211455 - After opening a variable number of tabs, usually at least 50, filled with largish graphics (e.g. porn sites), Mozilla loses its ability to refresh its screens

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 184933

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Sam Laker]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
Build Identifier: Mozilla 1.4 final

It's not uncommon for me to open 50 or 100 tabs that're basically pages full 
of (dirty) pictures. I've noticed that after some variable point, Moz ceases 
to be able to properly refresh its screens. This seems to happen earlier 
(fewer open tabs) on machines that have less-capable graphics cards, and later 
on machines with more capable graphics cards.

As an example, if I visit www.voyeurweb.com, as I am wont to do, and open 20 
tabs, each containing 10 or so 100kB images, and I am using a PC with 512MB 
RAM and an 8MB ATI Rage graphics card, I will get to a point where Moz simply 
won't update its display. I can tell in other ways that it's still working 
(more things go into cache, for example), but those things don't show up on-
screen. By selecting the contents of the page (click-drag), I'm usually able 
to read the text and view images on that page, but if, for example, I display 
another window that overlaps Moz, that region of the screen will not be 
updated until I re-select. Selecting does not fix color issues (backgrounds 
disappear, etc).
On a more capable machine, such as a machine with a 64MB Radeon 8500, this 
process may involve having many more open tabs (80 - 100), but it does 
eventually happen.

Closing some tabs may or may not fix this screen update problem.

I'm working on very capable machines generally, but I cannot determine if the 
problem I'm having is an ATI driver issue (all my machines have ATI cards) or 
Mozilla. 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Visit a site with lots of image files. Porn sites work well. :) I 
specifically mention voyeurweb.com, since there are lots of pictures.
2. Open several dozen tabs.
3. Enjoy display weirdness.

This may be an ATI driver issue; every computer I have access to has an ATI 
card in it.
Actual Results:  
When Mozilla has focus, its screen region is not updated properly. The 
navigation widgets disappear, the contents of the window are not displayed. 
Only the title bar seems to display "properly".

Expected Results:  
Refresh its screen like every other program!

I've lived with this bug through at least pre-1.0. I figured other people knew 
about it. Since it happens even in 1.4, I have to think it's a wider problem.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Sounds like more of the GDI stuff....

Comment 2

[Matthew Schultz]

This bug is a dup of 154976.

Comment 3

[Jesse Ruderman]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 184933 ***

Comment 4

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

verified.

Comment 5

[Arthur Abraham]

This on is getting worse... in 1.6 is now requires only >= 30 tabs to occur
(even if they're not porn.) [or using WinTel 2K)  

The biggest problem it causes is that tabbed browsing is the biggest selling
point in convincing new users.... when it fails, they bail. 

Comment 6

[Jesse Ruderman]

Arthur says it's fixed for him in a nightly.