Closed Bug 311438 Opened 19 years ago Closed 15 years ago

Blank strip or bar appears in top chrome over time, or when dragging tabs

Categories

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, defect)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
Toolbars and Customization
Version:
1.5.0.x Branch
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: brianr, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Whiteboard: [closeme 2009-07-24])

Attachments

(5 files)

Screenshot of blank strip in top chrome
43.74 KB, image/jpeg
Details
blank strip and toolbars extended and cut off to the right
34.62 KB, image/jpeg
Details
Another example of this occurring
255.42 KB, image/jpeg
Details
blank bar and missing scroll bars
235.18 KB, image/jpeg
Details
Occurrence in Firefox 21 on OS X
43.03 KB, image/png
Details 
After the browser has been open for a while, a blank strip appears in the top
chrome above the menus. It seems to expand over time. Screenshot to be attached.

It's been reported on 1.0.7 and 1.5b1 with no extensions running.

    
    

    
  
I am experiencing the same problem (occurs now in v1.5b2 and did also in b1).  After a moderate amount of time, probably around 30 minutes, a blank line appears along the top above the menu bar.  Also, once it appears, all other toolbars stay extended out to the right, even when the main window is shrunk.  Scrollbars, close-tab button, location bar drop-down button, etc... they all are stuck way out to the right.  My screenshot (to be attached after this comment) shows this out to the right.

I am unsure when it appears or if the browser is in focus or behind other windows when it happens.  Also, once it does, some sites appear to scroll horribly slow using the mouse-wheel (for example, this bug report page scrolled badly).


    
    

    
  
Will a fix for this make it into 1.5?  It seems like a pretty significant bug.  Once it happens, it entirely screws up the browser to its nearly unusable and requires a restart of the browser.


    
    

    
  
I've noticed that this happens fairly reliably when I disconnect and reconnect an external monitor to my laptop.

    
    

    
  


  
There was a single blank line that was being generated after I installed a couple of extensions, now there are several blank lines after installing a few more extensions.  I've noticed this happening when coming back to the desktop from the screensaver.

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 318405 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
not sure if this helps, but after i visited this website,
http://highschoolblows.blogspot.com/2005/11/take-screenshot-of-dvd-player-in-os-x.html
with multiple tabs open, the screen flashed grey, and then the strip appeared.

    
    

    
  
I get the blank strip in 1.5 every time I come back to my account by using the fast user switching feature of Windows XP. Together with bug 306426 they make my 1.5 feel more buggy than the previous releases.

    
    

    
  
I concur with comment #9: the bug is easily reproducible upon using WinXP fast user switching. Each time Firefox is re-displayed when returning to the user session in which it was launched, the blank strip appears. I'm currently using the latest versions of the following extensions: NoScript, FasterFox, Tab Search History, Google Toolbar, IE View and Extended StatusBar. I wonder if the bug is dependant on any of these extensions.

    
    

    
  
For the record, I also use Google Toolbar (Finnish version 1.0.20051122).


    
    

    
  
Based on Comment #11, I think the Google Toolbar for Firefox v1.0.20051122 is the problem. I downloaded this toolbar extension from the Google site, not from Mozilla. In fact I don't even see this extension on the Mozilla site at all! There are three other similar extensions but not this exact one. On my WinXP PC, I have a different user account that doesn't have the Google Toolbar extension installed and this user account does NOT suffer the blank strip bug! To conclusively test this theory, I'll uninstall the Google Toolbar for Firefox v1.0.20051122 in the original user account and install it in the second user account (on the same PC of course) and report on my observations when I get a spare moment...

    
    

    
  
Yes, the Google Toolbar for Firefox v1.0.20051122 available from the Google website is the problem! See Comment #12 for details. Uninstalling this extension caused the bug to disappear. Note to the Mozilla 'Powers That Be': Perhaps you can warn Firefox users of this problematic extension. I don't know how many versions of that extension exhibit the same problem. As well, under the above mentioned scenario, the bug does not occur "over time" but can be quickly and easily reproduced via Windows XP fast user switching (see Comment #9 -- thanks to Mikko). I'll wait a few days to ensure the bug does not re-appear without the extension installed before we declare victory and remove my vote on this bug. 

    
    

    
  
I should point out that there are several comments on this bug claiming to have experienced the blank strip on profiles with no extensions installed (not just mine).

