343082 - Firefox has a problem handling resolution switching on Windows XP Home SP2.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 343081

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[jon]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4

This problem seems to be native to forcing a resolution switch, due to loading a game that modifies your computer's resolution. I was NOT ABLE TO REPRODUCE THIS PROBLEM BY CHANGING RESOLUTIONS WITH THE "DISPLAY OPTIONS" DIALOGUE BOX ON WINDOWS XP.

When playing a game with a lower resolution that what was originally set, for instance, a game that is set to 1024x768 on a normally 1440x900 resolution, 7 out of 10 times, firefox shifts webpage content to the right, seeming like it's trying to compensate for the resolution switch. No fix has been discovered yet: this isn't some earth-shattering DEFCON 5 problem, just simply an inconvenience, and clearly a bug, and who wants faulty software engineering. Apparently, a quick fix to the problem is simply closing any affected instances of firefox and re-opening firefox. Suitable for now, but would like to see this problem fixed in the next stable release.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open a game that requires a different resolution that what you're currently running (in this case, Team Fortress Classic)
2. Start + D : display the desktop without closing the game (forcibly minimize the game)
3. Focus the firefox window: web pages loaded inside the firefox browser are shifted to the right, causing the absence of a vertical scrollbar as well as possibly missing content, depending on the web page layout

Actual Results:  
7 out of 10 times, Firefox moves the page content to the right quite a few pixels. Around 200 pixels are placed between the left of the firefox tab content and the left border of the browser. The vertical bar disappears, and some content that might have used the CSS "text-align: right" property is either limited in viewability or entirely missing. This applies to any content that is aligned or positioned on what would be the normal right side of the page.

Expected Results:  
Firefox should have simply adjusted with the resolution switch, or not attempted to adjust anything. If it was going to try to compensate for the resolution decrease, it should have re-compensated for the increase. If it wasn't going to recompensate, it should have just left things be.

Theme: Default
Graphics card: nvidia gforce fx go5200 (64mb vram)
Os: Windows XP Home Edition (SP2 installed)
Resolution: 1440 x 900

This problem seems to be manifesting itself in linux as well, due to resolution changes. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=256646.

Comment 1

[Kevin Brosnan]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 343081 ***