eBay told me to use Chrome.

Actual results:

Nothing. No redirect/forward/pop-up, whatever it is called for this type of function occurred. The transaction is unable to be completed using PayPal. THIS ONLY HAPPENS WITH FIREFOX. Merchants have told me to use Chrome. I successfully used Safari on a Mac to complete the purchase.

Expected results:

Clicking the PayPal button is supposed to present another dialog into which you can complete the purchase and pay for it with PayPal. Even though content blocking is disabled, pop-up blocking is disabled, the browser is basically set to most vulnerable settings, this functionality still does not work. Again, on ALL PLATFORMS Mac, Linux and Windows.

Comment 1

[Gingerbread Man]

(In reply to Chris Elmquist from comment #0)

even followed instructions here

1. Enter about:profiles into the address bar.
2. Click the Create a New Profile button.
3. Below that profile, click the Launch Profile in New Browser button.
4. In the new window, enter about:preferences#privacy into the address bar.
5. Set Enhanced Tracking Protection to Custom then uncheck every box below that.
6. Does the problem still occur? If yes, then it's looking more likely to be a bug in the site or Firefox. Someone may have other suggestions if you ask a new question on the support forum.

Merchants are aware

Possible but unlikely. Paid support personnel will always tell you to use another browser, regardless of which one you're using.

Comment 2

[Chris Elmquist]

OK. Thank you. The problem does NOT occur in the new profile. That is encouraging.

How can I debug what has "wrong" with my original (and only other) profile? This problem basically appeared out of nowhere-- coincident with Firefox updates so I am hesitant to believe it is something I added to or changed in my default profile.

I did the Custom settings in Enhanced Tracking Protection in my original profile and the problem still persists there. So, how do I determine what is different between the two profiles?

Basically, I want to understand which Firefox feature keeps the PayPal thing from working. I'd like to judge if it is safe to always run with that disabled or once I determine what it is, do I need to turn it on and off each time I use PayPal.

I understand your point about support people just sending you to another browser but it would seem that that is a poor situation for Firefox if people are directed away from it and find success with Chrome or Safari or whatever else-- as I did-- and as multiple coworkers have done as they discover they can no longer successfully use PayPal with Firefox.

So, I am interested in understanding the problem and being able to offer a useful workaround/solution so that Firefox is not blamed for this situation.

Comment 3

[Gingerbread Man]

(In reply to Chris Elmquist from comment #2)

The problem does NOT occur in the new profile.
I did the Custom settings in Enhanced Tracking Protection in my original profile and the problem still persists there.

Does the problem go away in a brand new profile without touching any settings, or was it actually necessary to turn off Enhanced Tracking Protection as described at comment 1? Also note when something is blocked on a page, there's a shield icon on the left side of the address bar. You can click that, then the arrow next to one of the categories under Blocked (e.g. Tracking Content) to see a list of domains whose content was blocked.

How can I debug what has "wrong" with my original (and only other) profile?

Two other things to try separately:

1. Enter about:preferences#privacy into the address bar.
2. Click the Clear Data… button and clear Cached Web Content.
3. Click the Manage Data… button and remove data for the domains involved. Be sure to click the Save Changes button when done. You can instead clear all cookies and site data in the previous dialog, but that would log you out of all sites and potentially discard saved preferences on all sites.
4. Check if the issue still occurs.

---

1. Enter about:addons into the address bar.
2. Disable all of your extensions.
3. If the site in question was already open, reload it (e.g. press the F5 key).
4. Check if the issue still occurs.

If that doesn't help, you may want to use the Refresh Firefox feature. It creates a fresh profile that retains some data like bookmarks and passwords, but discards other things, like add-ons and preferences/about:config settings. Again, the support forum is the best place for this kind of troubleshooting.

Comment 4

[Chris Elmquist]

I have been travelling so apologize for the delayed follow-up. Thank you for your input and I believe I have resolved my issue. It turns out that for forever I have had the config option "browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction" set to 0 in all of my Firefox profiles on all of my platforms. When I restored this setting to 2, I am now able to get the Pay with PayPal redirection/pop-up window to appear and the transaction to complete.

I had set it to 0 ages ago because I didn't want new windows or new tabs to open for every link that I followed. In the past, this was a recommended setting to keep new links opened in the same window/tab.

I suspect that the behaviour behind this setting has changed recently because it has been set to 0 for me for many, many years and the PayPal thing had worked fine until just a few months ago.

So, partly operator error and partly a behavioural change in the browser I think which conspired to create the problem for me.

We can close this ticket. Thanks for playing along.

Chris

Comment 5

[Gingerbread Man]

Thank you for the update.