    
    

    
  
My apologies Brian; I missed your original comment re no extensions running, despite doing a Find - Highlight All on this bug report (I must have been on drugs...). Anyway I hope my observations are still somewhat helpful, albeit diminished. They seemed definitive at the time. I'll keep the vote on for now and perhaps ease-up on whatever substance I was taking ...

    
    

    
  
You know I just noticed something else about this bug, not only is there a strip in the top chrome, but 1-2cm of the right of firefox isn't being display even with the window maximized.  for example the scrollbar and mozilla icon in the upper right hand corner aren't being displayed, but the scrolling still works when using a wheel mouse or the cursor keys.

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 323023 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 319452 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
For those of you that are seeing this, can you try this: disable each extension one by one (Tools > Extensions > right click Disable) and remember which one you last disabled when this doesn't occur anymore. 

Do the same thing for themes, too, if this still occurs with all your extensions disabled.
Keywords: qawanted
OS: Windows XP → All
Hardware: PC → All
Summary: blank strip appears in top chrome over time → Blank strip or bar appears in top chrome over time, or when dragging tabs

    
    

    
  
I just like to state that this is by no means a Windows-only problem.
In fact I run 1.5 with GoogleBar on a Windows2000 machine very well.

On Linux the problem occurs e.g. when a drag&drop action fails, because
you dropped the item somewhere where it isn't useful. Other than that the
space expands from 1cm to about 2cm after some time, if you just browse
further. Opening new instances helps, but these screw up as well after
some time.

The whole thing made me downgrade to 1.0.7 again (and well, the memory
problems denoted in quite a few bugs).

    
    

    
  
Do all people here have Google Toolbar installed?

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 324358 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
The XUL element which causes this is
main-window\mainPopupSet\
<tooltip orient="vertical" onpopupshowing="return
GTB_GoogleToolbarOverlay.tooltip.maybeShowTooltip(document.tooltipNode);"
label="xxx" width="xx" height="xx" id="aHTMLTooltip"/>
xx varies per page. Deleting this node from the DOM inspector will remove the blank bar.

    
    

    
  
(In reply to comment #21)
> Do all people here have Google Toolbar installed?

Yes, I did.  I recently got a new computer and did not reinstall the Google Toolbar and have not seen the bar since.  There are 3 or 4 others that I didn't install again too, but it sounds like GT might be the culprit.


    
    

    
  
*** Bug 324900 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
This also happens when you change your Gnome theme (window border) in Linux. See this bug (marked duplicate of the current bug) https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=324900 for the details of the particulars of gnome theme changing and this bug (was resolved with a patch) https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=305970 which I think is very related to the current bug bc. it involved the appearance of that bar as well. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=311438#c20 suggests they are related as well. Is there a code common to both these bugs? Bug 305970 also has my screenshot (png) that shows the defacement. 

happens with extensions (includes google toolbar) as well as with fresh profile (no nothing).

Using Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051230 Firefox/1.5)

Also, can someone with priveleges change the title to "Blank strip or bar appears in top chrome over time, or when dragging tabs, or when changing theme in Gnome" -thanks

    
    

    
  
towsonu2003@gmail.com, bug 305970 and this one are entirely different issues. Bug 305970 has been fixed for 1.5.0.1. 

What behavior are you seeing? You mention your screenshot in bug 305970, but that has nothing to do with this bug. This bug is being caused by the Google Toolbar as far as we can tell. If this happens when you switch themes in GNOME, that should be a separate bug.

    
    

    
  
(In reply to comment #27)
> towsonu2003@gmail.com, bug 305970 and this one are entirely different issues.
> Bug 305970 has been fixed for 1.5.0.1. 
> 

uhm, yes it is fixed, and I use a trunk that's 'issued' after the fix. but they seem related bc. in that bug (to repeat, it is fixed), this same bar appeared whenever you right clicked and chose 'save link as' and so on. It just feels like they are related, that's all I meant. I mention it bc it might make things easier for anyone looking at the code (and understand what s/he's seeing, bc I can't :) ). 

> What behavior are you seeing? You mention your screenshot in bug 305970, but
> that has nothing to do with this bug. This bug is being caused by the Google
> Toolbar as far as we can tell. If this happens when you switch themes in GNOME,
> that should be a separate bug.
> 

To repeat the behavior (explained better in bug #324900 but marked as duplicate of this current bug), I change the gnome theme (more exactly, the window borders) and the bar pops up from no where in firefox. restarting firefox fixes the bar until window border is changed again. a gnome user might help confirm the behavior. 

