648789 - Opening new tab makes tab overflow scroll buttons appear momentarily (flicker) if New Tab button isn't placed right after tabs

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Alex Limi (:limi) — Firefox UX Team]

On my setup (8 app tabs), I get the following behavior shown in the attached movie, where the tab overflow scroll button shows up for an instant before the tab is rendered, which causes the animation to not be as smooth as it should be, since it animates twice.

Slow down the video if you can't see it the first time (I show it twice).

Comment 1

[Alex Limi (:limi) — Firefox UX Team]

Attachment: Video demonstrating the issue

Comment 2

[Frank Yan (:fryn)]

I just tried reproducing this on Windows 7 and OS X, with various window widths, various numbers of app tabs, and various combinations of having Aaptabs and Easy App Tabs installed/uninstalled/enabled/disabled, and I never saw this.

Dão, any idea what's going on?

Comment 3

[Frank Yan (:fryn)]

Alex, can you reproduce this on a fresh profile too?

Comment 4

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

I can reproduce this when customizing the new-tab button away, don't know why it's happening.

Comment 6

[ithinc]

This could be something related with aero. It had ever happened on Firefox 3.6 when I tested about one year ago with AeroBuddy - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/aerobuddy/.

Comment 7

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

I can reproduce this without glass, and on Linux.

Comment 8

[Frank Yan (:fryn)]

I can reproduce this now with OS X with certain toolbar configurations and window widths, but I still don't know what is actually happening.

Comment 9

[Nick Howitt]

I have the same issue on WinXP and Win7-x64, default theme (and, from memory on Linux (Porteus/Slax/Slax-remix). I traced it down to the Tab Utilities addon but it has not been corroborated in their support thread on Mozillazine. 

It only happens once there are enough tabs to fill the tab bar and the tabs automatically resize themselves to fit. Once the tabs become small enough not to be able to resize then the scroll button becomes permanent and the issue goes away.

You also see the same issue when closing the right-most tab but not the left or any of the middle tabs.

Comment 10

[Nick Howitt]

I confirm Dão Gottwald comment. You can trigger the bug on a new profile every time you remove the new tab button from the right of the tab bar (either put the button to the left of the bar, remove it or put it in the normal button area). It happens as soon as you have enough tabs open so they start resizing themselves to fit the tab bar and you then close the right-most tab.

My comment about Tab Utilities is invalid. I think there is a bug in the TU code but all that did was expose the underlying Ff bug.

Comment 11

[ithinc]

I don't think this is a regression. It happened in Firefox 3.6 if you enable the glass effect and hide the new tab button. In Fx4+ it is just much easier to satisfy these two conditions.

Comment 12

[ithinc]

I have ever submitted a review for the AeroBuddy (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/aerobuddy/) extension. See https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/user/864971/#userprofile-reviews.

Comment 13

[ithinc]

Steps to reproduce:
1. Create a new profile
2. Customize the tabs toolbar and move the New Tab button away
3. Open enough tabs to make the tab bar full (but not overflown)
4. Ctrl+T to open a new tab

Actual result: 
The overflow scroll buttons show up for an instant. 

The problem also happens if you close the right-most tab in step 4. The problem won't happen if browser.tabs.animate is set to false.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:10.0a1) Gecko/20110929 Firefox/10.0a1

Comment 14

[Nick Howitt]

Just to confirm, it happens to me on PC's with these build ID's:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:7.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0

Until this morning the XP PC running 7.0.1 was running 6.0.2 when it upgraded itself. The bug also showed when it was running 6.0.2.

Steps to reproduce are as ithinc's but I usually noticed it closing the right-most tab by middle clicking on it or clicking on the tab's close button

Comment 15

[Ioana (away)]

I have verified this issue on Windows 7 x86, on several older releases and it seems to reproduce on all of them to 4.0 (including). The reproduce the issue I used the steps in comment #13.

Regression window:
Last good nightly: 2010-11-18
First bad nightly: 2010-11-19

Pushlog:
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/pushlog?fromchange=789f0f85f75a&tochange=6478c1b83d60

Comment 16

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

I see nothing suspicious in http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/pushloghtml?fromchange=789f0f85f75a&tochange=6478c1b83d60
Somebody will probably have to bisect this further.

