Closed Bug 293098 Opened 20 years ago Closed 19 years ago

Google News and others won't stop automatically reloading thus interupting reading.

Categories

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
General
Platform:
x86
Windows 2000
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: wsstmail-7726, Unassigned)

References

(
URL
)

Details

(Whiteboard: Only on Win2K with K6 CPU (Workaround: http://xrl.us/blockfresh)) 

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Firefox/1.0.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Firefox/1.0.3

Google News among other sites won't stop reloading.  I have just a few seconds
after it loads to read the page before it starts to reload again.  How do I stop
this?  I want to be able to reload when I want to reload.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Download Firefox
2. Go to Google News
3.

Actual Results:  
The page just keeps reloading every few seconds.  It happens on some other other
news sites but not all of them.

Expected Results:  
It ought not to reload a page until I request it, or give me an option to
control it.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050504
Firefox/1.0+

No constant reloads here.  Do you have the extension "Reload every" installed?
WFM too , 1.0.3

Please retest in safe mode (start menu/programs/firefo/firefox, safe mode)
From an email to me from the original reporter:

Thanks for your help.
I don't have a "Reload Every" extension.
The only extension I have, Chatzilla,  was added after this problem.  I had this
problem from the moment I used Firefox this time.

Is there anything else I can tell you that would help?
I have started Firefox in the safe mode and the problem remained.

I run Windows 2000.

I had downloaded Firefox back when the big publicity came out on it, whenever
that was, but I thought I had uninstalled it, however in looking at the
BOOOKMARKS that  were loaded in when I downloaded Firefox this time it looks
like they were older because some of my newer ones were missing.  I also had
downloaded Mozzilla and then uninstalled it a long time ago.

Any help you can give would be appreciated.
I have tried reloading Firefox after removing my profile from the documents and
setting.  Still had the problem.  I have tried reloading after again removing my
profile and not importing my history and settings from Internet Explorer.  There
is probably something I am overlooking but it is very irritating.  Never have
had this problem before on IE.  Any other suggestions would be welcome.  I
haven't deleted my Netscape 4.7.  Just taking shots in the dark, trying to
figure out why I am the only one in the world that this is happening to.  Of
course there are bigger problems for the Firefox programmers at the moment.
Thanks though for any help that you can give.
I also have this problem. It started after a clean upgrade from windows98 to
windows 2000. Pages that are set to reload after 15-20 minutes, reload
immediately. Pages that should log you out after 10-15 minutes (like banking
sites) log you out immediately.

This occurs after creating a new profile. This occurs in Firefox 1.06. This
occurs in safe mode. This occurs in Mozilla 1.7. This does not occur with IE.

Possibly related, Thunderbird "times-out" silently while downloading e-mails
that would normally take more than 15-20 seconds to download. This does not
occur with Outlook Express.

This only occurs on one of my computers running Windows 2000. The other 2 are
work perfectly.

This is a function of the javascript (AJAX, to be precise) that controls the
site.  The script checks for new content and loads it dynamically.  This is a
feature of the website and thus most definitely not a browser bug.  Resolving
INVALID.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 19 years ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID
Did someone blame this on the websites? Did someone say they "resolved" it by
saying it was invalid?   

I obviously don't know enough to solve this problem but obviously if sites work
fine with Internet Explorer and then won't function properly with Firefox, then
it is a problem for Firefox users.  If you can't, won't or don't want to fix
Firefox that is one thing, but Google News, Yahoo Mail, and other major sites
won't work, so I consider that to be a problem with Firefox.  It is definitely a
problem for me as a user, and for the other fellow who reported it as well.

Like the other fellow, I run Windows 2000.  It is clearly not an invalid bug. 
And it clearly hasn't been resolved. How can you claim it is?  Google News won't
work.  Isn't a browser supposed to work with sites, not the other way around.
Status: RESOLVED → UNCONFIRMED
Resolution: INVALID → ---
Please recheck this bug against a recent nightly build[1,2] to verify that the
behavior still exists and post the results here.

Thanks.

[1] ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla1.8/
[2] ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk
Thanks for your help.  I downloaded Deer Park Alpha2 from the nightly build
link.  If that is what you wanted me to try.  

