1829348 - The Top Sites and Recommended by Pocket sections disappears after opening a new window and restart the browser if Sponsored tiles via Pocket and startup cache is enabled

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect, P3)

Description

[Cosmin Muntean [:cmuntean], Ecosystem QA]

Attachment: sponsored tile via pocket re-displayed if disable - enable sposnored shortcuts.mp4

[Affected Versions]:

• Firefox Nightly 114.0a1
• Firefox Beta 113.0b6
• Firefox Release 112.0.1

[Affected Platforms]:

• Windows 10 x64
• macOS 12.4
• Ubuntu 20.04 x64

[Steps to reproduce]:

1. Open the browser with a new clean profile.
2. Navigate to about:config and set the "nimbus.debug" to true.
3. Paste the following link in the same tab: about:studies?optin_slug=showing-3rd-sponsored-tile-on-the-newtab-page&optin_branch=treatment&optin_collection=nimbus-preview
4. Open a new window.
5. Restart the browser using the browser console (ctrl/cmd+shift+j then ctrl/cmd+alt+r).
6. Observe the new tab page.

[Expected results]:

• The Top Sites and Recommended by Pocket sections are correctly displayed.

[Actual results]:

• The Top Sites and Recommended by Pocket sections disappear.

[Notes]:

• The issue is also reproducible on Beta and Release if the "browser.startup.homepage.abouthome_cache.enabled" pref is set to "true".
• However this issue will not affect the experiments since the startup cache is not enabled in the regions targeted by the experiment.
• Attached is a screen recording of the issue.

Comment 1

[Cosmin Muntean [:cmuntean], Ecosystem QA]

Attachment: top sites no longer displayed.mp4

I uploaded the wrong screen recording. I'm uploading the correct one now.

Comment 2

[:Gijs (out for now; he/him)]

However this issue will not affect the experiments since the startup cache is not enabled in the regions targeted by the experiment.

I think we're rolling this out everywhere now. Mike, can you clarify the state of the world here, and/or reassess the severity/priority of this bug?

Comment 3

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

This is interesting - it's basically a variant of bug 1824094, but instead of loading a stale about:newtab, it's loading a stale about:home.

The probability of hitting this are pretty rare - the user needs to get into a situation where the browser restores the previous session despite not being configured to do so (crash recovery, after an update is applied, developer restart). They also need to have a window open at about:home. I'd say this is a rare but certainly not impossible scenario.

A significant proportion of our user population have the cache enabled by default, and we will be rolling out the about:home startup cache to all users on the release channel starting in 114 (tomorrow).

We might want to update our scheme somewhat and disqualify any caches once the AboutNewTab machinery has had a chance to wake up.