I thought bug #324900 would be a separate bug, but it's marked duplicate (and the symptoms are similar so no complaints here). In the meantime, Comment #14 suggests this is not particularly google toolbar related. 



    
    

    
  
OK. Reopened bug 311438 for the problem caused by changing the GNOME theme.

    
    

    
  
s/bug 311438/bug 324900/ in my previous comment.

    
    

    
  
I experience this same issue.  Official google toolbar is installed.  I spent some time tonight trying to repro it and was unable to consistently get it to happen by simply fast-user switching.  The first time I tried a fast-user-switch, the bar did appear.  I then closed firefox, reopened, and tried another switch, which did not produce the bar.  I then tried opening many tabs and fast-switching, which also did not produce the bar.  In my experience it seems to be a combination of the time the browser has been open combined with fast-user switching.  The google toolbar may be thrown into the mix somewhere in there as well, as I have not seen this issue on my new work computer without installing the toolbar.

    
    

    
  


  
This appeared after turning off the google toolbar through the toolbar context menu, then using fast-user-switching and coming back to this profile.  You can see the oversized tabs and the missing scrollbars to the rigth.

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 325936 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
On my pc this bug occurs each time I use fast user switching, I've just updated the GoogleToolBar to the latest version from http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/ and the bug has disappeared!

    
    

    
  
I haven't experienced this bug since I upgraded to 1.5.0.1, mind you i have updated some extensions but it seems like 1.5.0.1 did the trick.

    
    

    
  
(In reply to comment #35)
> I haven't experienced this bug since I upgraded to 1.5.0.1, mind you i have
> updated some extensions but it seems like 1.5.0.1 did the trick.
> 

I have still experienced this bug since 1.5.0.1...


    
    

    
  
I have this same problem in XP and it seems to be related to fast user switching, particularly when the primary user has an FF window open when someone switches to a different account. When the primary user switches back, FF seems to forget the window width. If you extend the window width to maximum, you may see some of the widgets come back. For me, I can see about half of my "Go" button but I still can't see the throbber or the "Close Tab" button.

This seems to be a duplicate of bug 318514.

    
    

    
  
(In reply to comment #38)
> See also Bug 318514.
> 

either that, 324900 (gnome theme change) and this current bug are the same, or another glitch causes the same exact symptom for all?

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 327011 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 324900 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
the blank toolbar and the toolbars extended and cut off on the right happens to me whenever i log into my computer from remote desktop. it gets fixed if i restart the browser, but not any other way.

    
    

    
  
Still a problem with version 2 of the Google Toolbar

    
    

    
  
This bug also affected FF1.0.x. Overall, this seems to be independent of extensions. For me, it is triggered almost every time I use fast user switching on XP. This may be related to the fact that the users have different windows themes. 

    
    

    
  
I'm getting this problem when I save an image to the desktop or set an image as a background. No extensions installed

    
    

    
  
I've forwarded this bug report along with a couple links to threads over to the Google Toolbar team.  If I get any response, I'll post back in here.

    
    

    
  
I work on the Google toolbar team. We have been unable to reproduce this reliably and several comments in this bug indicate that the bug has occurred without the Google toolbar running so I'm suspicious that it's not a Google toolbar bug though we continue to investigate.

Besides my original description where I mention that this has been observed without the Google Toolbar installed, the attachment in comments 3 and 6, and comment 32, also indicate that this bug occurs independently from Google Toolbar.

    
    

    
  
I'm not quite sure of Bug Posting Etiquette but I'm still have this issue when saving images to the desktop (about 1 out of 10 times when saving). I have created a new profile and have never had the Google Toolbar. I feel alone when everyone says that it's caused by the Google Toolbar.

    
    

    
  
I've long maintained that this is not a Google Toolbar bug but further testing has convinced me that, at the very least, the Google toolbar exacerbates if not causes the blank strip to appear. I've added some of the right folks to investigate further.

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 346166 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
I have never had the Google Toolbar installed. I strongly believe that you are all letting Google Toolbar lead you down a wrong alley. Even if Google Toolbar exacerbates the problem, it is still highly doubtful that investigating the Google Toolbar code will reveal the cause of the bug. Furthermore, I don't even believe that Google Toolbar exacerbates the bug. I think you only get that impression simply because many people have the Google Toolbar installed.

