514902 - Pages with very large tables freeze Firefox during and after rendering

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 477564

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[humble.fool]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

On pages with extremely large tables -- at least 2000 rows based on the attached example, but likely with tables smaller than that due to the time it takes -- firefox will load a part of the page and then completely freeze, ignoring all input and, on a Windows XP install, will entirely "blank" (that is, the entire window is replaced by white as it fails to render at all). This freeze can last upwards of two minutes on modern hardware. CPU usage rises to 100% and stays there throughout the freeze. This has been confirmed on an instance with all browser add-ons disabled as well.

Attempting to interact with the page after it finally finishes loading -- for example, the check boxes on a form wrapped around the table, or simply scrolling down the page -- can cause the browser to again lock up, seemingly at random, for around the same length of time.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Attempt to load page with extremely large table.
2. Wait.
Actual Results:  
Browser locks up, ignoring all inputs, and continues to do so until tab containing page is closed.

Expected Results:  
Not frozen, or at least not frozen for as long as it does.

The test page for this bug makes me wonder if https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=477564 is perhaps related.

Comment 1

[humble.fool]

Attachment: Test case from a web app which suffers the problem.

Comment 2

[humble.fool]

Attachment: A cleaner example; 2000 rows with checkboxes in them.