567651 - Stop button remains active on some sites such as Facebook, "Waiting for ..." in status bar

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Vincent Lefevre]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100501 Iceweasel/3.5.9 (like Firefox/3.5.9)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100501 Iceweasel/3.5.9 (like Firefox/3.5.9)

With some sites that automatically update their contents, such as Facebook, clicking on the Stop has no effect: the Stop button remains active (doesn't gray out), which is a problem when one has chosen to merge the Stop and Reload buttons. If the mouse pointer is not over a link, the status bar permanently shows something like "Waiting for static.ak.fbcdn.net..." (in case of Facebook). This bug seems to occur when there has been some problem with the connection (such as an ADSL reconnection?); thus old requests to servers may not have been closed properly.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open a Facebook main page (e.g. "Fil d'actualité" in French).
2. Wait (maybe for several hours or days), reloading from time to time.
3. When the Stop button remains active for a long time, click on it.
Actual Results:  
Nothing happens. Clicking on the Stop button several times has no effect either. (In the case of Facebook, the site still updates the page with new contents, but this is normal.)

Expected Results:  
The Stop button should become disabled (grayed out).

This bug occurs both under GNU/Linux (Debian) and Mac OS X.

I've also noticed that after an ADSL reconnection, normal page loading never times out; this may be related.

Perhaps the same bug as bug 326757. If this bug is dupped, please set platform/OS to All/All.

Comment 1

[Vincent Lefevre]

I forgot to say: the throbber isn't active.

Comment 2

[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 3

[Vincent Lefevre]

I still see this from time to time under Mac OS X with the latest Firefox 3.6.*. This problem occurs after several hours or days, and since one cannot run a second Firefox instance on the same machine, I cannot try safe mode for a so long period.

Comment 4

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Have you been able to narrow down some similarities behind when it happens?

Comment 5

[Vincent Lefevre]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Have you been able to narrow down some similarities behind when it happens?

No. I'm just seeing this problem under Linux (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101227 Iceweasel/3.5.16 (like Firefox/3.5.16)), still with Facebook. If I click on the Stop button, nothing happens. The status bar says: Read profile.ak.fbcdn.net

Comment 6

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Ok so it is like Firefox is still trying to load the website and it hasn't loaded fully.

Comment 7

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

No reply, INCOMPLETE. Please retest with Firefox 3.6.13 or later and a new profile (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles). If you continue to see this issue with the newest firefox and a new profile, then please comment on this bug.

Comment 8

[Vincent Lefevre]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Ok so it is like Firefox is still trying to load the website and it hasn't
> loaded fully.

No, because the problem is that when I click on the Stop button, the button remains active. Moreover there's no throbber showing that something is being loaded.

I have a machine where I could try with a Firefox 4 nightly.

Comment 9

[Vincent Lefevre]

As a summary:

* With Firefox 3.x, the problem occurs with
  - Firefox 3.6.13 (official) under Mac OS X,
  - Debian's Iceweasel 3.5.16 under GNU/Linux (Debian).
  For practical reasons, I couldn't try with a new profile, but from the fact that the same problem occurs on two different machines, it doesn't seem to be related to a profile corruption. Note that the problem occurs after heavy browsing (several days) and with some sites only.

* With a Firefox 4 nightly, I couldn't reproduce the problem. It was running for several days on the same profile as with FF 3 (on my Debian-based laptop), not even with -safe-mode. So, the conditions were similar to FF 3, except I didn't use the browser very much. Perhaps something was solved due to the change of the interface.

I forgot to say: with FF 3, I use Stylish to have the Stop and Reload buttons at the same place, but this is purely a CSS rule.