    
    

    
  
With the Google Toolbar I got this problem every day when changing between rdesktop and real display. When I uninstalled the Google toolbar the problem went away immediately and completely.


    
    

    
  
(In reply to comment #52)
> With the Google Toolbar I got this problem every day when changing between
> rdesktop and real display. When I uninstalled the Google toolbar the problem
> went away immediately and completely.
>

I had the same experience. I'm fairly sure that I saw the bug without Google toolbar installed but I can get it pretty reliably with it installed and not at all anymore without it.

    
    

    
  
Someone on IRC reported this problem. They did have Google Toolbar installed (among other extensions). Here is their localstore.rdf: http://rafb.net/paste/results/aPyLBp17.html.

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 347055 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 349394 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 353258 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
I have been experiencing this problem as well in all of the 1.5.x releases as well as 2.0 RC1 and 2.0 RC2.

I have to agree with some of the others here that this is not specifically Google Toolbar related.  I have been trying to determine what is causing this for some time now and I'm a bit stumped.  I have 3 machines that exhibit this problem.  One machine is a fresh FF 1.5 install with *only* Google Toolbar installed, and the other two have a number of extensions installed.  I have uninstalled Google Toolbar on this machine and the problem persists.

From my testing, if I disable all of the toolbar modifying extensions, the problem seems to disappear.  Activating any of the toolbar extensions I have (RSS Ticker, Web Developer, or Google Toolbar) then the problem returns.

It is also not specifically Fast User Switching related.  I don't use FUS here as I'm on a Novell network.  In my case, I can replicate the problem about 75% of the time if I lock and unlock my screen.

Is there any way to enable some sort of debugging mode to record when this happens and trace the problem?

    
    

    
  
I'm sure is not google toolbar because I never had it install and I had the same problem, and nor do the Fast user Switching because I only got one account, but it happens to me sometimes when I return from Screen Saver(not all the time) and sometimes when I come back from hibernating, when I notice it happen I know for some reason either firefox or something trying to refresh every single page, the reason i said that is because I had session on and roboform installed, so when I start firefox, it prompt me to enter loads of passwords for some sites, and when the grey bar thing comes on, usually roboform will ask me to enter the password i haven't enter before(coz i hit cancel from roboform on some of them), that means something is trying to reload something and maybe making firefox not loading something properly. Hope this comment will help...

    
    

    
  
Still seeing this on 2.0RC3, on two computers - one that uses fast switching and one that doesn't.  It always occurs on a restore of sorts, either from another user's fast-switch (on the computer that uses FS) or from a restore from 'standby' (on computer sans FS). 

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 358463 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
Still there in FF 2.0 :(

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0

Using default theme, on XP, no Fast User switch, but screen locked and then upon return. Yes, I have Google Toolbar, but not everybody does.

I've only ever seen one line. If you try to customize the toolbar, you cannot drag anything into that empty space (mouse cursor becomes a "DON'T" symbol.

Pretty much sucks that I have to restart FireFox whenever I come back from lunch.

    
    

    
  
(In reply to comment #62)
> Pretty much sucks that I have to restart FireFox whenever I come back from
> lunch.
> 

Not promoting this as a solution, but as a workaround and a testing ground to see if googlebar is the culprit in *your* case: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/492/

    
    

    
  
This seems to be caused by having tooltips or popups where the height is explicitly set.  Here are steps to reproduce:

1) Start firefox with a new profile
2) Open DOM Inspector and find the tooltip node (id of aHTMLTooltip)
3) Add a height attribute to the node (e.g., height of 100)
4) Open display properties
5) Change display settings (I normally just change the color depth) and apply changes
6) See 100px tall grey bar.

Google Toolbar sometimes sets the height of the html tooltip (because it doesn't autosize properly) so you see it more often with toolbar installed. However, the test case above doesn't require any extensions.


    
    

    
  
Also, it looks like setting the height of the parent popupset (mainPopupSet) to 0 fixes this problem. 

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 364214 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
Just wanted to point out that, not only does this problem occur in version 2.0.0.2 (this bug report says it's in 1.5.0.x), but it occured when I was doing nothing in Firefox but reading a PDF file.  I've seen it happen hundreds of times, on different websites, and it usually isn't a result of anything on that particular website OR user input--it just seems to randomly happen when nothing else is going on.

Not running Google Toolbar, not using fast user switching, and using the default XP theme.  Also, more than one bar appears over time (never kept Firefox running long enough to see it go beyond two bars, but I imagine it must).

