777239 - Closed tab still visible in tab bar

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Dan Brown]

This appears to be a duplicate/carried forward/reintroduced bug from the Version 4 Branch bug report (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=603262) but in Version 14.0.1.  I am using 32bit Windows 7 Professional. I have roughly 151 tabs in 3 tab groups (with 142, 8, and 1 tab in each) open with 30-40 in regular active use (and some of the others are duplicates which I occasionally clean up).

Closing a tab, either via ctrl-w or clicking on the close button on an active tab in a variety of situations will bring about ghost tabs which are still in the tab bar but are not accessible. Usually I don't notice them until later when cycling through tabs.

I didn't notice this at all until I recently started using tab grouping about two weeks ago so I'm not sure if that is related.

The tabs should disappear from the tab bar obviously. Last two tabs in image here (http://tinyurl.com/bpnjnws) are ghost tabs. Tabs get focus highlighting and are right clickable but wont perform any actions specific to that tab.  I can also move the ghost tabs position around the tab bar such as placing in between other tabs, or moving other tabs in between them (in the example in the image).

I extensively use Firefox on Windows (version 14.0.1), Mac (version 13.0.1) and Linux (Debian Iceweasel version 10.0.5) and have only encountered this on Windows 7.

Feel free to suggest any tools/tests which may help in debugging this.

Comment 1

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

This sounds like it's probably caused by an extension.

Comment 2

[Patrick]

Seeing the same thing on build 17.0a1 (2012-07-28).
The closed tabs are gone in Panaroma view, but still present in the tab bar.
Using keyboard shortcuts to move to the next/previous tabs it will correctly jump over the closed tbs that are erroneously still shown.

Comment 3

[Dan Brown]

Dao, can a non-tab related extension cause bugs in tabs?


(In reply to Patrick from comment #2)
> Seeing the same thing on build 17.0a1 (2012-07-28).

Hey Patrick. What extensions do you have?  I've got:
- Better Gmail 1.2
- Delicious Bookmarks 2.3.1
- Echofon 2.4.2
- Firebug 1.10.0
- FireFTP 2.0.5
- FlashFirebug 4.4
- Gmail Manager 0.6.4.1
- Header Spy 1.3.4.3
- HTML Validator 0.9.5.1
- IE Tab 2.0.201200203
- infoRSS 1.4.1
- Javascript Debugger 0.9.89
- Live HTTP Headers 0.17
- Nagios Checker 0.16
- pwgen Password Generator 0.5
- RESTClient 2.0.3
- S3 Firefox Organizer(S3Fox) 0.6
- Show Location 0.7.2
- SmoothWheel 0.45.6.20100202.1
- Stylish 1.2.6
- TinyURL Generator 2.5.1
- View Source Chart 3.05
- Web Developer 1.1.9
- ySlow 3.1.3

None of these, except maybe Stylish in certain cases (but not what I use it for), are directly involved in tabs. FireFTP, S3Fox, and IETab are the next set of possibilities though those change the functionality of the browser window, not the tabs themselves.

I'll disabled all of my extensions on Monday and see if I can reproduce it, although it's reproducibility is intermittent.

Comment 4

[Patrick]

I have been trying to narrow this down. I think for me the problem occurred around the time I upgraded to Mountain Lion.

The problem persisted when running in safe mode (i.e., with add-ons disabled). 
Repairing permissions also didn't resolve this.

What (in my case) appears to solve the problem was using the OS X application "Terminal" to reclaim ownership of the Firefox profile folder and making sure that I had read&write access to all files there.

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Dan Brown from comment #3)
> Dao, can a non-tab related extension cause bugs in tabs?

Yes.