420155 - Large number of cookies come in and the active dialog does not always have the focus

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[J.M. Hardin]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b4pre) Gecko/2008022804 Minefield/3.0b4pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b4pre) Gecko/2008022804 Minefield/3.0b4pre

Some sites send a rather extreme mount of cookies (more than 10) and sometimes so many cookies come in that the active cookie acceptance dialog is not in front so I have to move all the dialogs to find the one that had the focus. The page listed had well over 20 cookies and I had to fan the dialogs out three times just to be able to get rid of the dialogs to see the page content.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. With cookie acceptance set to "ask me every time" open a website that wants to set/modify multiple cookies (more than ten)
2. Watch as multiple cookie acceptance dialogs come up before you can make a selection
Actual Results:  
All of the cookies come in at once and the active dialog is not always accessible for you to make a selection

Expected Results:  
Cookies should come in slow enough for me to say what I want to do with the cookie and give me a chance to make a selection and check the box to always apply the choice

I realize that the Component may be wrong, but I didn't see the Networking option in the list. Please change it to the correct Component if it is. I do have a screenshot of what I have to deal with every couple of days that I will attach as soon as I am able.

Comment 1

[J.M. Hardin]

The screenshot is available at http://nancib.wordpress.com/files/2008/02/fx3-cookies.png

Comment 2

[[e-mail]]

see also bug 420512 for a similar UX nightmare. (the problems described are subtly different, though whatever the fix is it'll probably cover both.)

Comment 3

[Serge Leger]

Problem is also present in Windows Vista. Tested with Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1a1pre) Gecko/2008070903 Minefield/3.1a1pre.

If you study the screenshot above, you will notice that the server is trying to set the same cookie more than once. 

Firefox 2.x did not have this issue. With version 2.0 you would never get more than one cookie request prompt at a time. So you had the opportunity to Allow/Deny each cookie individually. Of course, once you had allowed or denied a cookie from a site FF will not ask again.

Version 3.0 does not wait for the user to respond to the cookie-requests, and continues to download content from the server, and each subsequent download could send a new cookie... it repeats until you get the screenshot above.

Comment 4

[J.M. Hardin]

The issue seems to be getting better but I still have multiple cookies at a time from a given server, and sometimes the dialog that has focus isn't always the top dialog visible. Hopefully we can get a fix for Fx3.1. I'm kind of surprised fx3 shipped without any sign of a fix for it. I can only imagine how many people are experiencing this and consider it cause for rolling back to Firefox 2.0.x

Comment 5

[Jonathan Wakely]

I haven't noticed this get any better.

Who decided it was better to have loads of dialogs at once, most of which are inactive? I can't click any except the most recent to appear, even though that doesn't necessarily have focus, so I have to **** about finding which of a dozen dialogs is the one to click next.  If only one is going to be clickable, why open loads?

Comment 6

[P]

Still true with 3.6.12

Comment 7

[:aceman]

It seems FF4 does not longer show several cookie dialogs if they are for the same host/domain. See also bug 515521.

This bug is about the problem with focus of the cookie dialogs. There are comments in other bugs that this may be a problem of the KDE window manager. The attached screenshot shows Gnome. Comment 3 also mentions Windows Vista. Is this a cross-platform problem?

Comment 8

[Nico R.]

I have just reproduced this with Firefox 5.0 on GNOME. Went to https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/report/14 after clearing my browser cache. The dialog displayed on top was not the modal one, and I had to search through several dialogs.

Happened as a side effect of bug 515521 comment 17.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:5.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/5.0

Comment 9

[Håkon Løvdal]

I also run with "ask every time" setting, and this problem happens all the time, like 10-30% of the time.

The way I think would be best to handle this is to have one single cookie confirmation dialogue per tab. This cookie confirmation dialogue would be populated with one _or more_ entries. It would be nice to be able to set one decision for all the cookies in one go and this should be the default, although the should be an option make individual cookie decisions.

