1909532 - New-tab weather widget briefly shows up with wrong location & text formatting after a shift+reload, which causes layout shift

Status: REOPENED

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect)

Description

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

STR:

1. Load a new tab page
2. Shift+Reload, and watch the top-left area.
3. Repeat step 2 a few times.

ACTUAL RESULTS:
Weather widget is briefly shown in an unstyled form at the wrong position (with the text flush with the top-left corner of the window).

EXPECTED RESULTS:
Weather widget shouldn't show up with the wrong font styling / location. It's OK for the image to appear asynchronously, but we should avoid layout shift from the text changing styling and position.

Screenshots of ACTUAL RESULTS (with broken intermediate font styling/position):
https://bug1909530.bmoattachments.org/attachment.cgi?id=9414444
https://bug1909530.bmoattachments.org/attachment.cgi?id=9414445

Screenshot of final position which ideally those^ screenshots would match:
https://bug1909530.bmoattachments.org/attachment.cgi?id=9414447

(These screenshots are from bug 1909530 which is focused on another new-tab layout-shift, but its screenshots also capture this bug's layout-shift as well.)

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:amy, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 2

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Note: this is still reproducible in Nightly 132.0a1 (2024-09-21).

But the good news is that I think shift+reload (ctrl+shift+r / cmd+shift+r) is the only way to repro this.

(In particular, opening a new window [or a zillion new windows] doesn't trigger this; nor does navigating back to new-tab after clicking away; nor does a regular Ctrl+R refresh. In all of these cases, the top-left of the new-tab might be briefly blank, and then the weather widget appears fully-formed, which is great.)

Comment 3

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Redirect a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user to the triage owner.
:thecount, since the bug doesn't have a severity set, could you please set the severity or close the bug?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 4

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(I can still reproduce, for what it's worth. I haven't noticed recently because I don't ctrl+shift+reload on new-tab page all that often; but when I do, this incorrect layout reliably reproduces.)

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

The symptoms here evolved a bit in recent months - the closest thing I've seen to this bug recently was shown in this screenshot from bug 2025554 comment 2, where the weather widget's 3-dot-menu contents were exploded out into a plaintext paragraph at the top-right:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=9557072
That symptom was appearing on the first new-tab after onboarding, and also when opening new windows about 20% of the time.

However, per bug 2025554 comment 10, that issue seems to have been fixed by bug 2016217 or bug 2022304, and I can no longer reproduce any unstyled weather-widget-text (or layout shift in this text, or exploded weather-widget-3-dot-menu text). I'm not hitting issues of this sort at all when opening tons of new windows and reloading new-tabs with ctrl+shift+R, using latest Nightly 151.0a1 (2026-04-09) (64-bit).

So I think we can consider this bug WORKSFORME.

Comment 6

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

I spoke too soon; I'm still seeing the "weather-widget menu exploded out as a paragraph of text on some Ctrl+N new-window operations" issue.

I can reproduce it with & without the new "Nova" new-tab redesign (browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.nova.enabled).

I think It helps to have the system under load -- e.g. compiling a debug firefox build from source -- to reproduce the bug. But that might not be necessary, not sure.)

Comment 7

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:thecount, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.