554987 - Layout size is not the same for identical pages hosted at 2 other URLs

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Jeff Glassman]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_8; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.22.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Safari/531.22.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv: 1.9.2.2) Gecko/20100316 Firefox/3.6.2

I am preparing a new blog entry at the public URL above. I have two copies, called "sandboxes", on different URLs, which are private and I cannot share. I have 3 different size layouts for what should be the same page, assuring that the windows are all the same size. The font sizes and a banner at the top of the page are all proportional, but different scales. The text breaks are different among the three pages. Page editing for size and layout is all but impossible.
If I open the same three pages with Safari in identically sized windows, all three pages are identical in size and breaks. 


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Post identical page on different URLs with varying text sizes and perhaps a banner.
2. Open all pages from the different URLs, and size the windows the same.
3. Observe that the apparent font size, banner size, text breaks, and line spacing are proportioinal, but not the same.
Actual Results:  
Identical pages on different Firefox windows have different scales. This not true with Safari. 

Expected Results:  
For most users, this is a trivial problem, so I reported it as "normal". For doing layout, however, it makes Firefox unsuitable.

Comment 1

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

Firefox saves your zoom factor per-domain. If you reset zoom on all three pages using View -> Zoom -> Reset, does that fix it?

Comment 2

[Jeff Glassman]

Brilliant. That exactly made them all the same. 

What an interesting hidden feature. I could zoom in and out through lots of levels, and reset to 0, whatever that means. This might be a more useful feature if the zoom factor were quantified and accessible. For example, can I zoom the separate windows from different domains to the same level other than 0? Are there a maximum and minimum zoom level? Is the 0 level a standard for all or most browsers? Including cell phones? This might help me debug my blog for other viewers and for unexpected results. 

Right now, it looks like a Firefox's random number generator.

Comment 3

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

Firefox zoom logic is here: http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/content/viewZoomOverlay.js

Resetting the zoom factor usually just means that 1 CSS pixel equals 1 physical pixel on the screen. The other zoom factors can be set in about:config in the "toolkit.zoomManager.zoomValues" setting. "zoom.minPercent" and "zoom.maxPercent" specify min and max values.

(In reply to comment #2)
> For example, can I
> zoom the separate windows from different domains to the same level other than
> 0?

Sure. Reset the zoom factor and then increase / decrease the zoom factor the same number of steps on all sites.

> Is the 0 level a standard for
> all or most browsers?

For most desktop browsers at least, yes. At least with the default DPI system setting.

> Including cell phones?

Cell phone browsers usually start with a zoomed-out view of the page.

I'm setting this bug's resolution to invalid because it wasn't a bug in Firefox.