604240 - Make tab-title-transition (Connecting-->PageTitle) and Throbber transition (gray-->blue) more logically connected

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Right now, when we're loading a page, we have two pieces of feedback that stuff's loading:

 - Throbber (initially a gray circle, then switches to blue circle at some point)
 - Tab title (initially "Connecting...", then Page Title once we have it)

Currently, those two transitions don't appear to be connected in any way (though they may seem like it on a broadband connection, since everything happens so fast).

However, perhaps they should be.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
 0. Clear your cache.
 1. Artificially limit your bandwidth (if you're on broadband), with a tool like "wondershaper" for linux. e.g. (for 20 kbps down & up)
      wondershaper eth0 20 20

EXPERIMENT A: For title-change-before-throbber-change:
 2A. Load http://vip.grooveshark.com

EXPERIMENT B: For title-change-before-throbber-change:
 2B. Load http://wiki.mozilla.org

Comment 1

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Can anyone tell me why we're getting differential behaviour in the two cases listed above?

Comment 2

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Err, I suspect dholbert meant for experiment A and B to be differently named ;)

Comment 3

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Sorry, I got the title of experiment B backwards. It should read:
EXPERIMENT B: For throbber-change-before-title-change:
  2B. Load http://wiki.mozilla.org

(The changes happen in the opposite ordering w.r.t. experiment A)

Comment 4

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: Experiment A (vip.grooveshark.com - Page Title with gray throbber)

Here's a screencast of EXPERIMENT A (with the title change before the throbber change).  Here, "before" is not very long before -- but it's noticeably before.  That is to say -- there are frames of this video that include the updated title but the old throbber.

From testing just now, I haven't been able to get this ordering to have any larger amount of time between the changes, so this might just be a situation where we update the title and then the throbber in two subsequent paints for whatever reason.

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: experiment B (wiki.mozilla.org - "Connecting" with blue throbber)

...and here's a screencast of Experiment B (with wiki.mozilla.org).  Here, we switch from gray to blue throbber almost immediately, but "Connecting" sticks around for another 5 seconds or so after that change.

Comment 6

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/26b5a5c0075e completely replaced "Loading..." with "Connecting...". That string is displayed until the title is available or the document has finished loading.

Comment 7

[Dave Garrett]

Even on broadband you can sometimes see this sort of effect for a bit.

(me in bug 603717 comment 6)
> In some cases the throbber will switch from the connecting state to the loading
> state but the title isn't ready to be shown in the tab yet. In this instance,
> the "Connecting..." string should switchover to "Loading..." with the throbber
> switch until the title is available to show.

Comment 8

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(In reply to comment #0)
>  - Throbber (initially a gray circle, then switches to blue circle at some
> point)
>  - Tab title (initially "Connecting...", then Page Title once we have it)

I just retested both experiments from Comment 0, and it looks like we're now consistent between those experiments -- the throbber changes first, and *then* the page title.  (whereas they used to differ, per Comment 3)

This current behavior seems reasonable to me.  Seems like we establish an initial connection, then change the throbber, and then (once we've got enough data to know the page title) change the tab-title.  Given that we don't seem to make those UI changes in the paradoxically-reverse-ordering anymore, I'm resolving this as WORKSFORME.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:2.2a1pre) Gecko/20110406 Firefox/4.2a1pre