Open Bug 1858022 Opened 7 months ago Updated 3 months ago

Scrolling jumps back and forth in the Facebook feed.

Categories

(Core :: Panning and Zooming, defect, P2)

Product:
Core
Component:
Panning and Zooming
Version:
Firefox 118
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

Status:
UNCONFIRMED

People

(Reporter: resuna, Unassigned)

References

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/118.0

Steps to reproduce:

Firefox 118, 119.0b6, and 120.0a1 (2023-10-06).

I have the problem on other websites with long or "infinite scroll" pages in 118, I haven't tried other sites in the beta or nightly. I am filing this bug at the request of devs in 1779404.

Scroll down the Facebook feed a "long way". I can't be precise, because it's hard to measure, but the scroll bar is showing maybe 5% right at the bottom, so 20 pages?

Scroll down, slowly, as if reading the feed, and up a few articles and back down again, it's not precise, but eventually it starts jumping.

Actual results:

The feed starts jumping back and forth in and apparently triggering reloads from Facebook. Articles sometimes vanish completely as you're looking at them.

Expected results:

The feed scrolls to show new articles and you should be able to scroll back to see recent articles.

Component: Untriaged → Panning and Zooming
Product: Firefox → Core

I'm glad that you've opened a new topic about this, Peter. I wanted to add my input to the previous discussion, but it is locked to users like me.

Right now, I am using Firefox 118.0.1 64 bit, standard release, on Windows 10 Professional. I have an AMD 2400G cpu and 32 gigs of DDR4 Crucial ram. My C drive is a Samsung SSD. My Facebook feed goes on forever. I want to report that this version is rock solid stable for me on Facebook. I can scroll all the way down, hard, using my mouse, or the Down button on the keyboard, and the scrollbar moves on the side while the feed remains in place. As I scroll down, the new topics appear smoothly. I can scroll down and resume reading the previous posts at will. This is how Firefox used to behave before the scroll jumping began happening a year ago.

Moving along, I installed nightly version 119 Beta and FaceBook was jumping all over the place. I didn't install any extensions, nor did I tweak any settings. I had to uninstall it and reinstall version 118. I submitted feedback about why I uninstalled 119. I don't know if the diagnostic data was included or not. Is there any place to submit my current analytics for the good version?

119 and 120 are much more stable for me. I initially thought they had completely solved the problem.

(In reply to Peter da Silva from comment #2)

119 and 120 are much more stable for me. I initially thought they had completely solved the problem.

Could this radical difference in experience have something to do with our different computer setups? For instance, While I don't think different cpus would cause or prevent scroll-jumping, different types of RAM could. I have 4 matched 8 GB wafers of Crucial Ballistix RAM. I am not overclocking. I know that Firefox stores x amount of browser cache in the system RAM. Perhaps users with faster computers than mine are more likely to get fluttering in the read/write operations. ???

Also I'm on a Mac. :)

That probably makes a bigger difference than timing issues due to RAM geometry.

My current browser.cache.disk.capacity is 256,000. This was set during the fresh installation on October 7. Is that the new default capacity?

See Also: → 1856088

Setting P2:S3 since, I believe, the fix for bug 1779404 mitigates some of jumpy scrolling cases. I'd hope bug 1856088 eliminates jumpy scrolling causes on Facebook.

Severity: -- → S3
Priority: -- → P2

Peter, would you mind trying the latest nightly which should include bug 1856088? I haven't been able to reproduce any jumps with the STR in comment 0, so I am totally unsure whether it fixed the jumps though. If jumps are still there, it's definitely different type of jumps that I had been tracking down.

Flags: needinfo?(resuna)

When I saw the Bug Fix in 118 changes, I thought "oh god I thought it was a facebook problem!". I went to check it out to find it HAD WORSEN. Like I would scroll a bit and then the page would just not stop go back and forth literally without doing anything.

dj_sebas_v, would you mind providing ways to reproduce your issue as much detail as possible? I didn't think it got worse than before as per comment 2. Thanks!

Flags: needinfo?(dj_sebas_v)

(In reply to Hiroyuki Ikezoe (:hiro) from comment #9)

dj_sebas_v, would you mind providing ways to reproduce your issue as much detail as possible? I didn't think it got worse than before as per comment 2. Thanks!

To be perfectly honnest, I really don't know how I could tell you how to reproduce it. I follow some stuff and then I scroll and when it comes the infinite scrolling, that's when the jumping start happening. I don't adblocking happening on FB because literally nothing works on FB to block ads.

As far as I know, it only concerns Facebook and other websites with infinite scrolling does not have this issue.

Windows 11 x64, v118.0 (practically just updated), 64GB RAM, Ryzen 9 5900X, Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master motherboard.

