1855833 - Unified toolbar buttons disappear and could not be shown until TB is restarted.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1856509

(Thunderbird :: Toolbars and Tabs, defect)

Description

[ISHIKAWA, Chiaki]

Attachment: missing-toobar.JPG

I know this bugzilla is not useful for debugging since reproducing the symptom is unknown, but I believe the developers need to be aware that there is a display problem.

I am using the supernova version under win10.
The problem happened on Sept 27 (Japan Standard Time). I think it is with the current 115.3.0 but could be the older one. I think there has been a switch in the last few days.

I am attaching the TB's main window image when I noticed the toolbar, namely RECEIVE, COMPOSE, CHAT, ADDRESS BOOK, TAG, Quick Filter and search box disappeared completely.
Sorry, I am using Japanese locale and so I am not sure what the exact English labels are, but you get the idea.

My observation

• It is gone completely. I tried clicking where "RECEIVE" would have been there in the empty space, but nothing happens.
• Thinking that changing the layout and/or toggling the showing of toolbar might show the toolbar again, I tried that. No, the empty screen remains empty.
• Minimizing and restoring the TB main windows did not restore the toolbar space.

I have not changed anything (the famous last words) and so I quit and restart TB and the toolbar is shown again.

If someone works in the menu display, it is prudent to bear in mind that there is a potential problem of showing the display.

I am using a PC with ECC memory and thus, I think I can rule out, random memory corruption, but who knows.
Or was it some type of OOM issue? But I am attaching the screenshot of error console when this happened, and I did not see anything in particular although there ARE some messages that warrant investigation on the own.

EDIT: changed the mention of "menu" to "toolbar".

Comment 1

[ISHIKAWA, Chiaki]

Attachment: error-console.JPG

This is the error console.

I created a mail and sent it around 19:30.
Yes, there have been a strange mail attachment problem. It was irritating, but I assumed maybe it was caused by a filename that consists of Japanese characters and some. (Such a prob lem used to happen with some software. I was in a hurry and did not investigate this much further.)
I had enough temporary directory space and the error message was shown even before I hit the send button, but it happened while I was composing. Strange.
This may have been caused by possible OOM issue. But I have no idea.

Anyway around 19:30 when I sent out a couple of e-mail, the toolbar was shown.

However, around 20:30 when I switched to the main TB screen to fetch the mails, I noticed that
the toolbar disappeared and could not be restored.

I could not find any smoking gun related to menu display issue.
But the following errors I see in the error console may have a cascading effect and affected the menu display?

• 20:12:26.135 Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: tabmail.currentAbout3Pane.slectMessage is not a cfunction
• 20:18:53.201 Uncaught TypeError: this element is null (Addition: I think this is related to the issue. See comment 5)

Edit: Modified the mention of "menu" to "toolbar".

Comment 2

[ISHIKAWA, Chiaki]

Attachment: Toolbar is restored after restarting TB.

I was afraid that I might have changed something permanently (although I knew I did not do anything intentionally, sometimes wary finger or mouse movement may trigger unwanted action).

But given that nothing worked to restore the toolbar, and
I was positive that the toobar should be back, and as a matter of fact, it was rather uncomfortable to work with TB with the toolbar NOT showing, I restarted TB and the toolbar was back to my relief.

So it was a temporary issue, but I have no idea what triggered it.
But it may happen somehow. The code reviewer should bear this in mind.

EDIT: Mention of "menu" was modified to "toolbar" and other typo fixes.

EDIT: Changed the mention of "menu" to "toolbar".

Comment 3

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Updating the title since what disappeared are actually the toolbar buttons, as the menu can be still seeing there.
Gentle ping to Martin to see if he has any clue of what might have caused this sudden UI flicker.

Comment 4

[Martin Giger [:freaktechnik]]

Hm, the unified toolbar does require the spaces toolbar to work. And from what I can tell it's supposed to be visible. However it is missing in the first screenshot, suggesting the error in the spaces toolbar lead to it not getting built. And if the spaces toolbar doesn't initialize, the unified toolbar can't initialize.

