1689211 - Print problems after auto-update to 85 on Windows 7 32-bit PC

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core :: Print Preview, defect)

Description

[kevin_kruger]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/87.0.4280.141 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

I click the print icon in the toolbar. (Or select it from the drop-down in the menu - same results.) The print preview window comes up and looks good, so I hit the Print button at the top. Then the print dialog box (where I choose printer, page count, etc) appears next to the preview. The settings and printer are correct so I hit the Print button in the dialog box.

Actual results:

Firefox was auto-updated to 85 yesterday on a Windows 7 computer I use regularly. After the update it will no longer print when I use the print icon. I have to use Ctrl-P. When I click the print icon in the toolbar (or select it from the drop-down in the menu), the preview window comes up, at which point I hit the Print button. Then the print dialog box (where I choose the printer, page count, etc) appears next to the preview, as it always did. I set the print options as I always do, hit the Print button in the dialog box and it flashes but does not print. The preview does not go away and the print dialog box does not go away. As if that's not enough, it locks Firefox up. I can still make selections in the dialog box but I cannot close it and clicking buttons on it or on the Firefox window in the background does nothing. I have to end the Firefox process in Task manager to do anything else in Firefox. If I use Ctrl-P the preview does not come up (which appears to be the only difference between the two printing methods), I make the same selections in the dialog box, hit the Print button, and it works... FYI - This same computer was used daily for printing from Firefox before the 85 update with NO problems. The Firefox update is the only thing that has changed and this problem is unique to Firefox. (I switched to Chrome to confirm.) I have tried restarting the machine and starting Firefox in safe mode (and clearing cache, for what that's worth) and the problem persists.

Expected results:

The page should have printed without having to use Ctrl-P.

Comment 1

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

Bugbug thinks this bug should belong to this component, but please revert this change in case of error.

Comment 2

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Thanks for the bug report. There has indeed been a lot of work going on behind-the-scenes on improving Firefox's printing, and it sounds like one of the changes may've had some unforeseen fallout that you're running up against.

Could you check a few things for me:
(1) If you open Firefox' File menu (which you might have to press "Alt" in order to get to show up), do you see options for Print as well as Print Preview? (two separate options)

(2) If yes, then: could you confirm that "File|Print" is fine (and doesn't show any visualization of the document), whereas "File|Print Preview" is broken? (That's my takeaway from your bug description -- Ctrl+P is equivalent to File|Print, whereas the three-line-menu's "Print" option is actually Print Preview.)

(3) Would you mind trying out our new print dialog to see if it's affected or if it works fine? You may have to flip a preference in order to enable it. To do that: open a new tab and type in "about:config" in the URL bar and hit Enter; click through the disclaimer; and then start typing "print.tab_modal.enabled" and click the button at the right of the row for that preference to toggle it (from its existing value false to true). Then if you reload a tab and do Ctrl+P, you should see a new print dialog with an integrated preview alongside the printer-selection, etc. It would be help us to know if you hit the same issues there as well.

Comment 3

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc]

Daniel, should we revise the priority?

Comment 4

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

I'm not sure; we need more information to understand the severity.

Kevin, are you still able to reproduce the issues that you described?

In the time since you filed the bug, you may have received an update to start getting our new unified print/print-preview dialog (or if not, see part (3) of my comment 2 for how to opt-in to getting that UI). Could you try that out and let us know if that's affected?

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Calling this INCOMPLETE at this point. Kevin, if you can still reproduce, please reopen and let us know if anything has changed (e.g. you probably have the new print dialog now, since we've rolled that out everywhere).