Flags: needinfo?(dj_sebas_v)

OK, I thought you had fixed it, for a bit there. I scrolled down a long way without a problem, so I stopped and started reading the old messages as I scrolled down and after a bit at this slower rate it suddenly it started jumping for maybe 30 seconds to a minute, even after I stopped scrolling or even touching the mouse. So I scrolled down a bit, and it started again. The scrollbar position was jumping as well. It was like facebook was reloading the page over and over again, but it only happened after scrolling down with the mouse.

This doesn't happen when scrolling down with the keyboard.

Flags: needinfo?(resuna)

It seems to be fixed in Mastodon.

(In reply to Peter da Silva from comment #11)

OK, I thought you had fixed it, for a bit there. I scrolled down a long way without a problem, so I stopped and started reading the old messages as I scrolled down and after a bit at this slower rate it suddenly it started jumping for maybe 30 seconds to a minute, even after I stopped scrolling or even touching the mouse. So I scrolled down a bit, and it started again. The scrollbar position was jumping as well. It was like facebook was reloading the page over and over again, but it only happened after scrolling down with the mouse.

This doesn't happen when scrolling down with the keyboard.

Tried with the keyboard.
It seems less bad but it still happens on my end when the page loads more content. :\

But like I said, I never experienced this issue on any other site but Facebook.

(In reply to Peter da Silva from comment #11)

OK, I thought you had fixed it, for a bit there. I scrolled down a long way without a problem, so I stopped and started reading the old messages as I scrolled down and after a bit at this slower rate it suddenly it started jumping for maybe 30 seconds to a minute, even after I stopped scrolling or even touching the mouse. So I scrolled down a bit, and it started again. The scrollbar position was jumping as well. It was like facebook was reloading the page over and over again, but it only happened after scrolling down with the mouse.

Thanks for the feedback. The symptom sounds similar to bug 1840166. Can you please set layout.css.scroll-anchoring.suppressions.enabled to false for a while to see whether the symptom still happens or not. If it doesn't happen with the pref change, the root cause is same as bug 1840166. Thanks!

Flags: needinfo?(resuna)

I think you have it. At least it was no longer blatant enough to be noticeable.

Flags: needinfo?(resuna)

Bouncing as usual with FF 119. No change.

(In reply to Brinke Guthrie from comment #16)

Bouncing as usual with FF 119. No change.

I am having the same issue I think.
when tab away from open Facebook tab on Firefox v119.0.0
and come back to it after a little while I have noticed it auto-refreshes Facebook news feed bringing it back to the top.
This has been happening since I updated to Firefox v119.0.0.

Just now it was jumping like a kangaroo.

To see if it's getting fixed, you need to what I did, try it on the latest nightly with "layout.css.scroll-anchoring.suppressions.enabled" set to false in about:config.

(In reply to Peter da Silva from comment #19)

To see if it's getting fixed, you need to what I did, try it on the latest nightly with "layout.css.scroll-anchoring.suppressions.enabled" set to false in about:config.

Tried this.
It does still happen but at a less serious degree? When it jumps, I have to scroll back up just a bit to find where I was just before. And, before it jumped once, I had scrolled down quite a bit. So, progress...?

Luckily, I can do without FB but I do find that bug incredibly annoying.

Happens occasionally when I scroll up and down this page too quickly, and it's not even that long.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/coyote-san-francisco-couch-sofa_n_6548d6aae4b01b2585847c4f

It's partially fixed in Facebook in 120. After a while it starts doing the scrolling back and forth thing, but if I move the mouse to the very edge of the central pane, outside the actual messages, and scroll a bit it works and scrolls normally, even better it seems to fix it for the message area and I can scroll normally anywhere in the feed column again.

That's with layout.css.scroll-anchoring.suppressions.enabled set to TRUE.

Update: Setting it to FALSE doesn't change anything.

On December 26, 2023, the scroll jumping bug returned to my Firefox 121.0 I had just switched to its tab and scrolled down to read posts. Suddenly, the feed began hopping around. I reloaded the page and as soon as I scrolled down hard, the jumping began. The post where the jump begins gets lost as older posts are loaded. Until today, the feed seemed pretty stable.

(In reply to Wizcrafts from comment #25)

On December 26, 2023, the scroll jumping bug returned to my Firefox 121.0 I had just switched to its tab and scrolled down to read posts. Suddenly, the feed began hopping around. I reloaded the page and as soon as I scrolled down hard, the jumping began. The post where the jump begins gets lost as older posts are loaded. Until today, the feed seemed pretty stable.

It may have been a glitch. After a hard shift + F5 reload, the Facebook feed seems stable.

(In reply to Wizcrafts from comment #26)

(In reply to Wizcrafts from comment #25)

On December 26, 2023, the scroll jumping bug returned to my Firefox 121.0 I had just switched to its tab and scrolled down to read posts. Suddenly, the feed began hopping around. I reloaded the page and as soon as I scrolled down hard, the jumping began. The post where the jump begins gets lost as older posts are loaded. Until today, the feed seemed pretty stable.

