Closed Bug 1769428 Opened 3 years ago Closed 2 years ago

Tab occasionally refuses to load images from BBC website; only a new tab can load them

Categories

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
Tabbed Browser
Platform:
Desktop
All
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: gportioli, Unassigned, NeedInfo)

Details

From the BBC News home page (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news - you may need to VPN to the UK to avoid being redirected to bbc.com), open a number of articles in new tabs by clicking on their link with scrollwheel click or CTRL + click (tabs open in the background).

On average, 1 in 20 tabs (give or take) fails to load properly: text and formatting load ok, but images do not load and do not show alt text either (despite it being present in the source code). They show a blank placeholder instead; for videos, a placeholder with the BBC logo in it is displayed.
For example, the above just happened on the following page: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-61452860

The following actions are ineffective at loading the missing images in the affected tab:

  • F5
  • CTRL + F5
  • CTRL + Shift + R
  • Clicking on the address bar and pressing Enter.
  • Hitting the Back button and re-clicking the link (if the link was opened in the same tab instead of a new tab).
  • Closing the tab (CTRL +F4) and reopening it (CTRL + SHIFT + T).
  • Moving the tab to a new window.
  • Disabling the HTTP cache from Developer Tools and refreshing the page (with the console open).

The only way to load the missing images is to create a new tab and open the link there, either by ctrl-clicking on it from somewhere or copying and pasting the URL.

This is not a new behaviour. It started happening I reckon in the second half of 2021, but unfortunately I cannot remember which version of Firefox it started with.

This issue affects at least (as I saw):

  • Firefox 100 (64 bit) on Ubuntu 21.10
  • Firefox 91.7.1esr (32-bit) on Windows 10

including with all extensions disabled.

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Tabbed Browser' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Component: General → Tabbed Browser

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:dao, could you have a look please?

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Flags: needinfo?(dao+bmo)

I've seen the same behaviour in Firefox for a similar amount of time i.e. right clicking a link and selecting 'Open Link in New Tab'. I would say it happens about 1 in 4 times e.g. if I open a dozen tabs, 3-4 have not rendered the image. I've not seen this behaviour in either Chrome or Edge.

I've now also seen this on https://devclass.com/ - some images not rendered. Copy/pasting the URL into a new tab does not fix the problem (presumably some cache mechanism thinks the image has already been loaded?). Renders fine in Chrome and Edge.

Currently running Firefox 108 and the issue seems to have gone away: when a tab fails to load properly, now simply refreshing it with F5 does the trick.

Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 2 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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