Comment 5

[ISHIKAWA, Chiaki]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #3)

Updating the title since what disappeared are actually the toolbar buttons, as the menu can be still seeing there.
Gentle ping to Martin to see if he has any clue of what might have caused this sudden UI flicker.

Thank you for fixing the bugzilla title. I changed the description of the attachment files accordingly.
For someone who is a bit clueless with new UI, how to call these things were not clear initially.

(In reply to Martin Giger [:freaktechnik] from comment #4)

Hm, the unified toolbar does require the spaces toolbar to work. And from what I can tell it's supposed to be visible. However it is missing in the first screenshot, suggesting the error in the spaces toolbar lead to it not getting built. And if the spaces toolbar doesn't initialize, the unified toolbar can't initialize.

Thank you for the pointer.
Now, then the error in the captured console log makes sense.
https://bug1855833.bmoattachments.org/attachment.cgi?id=9355691

The error reported
20:18:53.201 Uncaught TypeError: this element is null
happens in spacesToolbar.js:816:5
and there are short Java stack trace.
I wonder if that will lead us to learn the cause of the issue.

Comment 6

[ISHIKAWA, Chiaki]

Looking at comm-esr115 source file using
https://searchfox.org/comm-esr115/source/mail/base/content/spacesToolbar.js#816
shows the following code snipet.

    let revealButton = document.getElementById("spacesToolbarReveal");
    revealButton.hidden = !state;
    this.element.hidden = state;   <---- Line 816. Somehow this.element is null. Hmm...

    if (state && this.element.contains(activeElement)) {
      // If the toolbar is being hidden and one of its child element was

Well, we know how it erred, but I have no idea what the right fix would be.

EDIT: this .element was null instead of undefined.

Comment 7

[ISHIKAWA, Chiaki]

Like I said, I sent an e-mail and did not touch the TB main window while I worked on other programs.
Only when I came back to download new e-mails (I don't download e-mails automatically), I realized the toolbar is empty.
Very strange. I have no idea what could trigger "this.element is null" condition.

Comment 8

[Richard Leger]

Fyi, I don't know if it is related to this bug but... user case https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/beta/T18eaba202dc38c4b/space-bar-and-unified-toolbar-not-appearing-immediately-at-startup-in-tb-119-0b3-64-bit

After upgrade from 118.0b2 to 119.0b3 that my customised button have disappeared from Unified Toolbar.

Also noticed that:

• it takes 3mn+ for Space Bar and Unified Toolbar to appear at startup
• and the Folder Header pane re-appeared while it was hidden previously and

Comment 9

[ISHIKAWA, Chiaki]

(In reply to Richard Leger from comment #8)

Fyi, I don't know if it is related to this bug but... user case https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/beta/T18eaba202dc38c4b/space-bar-and-unified-toolbar-not-appearing-immediately-at-startup-in-tb-119-0b3-64-bit

After upgrade from 118.0b2 to 119.0b3 that my customised button have disappeared from Unified Toolbar.

Also noticed that:

• it takes 3mn+ for Space Bar and Unified Toolbar to appear at startup
• and the Folder Header pane re-appeared while it was hidden previously and

It is great that you found the regression in Bug 1857376.
Thank you.

Comment 10

[Richard Leger]

(In reply to ISHIKAWA, Chiaki from comment #9)

(In reply to Richard Leger from comment #8)

Fyi, I don't know if it is related to this bug but... user case https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/beta/T18eaba202dc38c4b/space-bar-and-unified-toolbar-not-appearing-immediately-at-startup-in-tb-119-0b3-64-bit

After upgrade from 118.0b2 to 119.0b3 that my customised button have disappeared from Unified Toolbar.

Also noticed that:

• it takes 3mn+ for Space Bar and Unified Toolbar to appear at startup
• and the Folder Header pane re-appeared while it was hidden previously and

It is great that you found the regression in Bug 1857376.
Thank you.

This bug would likely be resolved by Bug 1856509 (which Bug 1857376 has been marked as duplicate of).

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

120 beta should be out tomorrow