1916643 - Navigation buttons don't work when using Custom and Strict ETP

Status: NEW

(Core :: Privacy: Anti-Tracking, defect, P3)

Description

[Adina Petridean QA [:apetridean]]

Attachment: custom.mp4

Steps to reproduce

1. Go to Enhanced Tracking Protection and change it to Custom.
2. Navigate to a few websites in the same tab

eg. https://www.mlb.com/tv/g632367?affiliateId=SCORES , https://imdb.com/ , https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/windows-10-update-assistant-3550dfb2-a015-7765-12ea-fba2ac36fb3f , https://wikipedia.org
3. Use the navigation buttons (Back, Forward, Reload) to switch between the previously visited websites.

Actual result

Tapping the back arrow from https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/windows-10-update-assistant-3550dfb2-a015-7765-12ea-fba2ac36fb3f to https://imdb.com/ causes the forward button to become inactive. Additionally, it requires two taps on the back button to navigate from https://imdb.com/ to https://www.mlb.com/tv/g632367?affiliateId=SCORES. After tapping the forward button from https://www.mlb.com/tv/g632367?affiliateId=SCORES and returning to https://imdb.com/, the forward button remains inactive.

Expected result

Navigation between the previously visited websites is not perturbed and works as expected

Device information

Firefox version: Nightly 132.0a1 from 03.09.2024
Android device model: Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra (Android 14)

Additional information

This issue is also reproducible with SHIP enabled.
This issue is only reproducible when using Strict ETP and Custom ETP.
This issue is also reproducible in PB.
A similar behavior occurs when navigating to reddit.com, x.com, cnn.com, and bbc.com, and then tapping the back button. When arriving at x.com, it behaves like imdb.com, with the difference that the issue occurs across all ETP options (Standard, Strict, and Custom).

Comment 1

[Bogdan Maris, Desktop Test Engineering]

This also affects Nightly on Desktop across platforms (Windows 11, macOS 13.6 and Ubuntu 22.04).
Also reproducible with browser.navigation.requireUserInteraction set to false. It appears that imdb.com website brakes while having Strict/Custom set in ETP.

Comment 2

[Hsin-Yi Tsai (she/her) [:hsinyi]]

Moving to the antitracking team's attention radar, as it looks like a whole script is blocked, not really specific to the user interaction navigation problem.

Comment 3

[William Wen (:wwen)]

I seem to be unable to reproduce the issue on latest Nightly (136) on MacOS.

Here is my setup:

1. Set browser.navigation.requireUserInteraction to false
2. Set ETP mode to "Strict" and clear all data
3. Navigate to these websites in order: https://www.mlb.com/tv/g632367?affiliateId=SCORES , https://imdb.com/ , https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/windows-10-update-assistant-3550dfb2-a015-7765-12ea-fba2ac36fb3f , https://wikipedia.org

Here are my observations:

In the long press history drop down there are now two microsoft support pages, and two mlb.com pages (presumably from internal redirects?)

From https://wikipedia.org to https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/windows-update-assistant-3550dfb2-a015-7765-12ea-fba2ac36fb3f the back and forward button work normally.

If I press the back button again from https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/windows-update-assistant-3550dfb2-a015-7765-12ea-fba2ac36fb3f, I end up on the same page and the forward button is now greyed out and https://wikipedia.org is removed from the drop down. Subsequent presses of the back button keep me on the same page.

If I press the back button twice (double click), I go from https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/windows-update-assistant-3550dfb2-a015-7765-12ea-fba2ac36fb3f to https://imdb.com/. The forward button here still works, though I still need to double click the back button from microsoft support to get back to imdb.

The back and forward buttons work normally between https://imdb.com/ and https://www.mlb.com/login?campaignCode=fgotd&redirectUri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mlb.com%2Ftv%2Fg632367%3FaffiliateId%3DSCORES. The mlb page here is not the link that was originally entered, but a login page that i was presumably redirected to.

If I press the back button again I get to https://www.mlb.com/tv/g632367?affiliateId=SCORES but immediately get redirected back to https://www.mlb.com/login?campaignCode=fgotd&redirectUri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mlb.com%2Ftv%2Fg632367%3FaffiliateId%3DSCORES, and the forward button is now greyed out, and imdb and microsoft support are cleared from the history dropdown.

This happens for me in both ETP Standard and Strict modes.

If I set browser.navigation.requireUserInteraction to true, I seem to have no issues with using the forward and back buttons on any of the pages.

Screen recording link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14rDHNa39ur9suhCERTFYIR4s9tGmPRUq/view?usp=sharing

It seems that there isn't any issue with ETP that I can reproduce here. Perhaps it was fixed by something between 132 and 136?

Comment 4

[William Wen (:wwen)]

Adina, could you verify if the issue is still reproducible on your side?

Comment 5

[Adina Petridean QA [:apetridean]]

I can still reproduce this issue with browser.navigation.requireUserInteraction to true onGoogle Pixel 7 Pro ( Android 14).

Try the following steps:

1. Set ETP mode to "Strict" or "Custom".
2. Go to bbc.com -> imdb.com-> cnn.com -> reddit.com
3. Use the navigation buttons (Back, Forward, Reload) to switch between the visited websites.

It seems that when reaching the imdb.com the bug occurs. Please check the new attached video.

Comment 6

[Adina Petridean QA [:apetridean]]

Attachment: ETP1.mov

Comment 7

[Manuel Bucher [:manuel]]

Note that the history API was changed in Bug 1915404 and the problem might got fixed in Fx135 (and was enabled in Nightly before that): Bug 1915404

Comment 8

[William Wen (:wwen)]

Was able to get my hands on an Android tablet to test this out but was unable to reproduce again. It's possible recent changes have fixed something related to this.

Marking as P3 S3 for now with intention to retest in a couple of releases.