352515 - [Linux] Page fails to draw/appear after load

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Web Painting, defect)

Description

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Symptoms:
You click on a link and the page loads, but you see no change in the window content. When you force a redraw, e.g. by changing the window size, the page appears immediately.

This is independent of tabs. Bug appears both in the current tab/window as well as if I load the page in a new tab in the background. When I switch to the tab, it's empty = grey. I have to change window size to see the content. Even if I load 3 pages in new background tabs, switch to first, change window size, and switch to second tab, the latter is still empty.

Reproduction:
Not 100% reproducable. It seems to happen the more often the longer the browser is in use without restart. At the moment, the browser is running for less than a day and I see the bug in maybe 30-70% of all page loads.

Severity:
Makes browsing a pain, if you have to resize the window for (almost) *every* *single* link click. Core functionality. -> Major

Builds / Environment:
I have seen this bug in older Mozillas one year ago and in Firefox 2.0b1, on different systems. Currently I use SuSE 10.1, I don't remember the other distros. I have not tested trunk yet, will do.
FWIW, I have not seen this bug in 1.4 or before, IIRC, so this is a regression, but a *very* old one.

Comment 1

[Adam Guthrie]

Using any extensions?

Comment 2

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

No. The problem appears both in old Mozillas/Seamonkeys as well as FF2 branch.

Typically, the problem doesn't appear at all for a while, but fairly frequently with changing frequence when it does.

Comment 3

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Just seeing it in Thunderbird 1.5.0.x, too, in the standalone msg window. So far I had not seen it in mail clients ever before (apart from one incident a few days ago). Happens both when opening new window and replacing content of an existing one. The header pane is fine (as is the titlebar, also in Firefox, BTW), but the content pane still shows the old mail body until I resize.

Comment 4

[C William Underwood]

Sounds like bug 350331;  

I'm seeing exactly the same thing under Feisty, and recall seeing this before under edgy and earlier.  Still have no idea why it starts doing it, although on my current session (of which I have a backup) it usually starts within a couple actions.

Comment 5

[kujub]

I have the same bug here (sometimes) with Firefox 2.0.0.x 
on feisty _and_ on gentoo. 
I remember at least one appearance with Thunderbird too 
(don't know if it was 1.5 or 2.0) 

For more similar experiences:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/72812

Comment 6

[kujub]

Some more of these, even one with _video_ recorded:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/86477

Comment 7

[Evan Wheeler]

I am seeing this problem on Firefox 2.0.0.8 / Fedora 7.  Seems to happen more often when downloading a large file simultaneously whilst browsing.

Comment 8

[Seth]

This bug is still present in firefox 2.0.0.12. After reading bug #72812 on bugs.launchpad.net and this bug report, I found that the pages can be viewed only after resizing the browser. Thus far the resizing has worked 100% of the time to correct the display issue. I would also agree that this issue is related to the durration of time the browser has been running. Typically I see this occur only after ~1 hour of browser use. The only thing that corrects this issue is either resterting the browser of resizing it. Finally, I am running this browser on CentOs 5, x86_64 w/ kernel 2.6.18-53.1.13.

Comment 9

[Mark Piazza]

(Cross-posted from bugs.launchpad.net)

I have the same problem in both Firefox (2.0.0.13, maybe as far back as 2.0.0.4?) and Thunderbird (2.0.0.9) under SUSE 10.0, and then under SUSE 10.3 on 5 different computers (with almost identical hardware and nVidia drivers, all with dual or triple monitor setups). It most definitely is still a problem in Firefox 3 rc1.
It seems to happen most often when I am developing HTML/PHP code and refreshing a lot. It's quite aggravating when I expect the page contents to change and they don't and I think its a problem with the code rather than with the browser.

I did notice one thing that might help. Pages under 64k total size don't seem to exhibit this problem. To test this I filled a properly formatted HTML document with lorum ipsum text so the exact size of the file was just under 64k while I was the bug was manifesting. It loaded and flowed correctly. I increased the file to just over 64k and the page no longer refreshed when reloaded. Back down to just under 64k and the problem went away again. Perhapses there is a buffer being overflowed? A problem at exactly 64k seems very suspicious indeed.

Some times it is limited to one or two tabs. If only Firefox is exited, or only Thunderbird, they seem to 're-infect' each other. Quitting both Firefox and Thunderbird is the only way to alleviate the symptoms besides the window resize trick.

Comment 10

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

I haven't seen this in years, so marking fixed by unknown coder. :)

Comment 11

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

If we don't know what fixed it, it's WORKSFORME.