749808 - about:newtab don't displays images for the 9 previews

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect)

Description

[Maik]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0
Build ID: 20120425123149

Steps to reproduce:

1) Changed the browser.newtab.url in Firefox 12 (release) to about:newtab
2) Changed browser.newtabpage.enabled from false to true
3) Problem (see "What happend") showed up
4) Installed Firefox 13.0b1 to maby solve the problem


Actual results:

about:newtab shows 9 preview windows, but without images of the including websites, instead, there are 9 blank previews only showing the title of the linked website


Expected results:

about:newtab should show images of the websites in the preview windows

Comment 1

[qcem]

I can confirm this on Linux, Firefox 13b1 as well.  about:newtab shows my most used pages, but the thumbnails are all blank, even after clicking on them.  problem still exists in safe-mode with all customizations turned off.  

UA: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0
Build ID: 20120425123149

Comment 2

[Virgil Dicu [:virgil] [QA]]

Do you have your cache enabled? Any settings in about:config with cache set to 0?
Currently thumbnails are saved in the cache, plans to remove it are found in bug 744388.

Comment 3

[qcem]

The only thing in my about:config with cache set to 0 is 'browser.cache.compression_level' 

Some of the others are: 
browser.cache.disk.capacity;1048576
browser.cache.disk.enable;true
browser.cache.disk.max_entry_size;51200
browser.cache.memory.enable;true
browser.cache.memory.max_entry_size;5120
image.cache.size;5242880
media.cache_size;512000

I can wait and see if the next version with the custom thumbnail storage fixes the issue, though.

Comment 4

[Virgil Dicu [:virgil] [QA]]

Yes, please report if bug 744388 fixes the issue once that is resolved for your Firefox version.

Comment 5

[Maik]

I found it. Had "browser.cache.disk.enable" set to "false" as result of optimizing my system for my SSD, that I use as system-drive for Win7.

After I re-activate the cache, the thumbnails now are working. Thx for the tip.

I would also vote for don't storing the thumbnails in the cache.

Comment 6

[qcem]

Was bug 744388 fixed in Firefox 13b2?  I just updated and the thumbnails still don't appear to be working.

Comment 7

[Virgil Dicu [:virgil] [QA]]

(In reply to QuadCEM from comment #6)
> Was bug 744388 fixed in Firefox 13b2?  I just updated and the thumbnails
> still don't appear to be working.

No, that is currently fixed in Firefox Nightly (Firefox 15).
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla-central/
You can get the latest build from this source (it updates daily) if you're curios about that issue fixing the problem.

Thumbnails display fine for me under Ubuntu 11.10 on Firefox 13 beta. If any page in the grid gets loaded completely with focus on that page i can afterwards refresh the New Tab page and the new thumbnail is retrieved.

Comment 8

[qcem]

I don't know if this is intended behavior, but at least I made a little bit of progress.  I've been messing with the browser for a while and managed to get the thumbnails to start appearing for some (seemingly arbitrary) previews, but in order to get them to start showing up I had to disable the "Clear history when Firefox closes" option.  When I re-enable it, all of my thumbnails disappear, and only upon re-disabling this option do they come back.  (Basically, I check this box, refresh the New Tab page and they all disappear.  Then I clear the checkbox and refresh the New Tab page and they all automatically reappear).  

Is it supposed to be working like this?  Am I not allowed to clear history upon Firefox closing in order to use the thumbnails?  I even tried this with a new, empty profile and had the same behavior.

Comment 9

[Virgil Dicu [:virgil] [QA]]

(In reply to QuadCEM from comment #8)
> Is it supposed to be working like this?  Am I not allowed to clear history
> upon Firefox closing in order to use the thumbnails?  I even tried this with
> a new, empty profile and had the same behavior.

Yes, this is normal. By default, when you select the "Clear History when Firefox closes" option the cache is included among the items to be deleted at restart. 
You can check this by selecting "Settings" next to the option in the Privacy tab. If you deselect cache, then you should be able to start seeing thumbnails.

Comment 10

[qcem]

I guess if it is intended behavior then this is not a bug; the thumbnails are mostly appearing now on my machine with it disabled (1 of the 9 thumbnails refuses to display no matter how many times I visit the page or restart the browser, but the rest are working fine).  

I thought that "Clear history when Firefox closes" would only affect what Firefox does upon restarting, not how it behaves during runtime.  The 'when Firefox closes' part makes it a bit unintuitive.  I'm assuming that this issue will be fixed / will no longer be relevant when the thumbnails switch from cache to their own custom storage, though.

Comment 11

[Ben Lerner]

I'm also seeing this lack of thumbnails.  So far, I've tried unchecking Clear History, unchecking the cache bit from comment 9, and running in safe mode.  I've checked the cache settings from comment 3, but I haven't yet tried in a brand-new profile or in Firefox 15.  I tried an older test profile, and some pictures are quite blurry/low-res and some are still missing.  I tried running my current profile with *all* extensions disabled, still no pictures.  Are there other settings I could try tweaking?

Comment 12

[Virgil Dicu [:virgil] [QA]]

History and cache should be the only ones to interfere here. So that would mean:
-reset all cache related settings in about:config to default values(to make sure your cache is working check Preferences/Advanced/Network tab. You should see how much disc space is used by cache there)
-in Preferences/Privacy "Remember history" or "use custom settings for history" checked without any option to delete history on shutdown

If you just updated from F12 you would see blurry pictures at first. The feature was implemented in F12 with smaller thumbnails, but prefed off. With the new larger thumbnails, they will look blurry. if you visit those pages and refresh the new tab page, you should no longer see blurry thumbnails.

Comment 13

[Ben Lerner]

This appears to now work for me in Firefox 16.0.1 on Win7x64, even in my old profile.

Comment 14

[Emanuele Bellini]

Attachment: What I see when I launch Firefox 16

Comment 15

[Emanuele Bellini]

Same behaviour in Firefox 21... For me not fixing a such important feature it's a low quality indicator.

Comment 16

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

Mass-move to Firefox::New Tab Page.

Filter on new-tab-page-component.

Comment 17

[srikrishnakumar]

1) Checked in firefox:13.0 version win 7 32 bit 
 
I tried this with mozilla firefox 13.0 version on windows 7 32 bit platform.. what you mentioned is correct only...thumbnails images in about:newtab don't displays images for the 9 previews..just displaying title of the webpages alone ....... 


2) Checked in firefox:16.0 version win 7 32 bit

Same result in Firefox 16... this too not displaying image thumbnails in about:new tab.. 


3) Checked in firefox:33 beta version win 7 32 bit and win 8 64 bit 

In mozilla new version 33 beta is properly loading all thumbnails images .... i checked both in win 7 and win 8 both are working fine

Comment 18

[Cornel Ionce [:noni]]

Resolved WFM based on comment#17