Googlenews still reloads about every 25 seconds, which is still not good. 
mysanantonio.com reloads about every 20 seconds.

I have installed Java Runtime Environment 5.0 update 4. I am running Windows
2000.  I have a AMD K6.  

No problems with Google News on Explorer.  


Tell us a bit more about the bug and your hardware setup.  For example, is the
whole page reloading, is it just segments, or is it just the throbber?

If I'm not mistaken, the K6 is a fairly slow processor.  It could be that the
AJAX updates that would appear invisible on most installations are exaggerated
because of the relative amount of strain it takes for your system to render the
page.
Interesting, I (who also has the problem) am also running a K6 processor (400MHz
IBM Aptiva 2158-270).

Anyway on my machine, I see the entire web page reloading every 15-20 seconds.
While I don't know about the AJAX part, I do know this occurs even if I turn off
Javascript. In fact all I need to make it happen is this simple HTML page:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
  <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="content-type">
  <meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="300; URL=file:///C:/Test.html">
  <title>Test</title>
</head>
<body>
test<br>
</body>
</html>

While I don't know how thw rendering is done, I tend to think the strain on a
400Mhz K6 processor from this HTML isn't that great. Besides, prior to upgrading
to Windows 2000 (a complete install with a newly formatted disk, actually), I
had never seen this problem.

Now, it is entirely possible that it has something to do with the way my
hardware is set up, but I did nothing special on the install. It might also be a
driver conflict. I just don't know.
I have a HP Pavilion with 128 MB. AMDk-2 500 Mhz.
That's it, with Windows 2000.

It looks to me like the whole page is reloaded.

I don't know anything about this stuff, but all the pages that reload too
frequently have meta refresh tags (if that is what you call them.  

For instance if on Google News it is 900, Internet Explorer will refresh the
whole page in a way that looks just like Firefox is doing, except it will
refresh it after 900 seconds instead of every 25 seconds like Firefox does.  

Thanks for any help you can give.  It makes using Firefox very difficult when
looking at news sites, many of which have the meta refresh tags.


 
OK. So, this is unconfirmed.  But, Internet Explorer works as intended while 
FireFox reloads every 20 seconds or less making it unusable on the following 
sites on my computer which runs Windows 2000 with a AMD K6-2 500 mhz chip:  

http://news.google.com/

http://login.yahoo.com/config/login?.partner=sbc&.done=http%3a//sbc.yahoo.com/
(This one reloads every 10 seconds or so which means Firefox is unusable with 
it.)

http://www.mysanantonio.com/
(This one is much like many media sites which reload every 25 to 30 seconds.)

So Firefox is definitely broken.  It doesn't work on this computer while 
Explorer does.

What you folks have done is amazing.  I hope you can beat Microsoft, and I am 
sure you have many more issues than this, but it is clear that somewhere there 
is a flaw that make Firefox unusable.

Maybe it is only unusable when running Windows 2000 with a AMD K6-2 chip.  But 
nevertheless there is a bug that is definitely there.  I hope you can fix it 
someday because despite it being "unconfirmed", I confirme it every single 
day.  Thank goodness for the "open in IE extension".

 



(In reply to comment #13)
> http://www.mysanantonio.com/
> (This one is much like many media sites which reload every 25 to 30 seconds.)

This one has refresh in the source code:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" Content = "300">

It should refresh every 5 minutes in any browser.  I haven't seen it refresh
'every 25 to 30 seconds' yet, but I am on trunk.
Just a few more things about this bug. It does not occur when Windows 2000 is
started up in safe mode without the network connections. It does occur when
Windows 2000 is started in safe mode with network connections.

Also, this has occured from the initial install of win2k and through all the
service packs and security updates (currently, my W2k install is 100% up to date).

wsstmail-7726: Do you use Thunderbird as a mail application? If so, do you see
issues with the connection being 'reset' with approximately the same frequency
as the reloading? I do, and I feel it is one and the same bug; it never occured
until the recent upgrade to windows 2000.
In reply to shawnhalversen's question: I don't use Thunderbird.
Do the pages consistently reload 10 times faster than intended or is it just a 
coincidence that when Google news is supposed to reload after 300 seconds, it 
reloads after 30 or so seconds?  This is all beyond me.  I just wish it could 
be fixed.  I wonder if all Windows 2000 users have this problem or if it is 
limited to Windows 2000 with AMD chips.  
Just in case someone decides to suggest it: this bug is NOT fixed in Firefox 1.0.7.
For those that might think this bug may be a system issue: Opera 8.5, in
addition to IE, works fine.
A buddy of mine also runs Win2000 but on an Intel chip machine.  He doesn't 
have this problem.  

