547891 - Toolbars and menubar disappear in Firefox 3.6

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, defect)

Description

[Matthew Middleton (:zzxc)]

Attachment: Affected localstore.rdf from a user

We've been getting lots of support requests about all toolbars and the menubar disappearing with Firefox 3.6.  Creating a new profile and starting Firefox in Safe Mode are known workarounds.

I walked several users reporting this issue in Live Chat through troubleshooting steps today, and a bad localstore.rdf file is causing the issues.  Either deleting this file or selecting "Reset window and toolbar settings" when starting Firefox in Safe Mode fixes the issue for at least three different users.

The cause seems to be the autohide="true" attribute being set on menubar element, but we're not sure how this is being set.  The affected users don't have any add-ons in common, and users have reported that this happens when unchecking toolbars or when changing the Persona.

Comment 1

[[:Cww]]

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/592299
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/592439
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/592536
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/592734
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/592942

Comment 2

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> Created an attachment (id=428338) [details]
> Affected localstore.rdf from a user

The relevant lines here are:
  <RDF:Description RDF:about="chrome://browser/content/browser.xul#toolbar-menubar"
                   autohide="true" />
  <RDF:Description RDF:about="chrome://browser/content/browser.xul#PersonalToolbar"
                   collapsed="true" />
  <RDF:Description RDF:about="chrome://browser/content/browser.xul#nav-bar"
                   collapsed="true" />

That's consistent with someone having hidden their toolbars from View->Toolbars... I can't think of a reason why that would happen without user interaction. Can they not restore them that way (using Alt to show the menubar)?

Comment 3

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

If you uncheck all 3 toolbars and you don't know that you should press alt, you can't get them back.

Comment 4

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Ria: while true, I don't think that's what's happening here based on reports.

Matthew: is this mostly OSX? The auto-hide attribute is related to full screen mode, and we only recently added that to OSX. Maybe we're missing a check and the toolbars are being hidden even after leaving full screen mode?

Comment 5

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Well, at least the case of comment 2 wouldn't have been reported if there was a known way to place a check mark in the toolbar boxes. Those options were un-checked. Makes no difference if the user did it by accident or an add-on.

Comment 6

[Matthew Middleton (:zzxc)]

> Matthew: is this mostly OSX? The auto-hide attribute is related to full screen
> mode, and we only recently added that to OSX. Maybe we're missing a check and
> the toolbars are being hidden even after leaving full screen mode?

The main problem with this is on Windows, where the menubar is hidden in addition to the toolbars.  Getting the menubar back from this state is difficult, as it requires holding down ALT and clicking in a small area.  (This is very easy to reproduce - just edit localstore.rdf to include the autohide="true" property on #toolbar-menubar)

Comment 7

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Getting the menubar back from this state is
> difficult, as it requires holding down ALT and clicking in a small area.

Or View -> Toolbars -> ...

By "small area" you mean the whole menu bar, don't you?

Comment 8

[Matthew Middleton (:zzxc)]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Or View -> Toolbars -> ...
> 
> By "small area" you mean the whole menu bar, don't you?

When all three toolbars (menubar, navigation, bookmarks) are hidden, the clickable area for the entire toolbar+menubar is only 2px tall.

Comment 9

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Right, that's why you press Alt.

Comment 10

[[:Cww]]

This bug has two parts: 1) Why are we seeing more people with this problem in 3.6? 2) What can we do about it? 

For the latter, we should definitely warn users and tell them how to get it back if they hide the menu bar -- regardless of how it's hidden (extension, context menu, view>toolbars)

Comment 11

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #10)
> 1) Why are we seeing more people with this problem in 3.6?

You couldn't hide the menu bar prior to 3.6.

Comment 12

[Matthew Middleton (:zzxc)]

(In reply to comment #9)
> Right, that's why you press Alt.

Users have reported that pressing Alt doesn't work to get the menu bar back in Windows Vista and Windows 7.  However, a SUMO contributor reported that using F11 to go between full screen mode and back worked on Windows 7 to show the menubar.

We need to update the knowledge base article with reliable methods to show the menubar when this happens.  Could someone with Windows Vista and Windows 7 available do some testing to see what the best workarounds are?

Comment 13

[u88484]

(In reply to comment #12)
> We need to update the knowledge base article with reliable methods to show the
> menubar when this happens.  Could someone with Windows Vista and Windows 7
> available do some testing to see what the best workarounds are?

Do you have reliable STR this problem?  I have Windows 7 and can test this out but I have not seen this problem.

Comment 14

[Matthew Middleton (:zzxc)]

(In reply to comment #13)
> Do you have reliable STR this problem?  I have Windows 7 and can test this out
> but I have not seen this problem.

To reproduce the problem, just copy the localstore.rdf from attachment 428338 [details] into your profile folder and restart Firefox.

Comment 15

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Maybe in the tab context menu (or tabbox) there should be a "Toolbars" menu-item with the 3 check boxes Menu bar, Navigation Toolbar and Bookmarks Toolbar. Too bad if the tab bar is hidden.

Comment 16

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

So is the conclusion here that all of these reports are cases similar to bug 551892 - the users hid all of their toolbars intentionally, and then couldn't figure out how to restore them since the menubar now gets hidden as well? Or is there still reason to believe the toolbars are being hidden without the user's interaction somehow? The first is certainly an issue worth dealing with, but it's separate one that we shouldn't conflate with the second (if it exists).

Maybe bug 551892 should track the first problem and we can leave this one to track the mysterious disappearing (in which case I think the summary is kind of misleading - localstore.rdf being changed is more likely to be a side-effect rather than a cause).

Comment 17

[[:Cww]]

Given that we're seeing spikes in reports of this, I suspect it's not just users doing it intentionally.  Unfortunately without a menu bar, we don't often get troubleshooting information so there's not much to work with.

Comment 18

[Michael Lefevre]

Just a couple of random thoughts, sorry if they're not useful...

Could it be people are getting stuck in full screen mode, rather than hiding menu bars? Just another anecdote, but someone did call me once because they'd accidentally hit F11, and didn't know how to get out of full screen mode. Could the menu bar be made to appear when pressing alt in full screen mode? Could it display a message briefly on entering full screen mode which says "Entering full screen mode, please F11 to exit"? Could something more obvious like escape also exit full screen?

Not sure if it's likely, but could people be hiding the menu bar accidentally by right clicking menus instead of left clicking (and then unchecking things from the menu bar's context menu)?

Comment 19

[[:Cww]]

Attachment: screenshot

(In reply to comment #18)

> Could it be people are getting stuck in full screen mode
No.  We check for that -- it's not full screen.

> Not sure if it's likely, but could people be hiding the menu bar accidentally
by right clicking menus instead of left clicking (and then unchecking things
from the menu bar's context menu)?

This is possible but the spike in occurrence suggest otherwise.

I got another screenshot today that has a norton toolbar but no nav bar or menubar.  User says that Norton Toolbar wasn't there before.  We've also heard a similar story about the Bing Toolbar.  Maybe something about additional toolbars makes this problem worse?

Comment 20

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Do these menu entries come back when you right-click and restore them, or are they gone forever?

Comment 21

[Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (not bugmail, email directly)]

It seems like the culprit here is contained to localstore.rdf, but just in case...

Something that came up elsewhere is that session restore also saves state for hidden toolbars (menubar, bookmarks toolbar, locationbar, etc). If this bug is something that persists across restarts after deleting localstore.rdf, then it's a good bet it's saved in sessionstore.js (search for "hidden").