273024 - Back Button History is not in the correct order.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[R. Solomon]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8a6) Gecko/20041202 Firefox/1.0+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8a6) Gecko/20041202 Firefox/1.0+

The list of previous pages that are recorded by clicking on the down arrow next
to the back button does not reflect the order that I went to those pages.

The that appear under the "go" menu seems to be correct however.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. go to a number of pages
2. click on the down arrow next to the back button
3. compare the list to the sites you browse and the list under the "go" menu

Actual Results:  
back button history list doen't relect the true history

Expected Results:  
The list should represent the order of the sites I visited

Comment 1

[Kenneth Herron]

I'm seeing this as well. I'm on solaris, running a copy of firefox from a trunk
CVS checkout thursday afternoon. The back and forward arrows seem to iterate
through the chain of pages correctly, but the forward/backward drop-down menus
contain a fairly random collection of my recent browsing history. The dropdown
menus aren't even consistent; repeatedly activating and dismissing one of the
menus can result in a different list of pages each time.

This may be related to bug 273017, though it describes different symptoms.

Comment 2

[Alan Batie]

In fact, history seems generally scrambled in Firefox.  When I go to a previous
page, it gets added on to end of the history, so the back button goes back to
the end of the history instead of page previous to that page in the history. 
Please put history back to the nice predictable mozilla style.

Comment 3

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

isn't this an aviary-landing bug?

Comment 4

[Anton van Bohemen]

I'm also seeing this, same as in comment #1. And yes, it might be an aviary
landing result, however, I have no evidence to support this. The mixup in the
back button history also gets over the tab-border: Sometimes I get items from
other tabs in the history list of a tab that has never opened the page in the
other tab. However, pressing the back and forward buttons (as well as an item on
the history list) brings me to the correct previous page. Only the labes don't
reflect the real history.

Comment 5

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

setting 
->NEW
->MAJOR (but just because normal is an understatement)

Comment 6

[Anton van Bohemen]

Correction: clicking on a history in the back button list does NOT always bring
me to the correct page. It may skip some items, bringing me too far back, or not
far enough. Also, when going back one page, sometimes two (same) items apear in
the forward history list. This history is seriously busted.

Comment 7

[Noah (NoahSUMO/SolidSnake) [:Noah]]

"The history is seriously BUSTED."
You can say that again.

Noticed since -
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.8a6) Gecko/20041215 Firefox/1.0+
Must have been a regression before then. Though this bug was formed on 12/02 no
one acts like it exists or has been reporting errors of this sort on Peter's
nightly build threads (They've been peachy-keen).

Even moreso, to describe this seriously hard-to-explain bug, I've noticed it
will swap Forward and Back history as well as not have memory (proper focus?)
when changing tabs to display their correct corresponding history.

Ah! (Remembered this before I hit the submit button. :D)
The installer builds have been broken for some time. Possibly since 12/02 (When
did the installer break?)? And, everybody's been using zip builds in the
meantime (except for me; despise the things - nice if on the go (friend's house,
etc.) so maybe that's why they never noticed it?! Since 12/15 (my build) is when
they officially fixed the installer my guess is some code got mangled in the
process (of the build machine? a "sort of" regression - also could be a checkin
caused this. Who knows?) just like my hypothetical theory on the *Desktop icon
getting installed regardless of user pref (*Damn. I can't remember if that's the
bug I had the theory on. But it was recent.)

Comment 8

[Markus Lindström]

Even worse, if I visit a few sites, then check the Back button history
repeatedly, some entries disappear, and others get multiplied. Very broken,
indeed. ;-)

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8a6) Gecko/20050101 Firefox/1.0+

Comment 9

[Joseph McLean]

Yeah, I see it too.   The wrong page order shows up under my Go menu as well,
contrary to the parent's comment.  Paging forward / backwards with the arrow
buttons themselves seems to be ok, as stated.  And here's another quirk: if I
select one of those random entires, I may actually be directed to ANOTHER page
on the list.  Wow!

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8a6) Gecko/20041218
Firefox/1.0+ (PowerBook)

Comment 10

[Kenneth Herron]

When constructing a back/forward menu, the function deleteHistoryItems() in
browser/base/content/browser.js is used to clear the old contents of the menu.
The aviary landing (specifically revision 1.357) changed this function:

  var children = aParent.childNodes;
- for (var i = children.length - 1; i >= 0; --i) 
+ for (var i = 0; i < children.length; i++)
    {
      var index = children[i].getAttribute("index");
      if (index)
        aParent.removeChild(children[i]);
    }

It looks like that loop really needs to count down instead of up; see bug 121495.

Comment 11

[Kenneth Herron]

Attachment: Revert to a countdown loop

This solves the problem. I've tested it with a current trunk build on linux.

Comment 12

[Kenneth Herron]

Checking in browser/base/content/browser.js;
/cvsroot/mozilla/browser/base/content/browser.js,v  <--  browser.js
new revision: 1.364; previous revision: 1.363
done

Resolving FIXED.

Comment 13

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

*** Bug 280709 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***