Comment 10

[Håkon Løvdal]

I see there is some discussion related to this issue at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Cookies:prompting_ui. Hopefully something like that infobar suggestion will be implemented.

Comment 11

[Charles Evans]

This is so common - and so hard to escape - 
that it makes the "ask me" choice almost unusable. 
I have seen more than 20 jumbled popups.
I confirm WinXP/FFox3 & Debian-LXDE/FFox10 are broken.

It should not ever be possible to have an unresponsive popup that 
can cover an active modal popup, regardless of their function.
Maybe this needs to be fixed far below the cookie functionality. 

I think the infobar with a checklist is a must-do.
It should also offer a listbox to pick:
1. deny all cookies. (never ask)
2. allow all cookies.
3. deny all cookies at this site and its subdomains.
4. allow all cookies at this site and its subdomains.
5. deny all 3rd party cookies at this  site and its subdomains.
6. allow all 3rd party cookies at this  site and its subdomains.
7. always ask again at this  site and its subdomains (undo saved choices)

If any of these are chosen, they must immediately affect all other tabs;
the user should not see an infobar when changing to another tab 
that was previously opened in the background on the same site.

If the current ask option is turned on, 
(perhaps while looking for another option, )
a new user may not know/remember how to find it to turn it off.

The experience is so maddening the user may abandon firefox,
correctly assuming it is broken. 

It is a dealbreaker, if not a common one - but likely among those who
switched to firefox to have more control over their personal info
(not having the ask choice is also a deal-breaker).

This bug is hard to find unless you give a vague search;
searching "cookie prompt" gave these duplicate/depends bugs:
 bug 430006 – Infinite dialog loop for cookie permission
 bug 467536 – "Ask me every time" cookie prompt can cause DoS, even crash
and related:
 bug 546746 – Remove cookie prompting UI
# ^ Good idea, BUT make the add-on BEFORE removing this broken feature.
# ^ ^    DON'T go from bad (pain) to worse (no privacy at all).
# ^ ^ Until this is done,

please rename the cookie options to:
 1. ask = beat self in head with stick
 2. always = any site, take my history, sell it
 3. never = break most websites

searches returning no bugs:
 session cookie many prompt
 accept cookie many prompt
 ask accept cookie many 

p.s.:

We who cheerlead for firefox have been discredited by this bug - for years.
It makes us look for some other browser to recommend -
even if we don't quit using firefox.
-> "I use firefox, but we have to choose: user-friendly or protect-privacy"

(In a perfect world, the dogfood rule would apply - 
 all paid Mozilla staff would have to use firefox with "ask" turned on - 
 it would be fixed in a week.
 I am grateful for firefox, but this abuse is not what any user 
 expects from any software maintained by professionals - 
 certainly not from a program with millions of users.
 They expect this from joke/prank/malware/alpha software.
 Mozilla has earned much respect, but this gets them cussed out.
 Removing "ask" won't change that, either.
 Yes, I still got more than my money's worth.
)

Comment 12

[Robin]

In Firefox 11, on 64bit Linux, this problem still exists.  I opened a site the other day and I was given over 100 cookie requests.  Focus was all over the place.  It took ages to find the correct cookie request in the proper sequence to carry on browsing.

I like the suggestion in this bug/request.  Provide a pop-up window or a browser tab that shows all cookie confirmation requests and have us be able to just click the correct option.

There was a time once where I could just pick any cookie request dialog and choose the setting.  This option would be an easy fix.



https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=633763

Comment 13

[[e-mail]]

I still see this in Forefox 15.  It's ridiculous.  There have been times where I had to kill Firefox and restart it because I just could not find the correct cookie prompt.

Comment 14

[Robin]

Latest version in Fedora 18 lets me deal with the cookies in a random order in most cases.  I can close cookie 2 before cookie 45.  I have only tried this on one computer so I cannot say that the situation has been fixed or at least vastly improved.

Comment 16

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

I don't think this is still supported.