575134 - Private Browsing Breaks Navigation (Amongst Others) In New Window

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Private Browsing, defect)

Description

[Jamie Kitson]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.3a6pre) Gecko/20100627 Minefield/3.7a6pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.3a6pre) Gecko/20100627 Minefield/3.7a6pre

If you open a new window while in private browsing mode that window is broken in several ways:

* No navigation available (eg, backwards, forwards)
* URL in address bar does not change as you navigate
* Stop Private Browsing not available
* Window/browser has to be closed and reopened twice before normal browsing is returned

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go Tools -> Start Private Browsing
2. Open a new window
3. Optionally close the old window
Actual Results:  
Navigation and Stop Private Browsing is broken.

Expected Results:  
Standard behaviour.

Comment 1

[(no longer active)]

Do you get anything logged to the error console when you enter the private browsing mode?  Also, do you get anything logged to the error console when you open a new window after entering the private browsing mode?

Additionally, can you try running Firefox with a new profile and seeing if you see the same behavior?

Comment 2

[Jamie Kitson]

No errors when I enter private browsing, but this is what I get when I then open a new window:

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE) [nsIObserverService.addObserver]"  nsresult: "0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE)"  location: "JS frame :: chrome://browser/content/browser.js :: prepareForStartup :: line 4245"  data: no]

Error: aBrowser is undefined
Source File: file:///home/jamie/downloads/3.7/firefox/components/nsSessionStore.js
Line: 754

If I use a new profile the error does not happen.

Comment 3

[(no longer active)]

The failure is probably caused by this line:

<http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/base/content/browser.js#1190>

Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Do you have any extensions installed?

Comment 4

[Jamie Kitson]

Ok, it seems to be caused by the Ubuntu plugin. I didn't think that any of my plugins were compatible with 3.7.

Comment 5

[Jamie Kitson]

It also causes the following error on alternate start ups, which causes my previous tabs not to load, ie, I shut and reopen firefox and no tabs are loaded, I shut and restart it and my previous tabs load.

Comment 6

[Jamie Kitson]

I've reported this on launchpad:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubufox/+bug/599662

Comment 7

[(no longer active)]

Thanks a lot!

Resolving as INVALID since this is not a bug in our code.

Comment 8

[Jamie Kitson]

Surely a plugin shouldn't be allowed to cause this issue though?

Comment 9

[(no longer active)]

Extensions can break things in many different ways!  They can do almost anything to the browser!

Comment 10

[Jamie Kitson]

Good point.