Comment 17

[Alice0775 White]

I can eproduce.

And I try to find regression window with following condition.
* On windows7 classic
* Make browser window width =976px(maybe depend on window border width)
* Open 8 tabs
* Follow the steps in comment #13.

Regression window (Overflow scroll buttons appear and disappear immediately whwn OPEN a new tab)
Woeks:
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/eb8e32b47158
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; en-US; rv:1.9.3a6pre) Gecko/20100611 Minefield/3.7a6pre ID:20100614002435
Fails:
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/9d9078188333
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; en-US; rv:1.9.3a6pre) Gecko/20100611 Minefield/3.7a6pre ID:20100614014001
Pushlog:
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/pushloghtml?fromchange=eb8e32b47158&tochange=9d9078188333
Suspected:
9d9078188333	Dão Gottwald — Bug 543206 - Tab opening animation. r=gavin



Regression window (Overflow scroll buttons appear and disappear immediately whwn CLOSE right most tab)
Woeks:
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/ddedaa587215
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0b4pre) Gecko/20100806 Minefield/4.0b4pre ID:20100806235707
Fails:
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/81c119fb86c7
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0b4pre) Gecko/20100807 Minefield/4.0b4pre ID:20100807040603
Pushlog:
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/pushloghtml?fromchange=e9c9b7d21a0c&tochange=81c119fb86c7
Suspected:
06b0aaa3623b	Dão Gottwald — Bug 380960 - Implement closing tabs animation. r=fyan,gavin

Both regression is caused by implementation of tab animation.

Comment 18

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Well, that's not a useful regression range, since we know that browser.tabs.animate=false prevents the bug.

Comment 19

[Alice0775 White]

(In reply to Dão Gottwald [:dao] from comment #18)
> Well, that's not a useful regression range, since we know that
> browser.tabs.animate=false prevents the bug.

So, it is impossible to find regression range without testcase.xul.

Comment 20

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Yeah, a reduced testcase would be useful in case this is a Gecko bug.

Comment 23

[Johannes Linke]

From the duped Bug 728548:

The overflow widget is also shown when closing the last tab.

Additionally, when closing the last tab, the tabs are resizing while the mouse pointer does not move after clicking the close-tab button. Closing any other but the last tab does not cause the tabs to resize. 

The resizing is also not completely done, it stops in the middle of the process. It stops when the overflow widget disappears.

FWIW:

What happens if closing the leftmost tab via the close-button
2. the new second-leftmost tab is selected
3. the closing tab is fading out while the other tabs are resizing and pushing the closing tab to the right
4. the closing tab is not visible anymore, the other tabs have not fully resized yet
5. overflow widget appears.
6. tabs continue resizing until they completely fit between the overflow widgets.
7. when the tabs finished resizing, the overflow widget disappears.
8. nothing happens. (the mouse pointer, which did not move but which which was first over the close-button, then over the tab bar, then over the overflow widget, is now over the tab bar again)
9. now move the mouse pointer
10. rest of tab resizing happens.

what happens if pressing strg-t:
1. old tab is deselected
2. overflow widget appears
3. new tab fades in
4. before the new tab has its full size, overflow widget disappears
5. new tab gets its full size

Comment 24

[Jesse Ruderman]

Still happens in both Nightly and UX-Nightly (after customizing away the 'new tab' button.)

Comment 26

[Justin [:JW_SoftvisionQA]]

I can reproduce this issue on  	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64; rv:47.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/47.0
Only when the "Open New Tab Button" has been removed from the toolbar.

Comment 27

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only: ex-Mozilla]]

Attachment: (2022) Video of the issue

I can reproduce this on macOS 12.3.1 with FF 100.0.2 and 102.0a1 in a fresh profile, without having to remove the new tab button or otherwise reconfigure the toolbar. I'm going to send it back to triage.

Comment 28

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S3. However, the bug has 4 duplicates and 10 votes.
:dao, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 29

[BugBot (nomail) [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The last needinfo from me was triggered in error by recent activity on the bug. I'm clearing the needinfo since this is a very old bug and I don't know if it's still relevant.