It may have been a glitch. After a hard shift + F5 reload, the Facebook feed seems stable.

Mine has been jumping again some over the past few days, sometimes a lot. It was really bad a night or so ago. I haven't been on Facebook today, 12/26, yet (except earlier on my old iPad mini). I'm on a Windows 10 Pro laptop.

The latest version will not scroll at all on many pages, such as https://liaison.reuters.com/tools/sports-team-codes .

This appears to be a major regression.

Firefox 121.0 Mac OS 14.2.1 Sonoma (intel).

(In reply to Peter da Silva from comment #28)

The latest version will not scroll at all on many pages, such as https://liaison.reuters.com/tools/sports-team-codes .

This appears to be a major regression.

Firefox 121.0 Mac OS 14.2.1 Sonoma (intel).

That doesn't seem to be related to the subject of this bug? So might be better served by filng a new bug. In any case that page seems to scroll fine for me.

When I originally opened the parent of this bug it was about scrolling problems on every page.

Someone changed it to be about scrolling problems on Facebook.

They asked me to open this bug to track post-fixing-issues with that bug.

So I'm doing that.

(In reply to Peter da Silva from comment #30)

When I originally opened the parent of this bug it was about scrolling problems on every page.

Someone changed it to be about scrolling problems on Facebook.

They asked me to open this bug to track post-fixing-issues with that bug.

So I'm doing that.

I don't understand this comment, are you expecting this bug to track every single issue that you come across related to scrolling? That is not how bugzilla works.

Please keep this bug focused on one issue. You are reporting a new issue that appeared for you in 121, this bug was filed before 121 existed, so it must be something different.

I have only noticed the problem on Facebook. It had been doing better, but the issue is back. I noticed it again several days ago but perhaps I had not been using Facebook enough to experience it daily. It was really bad again last night. Windows 10 Pro, Firefox 121.0 (64 bit).

I am seeing this on Windows 11 Pro, Firefox version 121.0.1 (64 bit). This jumping happens at random on the timeline, scrolling does not need to happen to start this bug, but reading down the timeline on facebook increases the bug visibility. I am not seeing this bug in Google Chrome. This issue had been resolved, but it returned or facebook changed something to make this issue happen again.

Getting this with Facebook on FF121.0.1 (64bit) Win11 - constantly loading more to timeline, causing the scroll and moving the focus position down - only stops if you scroll up enough, quickly. Starts as soon as I get to scroll bar 80 to 90% down

It's happening on Linux as well.

Still happening heavily in 122.0.1 on MacOS 14.2.1. Actually, now it's not just about scrolling automatically, but at times - without touching any key or pressing the touchpad - it starts to scroll up then down then up then down by the same distance several times per second, basically flashing two different posts on screen.
Hey, this bug is over 2 years old (though it was closed and reopened with a new number to make it look younger...) and it makes it almost impossible to use the most visited website on Earth or so. Does Mozilla still care about its browser or should we all just move to Chrome and forget about it?

(In reply to Vittorio Bertola from comment #37)

Still happening heavily in 122.0.1 on MacOS 14.2.1. Actually, now it's not just about scrolling automatically, but at times - without touching any key or pressing the touchpad - it starts to scroll up then down then up then down by the same distance several times per second, basically flashing two different posts on screen.
Hey, this bug is over 2 years old (though it was closed and reopened with a new number to make it look younger...) and it makes it almost impossible to use the most visited website on Earth or so. Does Mozilla still care about its browser or should we all just move to Chrome and forget about it?

We've been trying to fix this, but the intermittent nature of the issue, the complexity of Facebook's javascript code, and the fact that Facebook's javascript code is obfuscated, have made this a very challenging issue to fix.

We've made four attempts to fix this over the past year, with a fifth one in the works:

I'm also going to repeat what I said in bug 1779404 comment 143:

I would encourage everyone who still experiences this bug to also report it to Facebook Support, just to attack the issue from another angle.

We will continue to try to reproduce the remaining issues and make fixes, but due to the intermittent nature of the problem and the complexity of the Facebook website it's a challenging one to track down. Facebook engineers have some advantages over us in investigating this: they have access to the non-obfuscated version of Facebook's Javascript code, and they have a better understanding of how their mechanism for lazy loading/unloading of posts works. Even if the underlying bug is a browser issue, if Facebook engineers are able to prepare a reduced testcase that demonstrates the browser issue, that would make it much easier for us to fix.

Reported it "strongly" to Facebook support.

With "couldn't you manage to get a single software engineer to participate in the bugzillia forum?

Why the hell don't meta have an engineer in this forum? Do they think they are perfect and everyone else does wrong stuff?

:botond - the problem isn't just in Facebook, though.

You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.