646615 - Links suddenly stop changing color when visited

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Jeff Rivett]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0

I'm browsing a web site, say reddit for example. I click a link to go to a story and read it.  I click the Back button to go back when done.  Normally, this causes the visited link to change colour from blue to purple.  At some point in every session, this stops happening.  Links previously showing as purple remain so, but links visited after the problem starts remain blue.  Closing the browser and restarting it fixes the problem, temporarily.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Browse a site that contain internal links that are styled in the normal way, with unvisited links being blue and visited links being purple.
2. Keep trying links until the problem occurs (sorry).
3. Profit.
Actual Results:  
Eventually, returning to a page containing a link that was just visited shows the just-visited link as not visited.

Expected Results:  
Visited links should appear as visited.

This is new behaviour with Firefox 4.  In other words, even doing all the same things, I never saw this behaviour in Firefox 3.  In Opera, sure, but not in Firefox.

Comment 1

[Jeff Rivett]

UPDATE: this actually may only affect specific sites, like reddit.com.

Comment 2

[Jeff Rivett]

UPDATE: It definitely happens on reddit.com, although it's sporadic.  It also seems to happen fairly consistently on Google search results pages.

Comment 3

[Marty Sachs]

I see this also with Firefox 4 in Mac OS X 10.6.7 (especially on Google search results pages).

Comment 4

[Dennis A. S.]

I too have seen this but on Mac OS 10.5.8 at work.
It does not happen for me on Windows 7 Pro at home.
I have seen it happen on the UserFriendly.org board (http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/).
Going back to the previous page then clicking on the link a second time or going to the URL bar and hitting enter fixes it and causes the link to be marked as visited.
Clicking the refresh button, hitting F5, or even Command-****-R does NOT fix it and cause the link to be marked as visited.

Comment 5

[Jeff Rivett]

UPDATE: I noticed that when I'm on a site like reddit.com, doing what I usually do (click a link, click Back to return to reddit, repeat), at some point there is a noticeable pause (longer than usual) when returning to reddit.  When reddit reappears, none of the links I just visited are still marked as visited, even if they had been up to that point.  Links I visited in a previous session are often still marked as visited, but none from the current session.  An SQLite database glitch, perhaps?

Comment 6

[Jeff Rivett]

UPDATE: I also notice that changes to the bookmarks are sometimes lost, which would also point to a database (SQLite) failure of some kind.  I will check for similar reports here.

Comment 7

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Note that Reddit is a special case, the site's JS changes link colors upon clicking. You can see this in Private Browsing mode -- we don't use or store history in PB mode, and yet Reddit links change color. Also note the color reverts to blue when reloading the Reddit page.

Comment 8

[Jeff Rivett]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Note that Reddit is a special case, the site's JS changes link colors upon
> clicking. You can see this in Private Browsing mode -- we don't use or store
> history in PB mode, and yet Reddit links change color.

Interesting.  I was not aware of that, although it does explain some of what I've seen when using that site.  I should probably use a different site for demonstrating this issue.

> Also note the color reverts to blue when reloading the Reddit page.

I see that, but it doesn't do that in Opera, Chrome or Internet Explorer.  So I think Firefox is involved.

Comment 9

[Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)]

I reproduced this bug on Nightly too.

When I reproduced this bug, Sync was syncing during very long time. And now I have trouble of my sync data. I'm trying to remove a bookmark but it is recovered by Sync. But after I restart firefox, I cannot reproduce this bug.

FYI: I saw the history which wasn't colored as :visited was in History menu.

Do you use Sync?

Comment 10

[Jeff Rivett]

(In reply to comment #9)
> Do you use Sync?
Nope.  Interesting observation though.

Comment 11

[Jeff Rivett]

I created a new profile and that solved the problem.  Still, I wonder what caused it in the first place?  A setting I changed that I shouldn't have messed with?  A glitch in the upgrade process?  A misbehaving add-on?  I know it wasn't database corruption, because I also recreated places.sqlite and that didn't help.  But it's interesting that this problem was affecting all the machines I use.  Marking as resolved.

Comment 12

[Jeff Rivett]

As I gradually started re-enabling add-ons and extensions, the problem reappeared.  I've narrowed it down to one the following, all of which I have once again disabled:
- Compatibility Reporter (installed to allow running Google toolbar)
- Google toolbar
- Fiddler (re-enabled automatically when I installed Compatibility Reporter)
- Avast Web Reputation (re-enabled automatically when I installed Compatibility Reporter)

I'm leaning towards the Avast add-on, but I will continue testing and will post my observations here.

I realize that many readers will probably object to my use of Compatibility Reporter, but I've come to rely on the Google toolbar and can't face Firefox without it.  Still, for the purposes of troubleshooting, I will suffer without it for as long as it takes.

Reverted status to Unconfirmed.

Comment 13

[Jeff Rivett]

Removed almost all the extensions and addons; the problem disappeared.  Started adding back the ones I really use, including Google Toolbar, for which I first had to add the Compatibility Reporter.  Problem returned.  Disabled Google Toolbar; problem gone again.  I will continue to monitor this.  If it's really Google Toolbar causing this problem, I wonder if the version for Firefox 5 will solve it?

Comment 14

[Jeff Rivett]

No more problems as long as Google Toolbar is disabled.  Reddit, Hacker news, etc. all work as expected in terms of visited link styling.

Comment 15

[bugzilla]

Google Toolbar does appear to be the likely culprit as it is the only program on Jeff's list that I am running.  It is worth noting that since I installed Firefox 5.0 the problem has not recurred, even though I am still running Google Toolbar with the supported version hacked to allow it to run under 5.0.

Comment 17

[Jeff Rivett]

As far as I'm concerned, this issue was resolved by discontinuing use of Google Toolbar, which is no longer being actively developed or supported in any case. Note that the resolution doesn't appear to be the same as in the marked duplicate (#853981).

I'm not sure what the policy is here for closing bugs, but as the reporter I'm hoping it's okay for me to close this one.

Comment 18

[Marty Sachs]

I'm still seeing this issue, but it appears to be part of a much larger cpu issue involving having ones Profile Folder located in a home directory on a remote server.