1842437 - Youtube back navigation has started to fail again in new tabs.

Status: REOPENED

(Web Compatibility :: Interventions, defect)

Description

[Kestrel]

STR:

1. Open a youtube video link in a new tab.
2. Navigate to a different video.
3. Click the back button.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 until issue occurs.

Expected:
Navigates back to previous video.

Actual:
URL changes but page content sometimes does not, showing the wrong video. Refreshing updates the page content to the correct video.

Happens more often with privacy.resistFingerprinting = true due to the ReduceTimerPrecision RFPTarget (Bug 1437266).

Regressed by Bug 1833871.

Comment 1

[Thomas Wisniewski [:twisniewski]]

Sigh. Ok, let's ship the intervention again. Thanks for the report!

Comment 2

[Donal Meehan [:dmeehan]]

:twisniewski I see Bug 1838838 for Fx117, do you also have something for Fx116?

Comment 3

[Thomas Wisniewski [:twisniewski]]

Not yet, but if we'd like a patch for it, then I could make a patch tomorrow for 117 and we can backport it right away?

Comment 4

[Donal Meehan [:dmeehan]]

(In reply to Thomas Wisniewski [:twisniewski] from comment #3)

Not yet, but if we'd like a patch for it, then I could make a patch tomorrow for 117 and we can backport it right away?

Perfect, thanks for the info

Comment 5

[Thomas Wisniewski [:twisniewski]]

Attachment: Bug 1842437 - re-apply the YouTube webcompat intervention to fix back-forward cache navigation issues; r?denschub

Comment 6

[Thomas Wisniewski [:twisniewski]]

Comment on attachment 9343288 [details]
Bug 1842437 - re-apply the YouTube webcompat intervention to fix back-forward cache navigation issues; r?denschub

Beta/Release Uplift Approval Request

• User impact if declined: YouTube can have problems with back/forward navigation, with videos not changing correctly.
• Is this code covered by automated tests?: No
• Has the fix been verified in Nightly?: No
• Needs manual test from QE?: No
• If yes, steps to reproduce:
• List of other uplifts needed: None
• Risk to taking this patch: Low
• Why is the change risky/not risky? (and alternatives if risky): This same code was shipping in Firefox 114, so it's safe to re-apply it (it was prematurely removed in 115). It would be fine to ship this in a dot-release if desired.
• String changes made/needed:
• Is Android affected?: No

Comment 7

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/1fa7de8dec52
re-apply the YouTube webcompat intervention to fix back-forward cache navigation issues; r=denschub,webcompat-reviewers

Comment 8

[Cristian Tuns]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/1fa7de8dec52

Comment 9

[Dianna Smith [:diannaS]]

Comment on attachment 9343288 [details]
Bug 1842437 - re-apply the YouTube webcompat intervention to fix back-forward cache navigation issues; r?denschub

Approved for 116.0b5

Comment 10

[Pulsebot]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/9ea5b35a3142

Comment 11

[Thomas Wisniewski [:twisniewski]]

Comment on attachment 9343288 [details]
Bug 1842437 - re-apply the YouTube webcompat intervention to fix back-forward cache navigation issues; r?denschub

Given that v115 is an ESR, and will be the last version for Windows 7/8 users, I think we should try to ship this in the next ESR dot-release.

Comment 12

[Alex Finder]

(In reply to Pulsebot from comment #7)

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/1fa7de8dec52
re-apply the YouTube webcompat intervention to fix back-forward cache
navigation issues; r=denschub,webcompat-reviewers

== Change summary for alert #39016 (as of Thu, 13 Jul 2023 23:17:55 GMT) ==

Improvements:

Ratio	Test	Platform	Options	Absolute values (old vs new)	Performance Profiles
18%	youtube FirstVisualChange	macosx1015-64-shippable-qr	cold fission webrender	315.75 -> 259.47	Before/After
3%	youtube PerceptualSpeedIndex	macosx1015-64-shippable-qr	cold fission webrender	1,023.80 -> 991.47	Before/After

For up to date results, see: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/perfherder/alerts?id=39016

Comment 13

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Comment on attachment 9343288 [details]
Bug 1842437 - re-apply the YouTube webcompat intervention to fix back-forward cache navigation issues; r?denschub

Approved for 115.1esr.

Comment 14

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Comment on attachment 9343288 [details]
Bug 1842437 - re-apply the YouTube webcompat intervention to fix back-forward cache navigation issues; r?denschub

Actually, this needs a rebased patch for 115.

Comment 15

[Thomas Wisniewski [:twisniewski]]

Attachment: esr115.patch

Sure, here's a patch made against the mozilla-esr115 branch.

Comment 16

[Alexandru Trif, Desktop Test Engineering [:atrif]]

Reproduced the issue with Firefox 117.0a1 (20230709212832) on Windows 10x64.
I can no longer reproduce the issue after using STR from comment 0 on Windows 10x64, macOS 12 and Ubuntu 21 with Firefox 116.0b6 and Firefox 117.0a1 (2023-07-16). The page content successfully changes after visiting a youtube link and changing to another video and then navigating back to the previous video. Tested multiple times.

Comment 17

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Comment on attachment 9343928 [details] [diff] [review]
esr115.patch

Approved for 115.1esr.

Comment 18

[Pulsebot]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-esr115/rev/ed0517f7877b

Comment 19

[Alexandru Trif, Desktop Test Engineering [:atrif]]

Verified fixed with Firefox 115.1.0esr (20230717211020) from comment 18 on Windows 10x64, macOS 12, and Ubuntu 20.04. The page content is correctly changed after following the steps from comment 0.
However, I encountered bug 1844070 when testing which may be similar to this.

Comment 20

[Thomas Wisniewski [:twisniewski]]

Pardon the spam, but I'm reopening this bug, as we're going to track webcompat issues which have a site intervention differently (by keeping the open until the underlying issue is actually fixed).