1801597 - Typing jank on google.com search field with adblocking filter "uBlock-Origin-dev-filter – All Search Engines – Global"

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Core :: Performance, defect)

Description

[Fanolian]

Attachment: [new profile] typing jank.mp4

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/109.0
Build ID: 20221120214001

Basic Information

Steps to Reproduce:

1. In a new profile, install uBlock Origin (currently 1.45.2).
2. Subscribe uBlock-Origin-dev-filter – All Search Engines – Global. (Or import this permalink url from uBO settings > Filter lists)
3. Go to https://www.google.com/search?q=f. (So it skips the seemingly unaffected search field at google.com homepage.)
4. Press and hold a key to type rapidly into google.com search field. Adding some spaces inbetween seems to make the issue worse.

Expected Results:
Typing should be smooth and there should be little janks in performance profiles.

Actual Results:
There are some janks/slowness as shown in the attached video and profiles. The situation, however, is much worse in my main profile. I will attach a video in another comment.

This issue seems to be related to google.com's autocomplete feature. If I make an extremely long search phrase, autocomplete flyout will not be activiated and the jank is gone. The jank is back after clicking the X in the search field to clear the search phrase and type again.
However, Google will temporarily suspend autocomplete (https://www.google.com/complete/search?q=* requests return 403) for an unknown period of time (few hours max?) if I spam the autocomplete. I cannot reproduce the jank when autocomplete is suspended. Changing IP address or set up a new profile may lift the suspension.

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Performance recording (profile)

Profile URL: These are the profiles as shown in the video:
1st [0:01 - 0:06], the adblock filter is enabled: https://share.firefox.dev/3UYMj4H
2nd [0:18 - 0:21], reload google.com and try again: https://share.firefox.dev/3gnyUUS
3rd [0:37 - 0:42], filter is disabled, no janks: https://share.firefox.dev/3V3ZuB4
4th [0:59 - 1:04], filter is re-enabled, janks again: https://share.firefox.dev/3V88ZyY
5th (not shown in the video), Accessibility is force-disabled to eliminate bug 1800028: https://share.firefox.dev/3Gu6HX7

System configuration:

OS version: Windows 10 64bit 22H2 19045.2251
GPU model: Nvidia GTX 760 driver 473.81 (Aug 02, 2022)
Number of cores: i7-4771 4 cores 8 threads
Amount of memory (RAM): 16GB
SSD drive

More information

This archive is the Firefox test profile I use for the STR. The link will expire on 2022-12-31 but I can provide a new link as needed. (Nothing personal in the profile anyway)

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Thanks so much for your help.

Comment 1

[Fanolian]

Attachment: [new profile] about support.txt

Comment 2

[Fanolian]

Attachment: [main profile] typing jank, worse.mp4

This video is captured from my main profile. The jank is much more noticible.
Granted there should are other factors causing the jank, but disabling adblock filter "uBlock-Origin-dev-filter – All Search Engines – Global" vastly improves the jank to an accpetable level.

Profile captured during the video; filter enabled: https://share.firefox.dev/3ENTdUH
filter disabled (captured at a much later time and browser restarted, PIDs had changed): https://share.firefox.dev/3Aw8WWa

Comment 3

[Fanolian]

Attachment: [main profile] about support.txt

Comment 4

[Fanolian]

Attachment: [modern laptop] typing jank.mp4

I can still reproduce the jank with a modern gaming laptop using (essentially) the same profile as comment 2.

The laptop was plugged in with a high performance power profile. iGPU was used in the video but dGPU had the jank too.

Profile URLs:
1st, filter enabled: https://share.firefox.dev/3ErP8Es
2nd, filter disabled: https://share.firefox.dev/3U2qqQU
3rd, filter re-enabled: https://share.firefox.dev/3GDDvwZ

During the 3rd profile the jank was gone when autocompletes returned 400 (not 403) if the search phrase was too long.

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For both my desktop and laptop I don't have issues typing in Reddit or BMO, and accessibility.force_disabled;1 doesn't help.

Comment 5

[Fanolian]

Attachment: [modern laptop] about support.txt

Comment 6

[Fanolian]

This is not a recent regression. I can reproduce it in Firefox 79 but I didn't test it further.

Comment 7

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

The profile shows that uBlock Origin is doing expensive work in a requestAnimationFrame handler. https://share.firefox.dev/3GDay48

I think this bug should be reported to uBlock Origin. It's not clear that Firefox can do much to improve this.

Comment 8

[Fanolian]

I reported the issue to the filter list author. The jank is unrelated to Firefox.