571189 - "Unresponsive Script" error triggered by extensions on start since 3.6.x

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Milan Bouchet-Valat]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; fr; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100423 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; fr; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100423 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.3

Since some version in the 3.6 series, extensions seem to be applied the same timeout as other scripts, which means you get the "Unresponsive Script" dialog when loading takes too long. I'm not sure what version it appeared in, but this behavior was not present in 3.5.


This new "feature" is really annoying for me because I always keep Firefox open, and it's restarted automaticllay by session saving when I turn my laptop on. On login, the HDD is really busy, which means Firefox is slow to load, and so do extensions. Thus, they are triggering the timeout but it's mainly due to I/O blocking their loading, not them doing crazy things. When starting Firefox manually, i.e. not on login, no timeout is reached.

I really think extensions should be trusted more than scripts from random web pages, because the user installed them manually. Something like 60 sec sounds reasonable: if an extension hangs, user will understand this and be able to remove it - not like web scripts.

Bonus points would be to detect what extension hangs for more than one minute, and suggest removing it, instead of telling users about a weird script path!


FWIW, I'm using Zotero and Lazarus, and both reach the timeout on start. My laptop is reasonably recent (2006).

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[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 2

[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.