475720 - "Unresponsive" JavaScript on theregister.co.uk makes Firefox stop functioning

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Per Ångström]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.9.2a1pre) Gecko/20090128 Minefield/3.2a1pre

How to reproduce:
1) Point Firefox to http://www.theregister.co.uk/

The CPU will max out and nothing will be rendered. After some time, a dialog "Warning: Unresponsive script" will pop up, saying:
"A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete.
Script: http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/javascript/_.js:14"

After I click to stop the script, all attempts to open other sites will result in an "Address not found error". This happens every time.

This looks to be a fairly recent problem. The same page works in the 20090115 build. I saw it for the first time in the 20090122 build.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Can you reproduce this in ther Firefox safemode ?
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode

Comment 2

[Per Ångström]

Yes, same behavior in safemode.

Comment 3

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2a1pre) Gecko/20090125 Minefield/3.2a1pre

No problem on Windows.

Comment 4

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

Works for me,  Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.9.2a1pre) Gecko/20090128 Minefield/3.2a1pre

Comment 5

[Per Ångström]

It looks like the 20090128 build I was using is generally unreliable on my machine. That was a 32-bit build on my 64-bit OS. I have now tested a 64-bit 20090128 build and it works OK. I will reopen the bug if I run into this again.