608659 - Firefox and Chatzilla freeze if I close the FF window from which I launched Chatzilla and open a new one.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Other Applications :: ChatZilla, defect)

Description

[ericongerth]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101026 Firefox/3.6.12
Build Identifier: ChatZilla 0.9.86 [Firefox 3.6.12/20101026210630]

Pretty much what the Summary line says.  Open Firefox.  Launch Chatzilla using FF's Tools menu > Chatzilla option.  Everything else about Chatzilla works for me.  But if I happen to close that original Firefox instance from which I launched Chatzilla... well, at that point Chatzilla still works fine. BUT if I then open a new instance of Firefox, *both* the new FF and the existing Chatzilla window lose all performance... they both turn completely sluggish as if there were a race condition or memory leak or something of that nature.  I can barely type or click anything.  If I wait really long (and I mean like three or four full minutes) they may become useable.  But this problem pretty much makes Chatzilla unuseable on my system -- I should not be required to keep the original FF window at all costs.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. open Firefox 3.6.x (in this case 3.6.12 but i think it has been all 3.6 versions)
2. from FF's Tools window, open Chatzilla
3. close that Firefox window, leaving Chatzilla open
4. observe Chatzilla still works fine
5. now launch a new Firefox window, watch both FF and Chatzilla become useless.
Actual Results:  
The results are exactly as described in the Details section above.  I have done this many times and it is 100% reproducible on my system.

Expected Results:  
One would expect that either (a) the original FF window from which Chatzilla was launched cannot be closed while Chatzilla is invoked, or (b) that closing that FF window and launching a new one would have no effect on Chatzilla whatsoever.

I know, it makes sense to me, since Chatzilla is a Firefox addon, that one should perhaps not have a reasonable expectation of it being able to work entirely independently of a given Firefox instance.  However, since it does open its own desktop window, it's reasonable to claim that this creates such an expectation, particularly because it is not a child window (apparently) but a base level window of its own.  Bottom line is, the fact that Firefox is allowed to be closed completely without either making Chatzilla go away or raising a dialog that stops the user, indicates that there is a reasonable expectation that they are independent, and that Chatzilla's continued functioning would not depend on what exact Firefox window is open, whether it's the original one from which Chatzilla was launched, or a new one.