549923 - Information fields are reseted after submitting

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[André]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; pt-PT; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; pt-PT; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6

When one edits submission fields, such as textboxes, radioboxes, etc., there is a chance (aprox 30%) that, when pressing the Submit button, the site will try to submit as if the user had all fields empty, even after filling them.
This does not happen with a particular website, bur rather all of them. Examples include changing pages in Wikipedia and other Wikias, submitting messages in blogs and forums, and even this very same textbox in which I'm writing right now.
If the user presses the button that submits the written information, the page may load up a blank preview (in Wikipedia's case), warn about nonexistent topics (in the case of forums) or behave strangely, as if the user had submitted with no information. In some cases, it may even react as if the user didn't specify one in a group of radioboxes, something normally impossible.
Usually, pressing the back button on the browser will give the user a second try, to see if it doesn't fail again. Unfortunately, sometimes, when the user comes back, some of the changes have been lost.

Incidentally, for a good example: I'm currently writing this Bugzilla report. When I press submit at the bottom of the page, there is a chance this bug will be manifested. I don't know what will happen when this bug happens in this site, but it might be something along the lines of telling me to fill in all fields.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to a website that allows changes, in general.
2. Edit a text field, radio button option or something else.
3. Submit.
Actual Results:  
Frequently, the website will try to accept the changes as if the user had all fields blank.

Expected Results:  
The website should save the changes.

It seems to be a very exceptional case. This is a pretty major bug, and I'm surprised how there hasn't been any report yet. Though I'm not the only person to suffer from this. Most people I know don't seem to encounter the bug, but a couple of friends of mine do.

I tried running Firefox in safe mode and it still presented the bug, meaning that it's not a problem of any of my configurations. I also tried re-updating Firefox, but to no avail.

Comment 1

[André]

I forgot to mention that it didn't happen in Firefox's previous versions. I don't recall if this happened in the version immediately before the current one. As such, this isn't a problem of my computer specs.

Comment 2

[phmode]

I and lots of others are having this problem; all with various versions of the same symptoms. All this started when folks updated to 3.6

Re-loading 3.5.1 cures the problems but is no answer long term.

I have even purchased Lazarus Plug in to Firefox to allow me to retrieve lost text in comments boxes (such as this one!!!) when it sends me back to the blank login box.

This is totally reproducible. It happens every time I go to a website with logins, even this site.

I lose e-mail; I can't get into my bank account and numerous other problems.

This does NOT happen with Internet Exploder! so the problem is with Firefox.

Comment 3

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Reporter, are you still seeing this issue with Firefox 3.6.13 or later in safe mode? If not, please close. These links can help you in your testing.
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles

You can also try to reproduce in Firefox 4 Beta 8 or later, there are many improvements in the new version, http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Comment 4

[phmode]

All problems with this bug now resolved. I am running Firefox 3.6.13