Since both of us who have reported this problem use AMD chip machines is it 
possible that there is something in Firefox that is not in Explorer or Opera, 
that interacts with some timing mechanism in the AMD chip which is not in the 
Intel chip?  It would be an interaction that speeds up the 300 second reload 
(on Google News for instance) by a factor of 10, causing the page to reload 
ever 30 seconds or so.




It's not the chip itself. This problem did not occur when I ran Windows98 on the
same machine. It may be a K6/windows2K issue though.

Like you, I am stumped. I know it's not something we've done, that it's a
problem with the core code inside Firefox (and Mozilla, and Thunderbird), but it
doesn't affect enough people to make it worthwhile to look into.

I aggree that it appears that whatever Firefox uses for the clock seems to go
way too fast, my refresh time is somehat erratic. I've had news.google.com
refresh in as little as 3 seconds, and as many as 30.

In defense of all those that work on Mozilla, I truly understand that it is
nearly impossible to debug a problem when it never occurs for the person doing
the debugging.
I'm pretty sure people are agreeing that this happens only on win2k with a k6
cpu (from what I am reading), adding that to the Whiteboard.  What would aid
best is for someone to donate a machine exhibiting this problem to Mozilla, or
one of the higher up developers.  I'm not sure if they even accept this (I do
know MoFo accepts machines for build platforms to use with tinderbox), or will
return the machine, but if it truely is limited to this platform and can be
proven to be the fault of the platform (and a workaround must be coded) then
that would gurantee a solution would be found.

This bug interests me for the peculiarity of the requirements to experience it.
Whiteboard: Only on Win2K with K6 CPU
I registered on the AMD site and sent them the following message.

Perhaps they will respond.  Perhaps someone with more prestige contacted them, 
AMD would be more likely to respond.  

"Firefox Bug 203098 apparently occurs only when a AMD k6 chip is used to run 
Win2000 and Firefox.

As very few (or no) high level Firefox developers run machines with AMD K6 
processors and Win2000, it has been a difficult bug for them to confirm and to 
solve.

I am bringing this to your attention in the hopes that AMD, who obviously has 
machines with the AMD K6 processors, can assist in the solving of this problem.

You can find the details of the bug at the Firefox bugzilla site.  In general 
when a site automatically reloads every 300 seconds, the machines with the AMD 
K6 and Windows 2000 reload every 30 seconds or so. 

Any assistance you can give in helping the Firefox developers make it 
compatable with the AMD K6 chip would be much appreciated, and make me much 
more likely to consider purchasing AMD equipped machines in the future.

Thanks in advance for your attention and assistance."
I've added a url to the whiteboard as a workaround.  The refreshblocker
extension, located at http://www.allesdurcheinander.de/refreshblocker/, allows
you to block all refreshes and add exceptions.

(Personally I believe this could be integrated into Firefox since it's just
4.5kb and is all through about:config options, at least until the real problem
is fixed, or maybe not since refreshes are a real problem.)

I hope this makes the problem more bearable for those who continually spam this
bug ;)
Whiteboard: Only on Win2K with K6 CPU → Only on Win2K with K6 CPU (Workaround: http://xrl.us/blockfresh)
This bug appears to be resolved with version 1.5.0.2

Thanks! Thanks! Thanks!
Reporter, do you still see this with 1.5.0.2?
This appears to have been fixed in Firefox1.5.0.2

To test it I disabled the refresh blocker extension and went to the sites that were problems for my system before refresh blocker was created: google news, yahoo, a local news site mysanantonio.com,and they reloaded in a normal fashion.

Thanks to the person who came up with the refresh blocker extension to work around the problem and thanks to whoever took care of it completely in the new version of Firefox.  

You all deserve all the credit you are getting in the press.  It is amazing how fast you get things working.

Again thanks.  You all are great.
Closing this bug based on c#24 and c#26
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 19 years ago → 19 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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