Oh, and, my toolbars don't get extended to the right and cut off, like Hergert's do.

    
    

    
  
I have exactly the same effects as described in #64
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=311438#c64

Chaninging color depth can be replaced with fast user switching.

Is there a way to lock the value of aHTMLtooltip.height to 0 ?

    
    

    
  
Lots of lines on mine: http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/5817/toolbarbugyf5.th.jpg

Hope this gets fixed soon sometime, I will be overcome by these lines in no time.

    
    

    
  
I just updated my Wizz RSS extension from 2.1.7 -> 2.1.8 and now the bars are completely gone. Not sure if they will reproduce later though.

    
    

    
  
Up until now, I have only had this problem in Windows XP, and Ubuntu has been fine. But after upgrading from Ubuntu 7.04 to the latest Ubuntu release (7.10 aka Gutsy Gibbon), this problem occurred. Similar to resuming from screensaver in Windows (comments 6 and 59), this bug occurred when I returned from a locked screen. 

I am adding this comment in hopes that this may help the developers figure out what is causing this bug. 

I am not knowledgeable enough to really offer any real insight, but since the different releases of Ubuntu use different releases of GNOME, it might a good idea to see what changed and if there is anything common with that in Windows. Just my two cents.

    
    

    
  
This seems to not only be a problem for firefox. See bug 402595, bug 400696, bug 403551 for sunbird/lightning.

In short, it happens when resuming from sleep, with remote desktop and with some desktop switching software. I think it has to do with resolution changes in general.

    
    

    
  
If it is happening with Sunbird, its highly likely that it is a bug in GTK. Is there any other GTK applications with this problem? I'll check out Gimp and report. 

    
    

    
  
Note also that these bugs are mostly windows bugs, so I don't think its GTK (alone?).

    
    

    
  
GTK on windows...maybe something specific to do with implementation on windows. Just a pointed guess. 

    
    

    
  
@ Philipp & Suraj:

While it is true that this usually occurs on Windows, please note my earlier comment that I observed this bug once in Ubuntu Linux. Also note that Windows has a very high market share, which could explain why most of the comments are coming from Windows.

    
    

    
  
I'm currently running Firefox with only the ScrapBook plugin, on Vista, and I have something called WallpaperChanger which periodically changes my wallpaper.  Now, no one of these programs is directly related to the problem, as I've had these blank bars appear with any combination, or none, of these installed.  But I just noticed that the instant my wallpaper changed, my Firefox window immediately sprouted three blank bars.  The timing was too close to be a coincidence.

Don't know if this'll be any help to anyone, but I thought I'd throw it out there.  Maybe it's related to something Windows does when (among other things) the wallpaper is changed?  Of course, as noted, this happens on Linux, too, so it could be a red herring.

The wallpaper changer is at http://wallpaperchanger.de if anyone wants to investigate it.

    
    

    
  
I've had the blank bar appear (sometimes multiple) after locking/unlocking my workstation on both Windows XP Home and Vista Business.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080404 Firefox/2.0.0.14

    
    

    
  
I have not noticed this bug in Firefox 3. It appears to be fixed.

    
    

    
  
I'm still seeing it on the latest stable release of the Firefox 2.0 branch, this time inside a Remote Desktop session.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.15) Gecko/20080623 Firefox/2.0.0.15

    
    

    
  
Is anyone still able to reproduce this issue with Firefox 3.5?
Whiteboard: [closeme 2009-07-24]

    
    

    
  
I haven't seen this bug since the 2.x train of code.  3.5 is awesome, btw..  great job !

    
    

    
  
Thanks Jason! I'll wait for some more confirmations before closing out this bug.

    
    

    
  
I too have not encountered this bug since I've changed to 3.x. Should be moot. 
btw, 3.5 looks good :)

    
    

    
  
Thanks for your feedback. If someone can still see this problem feel free to reopen the bug. Closing as WFM.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 15 years ago
Keywords: qawanted
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME

    
  
See Also:  → https://launchpad.net/bugs/26354

    
    

    
  


  

    
    

    
  
I hate reopening 7 year old threads, but upon updating from Firefox 20 to Firefox 21 I have this issue (see the screenshot I just posted). I can't remove the bar when using customize toolbar, so it appears not be a toolbar. Not sure what's going on, but it's annoying. It appears right away when opening Firefox, not after any time.

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