583316 - new windows do not appear if firefox was closed on a monitor that is now disconnected

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Lonnen :lonnen]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:2.0b2) Gecko/20100720 Firefox/4.0b2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:2.0b2) Gecko/20100720 Firefox/4.0b2

I have an external monitor I use as an extended desktop. I quit my single open Firefox window while it was displayed on the second monitor, then disconnected the monitor. Later, when I tried to open a new Firefox window it behaved as if it was opening the window, and I could give it focus by clicking the icon, but the actual windows never showed up. I checked around the edges of the screen but couldn't see even a portion of the browser window. When I connected it to the second monitor again the window was open where I last closed it.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Move the Firefox window to an external display and quit the program.
2. Disconnect the display
3. Try to open Firefox
Actual Results:  
The dock icon springs, and the menu bar changes to indicate that Firefox has focus and the windows I expect are open under the 'Window' menu, but the window is never drawn on my monitor.

Expected Results:  
The window, at least part of it, should have been moved to my primary display now that the secondary display no longer 'exists'.

It makes the program unusable until I can connect to an external monitor to fix it.

Comment 1

[Pierre de La Morinerie]

Confirmed: I have the same issue since Firefox 4b2.

Some details about this issue:

* The windows are actually created, and appear in the "Window" menu item. But none of them can be seen or moved, even with Exposé/Spaces.
* All windows are subject to this defect, not only the browser windows. For instance, same defect with the Download window if you try to open it with Cmd+J.

This is critical: in this scenario, it makes the browser completly unusable.

Comment 2

[Lonnen :lonnen]

Another curious detail I can reproduce as of today:

* If reproduce this issue, and then create a few windows they appear in the "Window" menu item. Then, if I reconnect the external monitor, the windows are not drawn. I can open new windows and they appear where the browser was, and I can close and manipulate the new window like normal, but the old windows persist in the Window menu.

Comment 4

[Zandr Milewski [:zandr]]

I can confirm the behavior reported in comment #0 and comment #2.

Further, I can sometimes recover windows by closing Firefox, attaching the external monitor, and then restarting. But in the process of testing the STR, I have created a window that I can't recover in this way.

Comment 5

[Zandr Milewski [:zandr]]

Now in a state, even after removing localstore.rdf, where windows opened in response to clicking URLs outside the browser open in limbo/offscreen. New windows (cmd-N) open on-screen.

Removing sessionstore.js had no effect, removing localstore.rdf got me a window that had maybe 50 pixels on screen, enough to grab and drag back.

Comment 6

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

Might bug 609405 may be related to this?

Comment 8

[Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (not bugmail, email directly)]

I haven't been able to reproduce this. Can anybody still make this happen?

If so, please post exact steps to reproduce. Following the steps in comment 0 result in the window being partially displayed on my monitor.

Comment 9

[Lonnen :lonnen]

1. Have all Firefox window(s) open on an external monitor.
2. Quit the program, either through apple-Q, the menu Firefox->Quit Firefox, or right click->Quit on the dock icon
3. Disconnect the external monitor
4. Launch Firefox

This should result in Firefox launching, but no window being displayed. It should show up in the Window menu item. To restore functionality, reconnect the external monitor and restart Firefox.

Comment 10

[Lonnen :lonnen]

Just updated and tried my reproduction again and it looks like it has been fixed. The window is moved appropriately back to the primary screen.

Comment 11

[Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (not bugmail, email directly)]

(In reply to comment #10)
> Just updated and tried my reproduction again and it looks like it has been
> fixed. The window is moved appropriately back to the primary screen.

Great. I was just commenting to ask if you were using a recent build (as I was).

I'm going to close this. If anybody else that was having this problem can still reproduce, please reopen.

Comment 12

[Lonnen :lonnen]

Thanks!