330311 - First/one tab in window mostly fails to update history, location bar

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Tony Smith]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060127 SeaMonkey/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060127 SeaMonkey/1.0

This is a persistent problem which effects my browser even after reinstalling SeaMonkey from the .dmg and clearing my complete history.

Normal history and location bar functionality works for all but one of the tabs in a browser window, failing for the only (implicit) tab when a new window is opened but not in a new tab opened in the same window.

There is a possible connection/overlap with unconfirmed bug 321096 but far too many differences to add these details there.

When in the non working tab, the location bar retains the value from the previous front tab and the Back and Forward buttons fail, regardless of whether they appear active.

While new pages open as normal in the non working tab, they are not registered in the history and do not subsequently appear as visited. (This might make a nice optional feature one day.)


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open link in new browser window (including automatically).
2. Click on link within document
3. Open another link in a new tab
4. Click on link within that document
5. Check that back and forward work in the second tab
6. Click back to first tab

Actual Results:  
The location bar reflects the current page in the second tab and back and forward don't work regardless of their apparent activation.

The locations visited in the first tap are not included in the history for any purpose.

Expected Results:  
The location bar, back and forward buttons should work.

(In the absence of an explicit future option) all locations visited should be part of the history.


I did not notice the problem in the first week and a bit of using SeaMonkey, but it did eventually reach a point where I tried quitting and restarting, which did not help, and has not been necessary since apart from for system updates and the aforementioned reinstall.

At one level I can and largely have learnt to live with it, but it remains annoying and ugly in a product which otherwise just works day in day out.

Comment 1

[Tony Smith]

The abnormal tab can be moved within the tab bar and retains its abnormalities across such a move. However, it cannot be closed short of closing the window, neither by the close button at the right of the tab bar, nor by File>Close Tabs.

Should 4+ weeks continuous evidence from one user considered to provide confirmation?

Comment 2

[Andrew Schultz]

Do you see the same problem with a clean profile?  Do you see any errors in the Javascript Console?

Comment 3

[Tony Smith]

Yes to JavaScript Console, in fact more than one, but I've had trouble spotting which exact actions produce which errors.

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIWebNavigation.canGoBack]"  nsresult: "0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)"  location: "JS frame :: chrome://navigator/content/nsBrowserStatusHandler.js :: anonymous :: line 290"  data: no]

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIWebProgress.removeProgressListener]"  nsresult: "0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)"  location: "JS frame :: chrome://global/content/bindings/tabbrowser.xml :: removeTab :: line 1028"  data: no]

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIWebProgress.removeProgressListener]"  nsresult: "0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)"  location: "JS frame :: chrome://global/content/bindings/tabbrowser.xml ::  :: line 1799"  data: no]

Error: this.mCurrentBrowser has no properties
Source File: chrome://global/content/bindings/tabbrowser.xml
Line: 0

May not get a chance to try a clean profile for another 24 hours ... too many immediate commitments.

Also noticed that when a window is on the suspect tag, I can't bring it to the front via the Window menu (no JS error for this).

And after I appeared to have forced a delete of the window by agreeing to the "close multiple tabs" dialog, even though only the bad one appeared open, the "deleted" window reappeared when SeaMonkey was woken up again. (The 2nd and 3rd JS errors above were from redoing that attempted delete sequence.)

Comment 4

[Tony Smith]

The problem disappears with a clean profile, both on my Mac Mini, which mostly serves as a back up machine with minimal browser use, and with a specially created test user on the aging G4 tower where the problem was first noticed.

I don't currently plan to experiment with using the clean profile knowledge as the basis for experimenting with a workaround, both because I'm still curious as to how something this strange can persist without doing even greater damage and because my adapted working patterns have almost turned it into a feature.

Comment 5

[zug_treno]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code:
> 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIWebProgress.removeProgressListener]" 
> nsresult: "0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)"  location: "JS frame ::
> chrome://global/content/bindings/tabbrowser.xml :: removeTab :: line 1028" 
> data: no]

Related to bug 329365 -> bug 137477?

Comment 6

[Tony Smith]

Bug survives upgrade to SeaMonkey 1.0.1

Comment 7

[Andrew Schultz]

Do you see this with a clean profile?  Because you're the only one seeing this, the only way to figure out what's causing the bug is to identify what's unique about your setup.

Comment 8

[Eyal Rozenberg]

*** Bug 333210 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Andrew Schultz]

Do you have the session saver extension installed?  See bug 326395

Comment 10

[Eyal Rozenberg]

I used to have this bug without session saver installed. Can't reproduce it now though.

Comment 11

[Philip Chee]

Various other extensions can cause this problem including certain versions of MrTech Local Install and Adblock Plus. Resolving as WFM based on Comment 10