293591 - Under RDP, Terminal Services fails to recognise fixed backgrounds as part of a 'scrolling region'

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Layout, enhancement)

Description

[david]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-GB; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Firefox/1.0.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-GB; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Firefox/1.0.3

When viewing a page, such as PandasThumb.org via RDP, Terminal Server fails to
recognise the fixed background as part of a 'scrolling region', and thus redraws
the entire screen when the page is scrolled.

Whilst this is technically a bug with RDP/TermServ, I believe the issue could be
resolved by having Gecko (or the container, such as Firefox) check to see if it
is running under Terminal Services, and thus change page handling appropriately.

Firefox/Gecko could also provide some extra features to improve performance
under TermServ. Right now I use the WebDevToolbar to disable GIF animations,
FlashBlock to stop Flash from showing, and AdBlock to prevent ads. If these
features were implemented as part of Gecko it would greatly increase Firefox's
usability under Terminal Server (as well as VNC, but AFAIK VNC doesn't recognise
'scrolling regions')

Regardless, the point of this bug is to add a feature to Gecko to disable fixed
backgrounds when running under Terminal Server.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Connect to a Terminal Server with Firefox installed
2. Go to Pandasthunb.org
3. Try to scroll the page

Actual Results:  
The page is redrawn everytime you scroll even one pixel

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

I don't think we want to do this.  roc, David, any objections to wontfixing this?

Comment 2

[david]

(In reply to comment #1)
> I don't think we want to do this.  roc, David, any objections to wontfixing this?

Hmm, I guess.

As a compromise, can someone sort out a patch that adds a button to "disable
VNC/RDP unfriendly bits" (such as fixed backgrounds)?

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

er, too many David's.  I was asking David Baron, whom I cced.

Note that almost all the "cool stuff" currently being worked on (opacity, svg,
anti-aliasing, etc, etc) will be pretty rdp-unfriendly unless rdp gets a lot better.

Comment 4

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

I think someone could write an extension to do this.

* { background-attachment:scroll !important; }

would be a good start.

Comment 5

[david]

Sounds good to me.

Where's the reference for developing Firefox extensions?

Comment 6

[Thomas K. (:tom)]

http://developer-test.mozilla.org
http://www.mozilla.org/catalog/
http://www.xulplanet.com/tutorials/
http://www.mozdev.org/docs/