833048 - Firefox switches between open windows from active PB window to non-PB window

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 768802

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect, P3)

Description

[Christian Ascheberg]

Under certain conditions Firefox unexpectedly switches fcous between open windows. I am using Firefox 2013-01-21 nightly build.

STR:
1. Start Firefox
2. Press CTRL+SHIFT+P to open new private browsing window in foreground
3. Load Youtube webpage and video in PB window

Result:
Firefox switches focus back to the non-PB window in the background (if there is a plugin like a Youtube video on the website)

Expected:
focus should remain on current PB window

This only happens as long as you did not switch between the two windows previously, so you have to restart Firefox to see the behavior again.

Comment 1

[(no longer active)]

I can't reproduce this.  Can you please try this in a new profile or in safe mode?

Thanks!

Comment 2

[Christian Ascheberg]

I can reproduce this in safe mode as well as with a whole new profile.
Firefox must be closed before starting to reproduce this.
It does not happen if Flash is disabled, my installed Flash version is 11.5.502.146.

Comment 3

[(no longer active)]

Hmm weird.  What OS are you on?

Comment 4

[Christian Ascheberg]

(In reply to :Ehsan Akhgari from comment #3)
> Hmm weird.  What OS are you on?

Windows 7 64bit (regular 32bit Firefox nightlies)

Comment 5

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

I reproduced this (focus going back to the non pb-window) but not with the steps in comment 0, if I should reproduce it again, I'll try to annotate my steps.

Comment 6

[Marco B.]

I can confirm this. No problem with the Nightly on my computer, but I noticed this on my Netbook with Aurora. 

I can also confirm that this might be Flash related.

Comment 7

[(no longer active)]

Benjamin, have you ever seen a problem similar to this with Flash?

Comment 8

[Christian Ascheberg]

I realized that this bug is not necessarily related to private browsing.

New STR:
- start Firefox
- open a new window (or more windows)
- load youtube video page

Result:
Firefox switches focus to the previously active window.

I am not sure if I forgot to check this case or if the bug did not occur then for some reason. Feel free to adjust the bugs component and title accordingly.

Comment 9

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

I saw this in the recent past, but couldn't figure out consistent STR. It may be that updating my Flash or Firefox fixed it?

Comment 10

[(no longer active)]

Moving to Core::Plugins.

Comment 11

[Benjamin Smedberg]

I think this is a dup, but I can't find it right now.

Comment 12

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

Could this be a followup to bug 768802, with the fix there restoring focus to the wrong window?

Comment 13

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Yes.

Comment 15

[Ada [:adalucinet]]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:21.0) Gecko/20130218 Firefox/21.0

I confirm this issue on latest Nightly (Build ID: 20130218031106) when following these STR:
1. Launch Firefox.
2. Open a Private Browsing window and navigate to a random web site (e.g. http://edition.cnn.com/)
3. Close the private window and select Never remember history (Options->Privacy->"Nightly will..").
4. After restarting the browser (as requested), open a private window and navigate to a random web site.

Actual result: At step 4, Firefox switches focus to the window opened after restart.

Note:
I've reproduced this issue 3 out of 5 times.

Comment 16

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

(In reply to Alexandra Lucinet [QA] from comment #15)
> ...

If you say "random website", i assume Flash is involved? Per comment 2 that seems to be the case.

Comment 17

[Ada [:adalucinet]]

(In reply to Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche] from comment #16)
> If you say "random website", i assume Flash is involved? Per comment 2 that
> seems to be the case.

You're right, if Flash plugin is disabled, this issue can't be reproduced.

Comment 19

[colonel.panic.code]

I have experienced this bug even without visiting a site that uses Flash. When I simply open firefox with "about:home" as my homepage and a new private-browsing window (also no page loaded), it will randomly switch back to the non-PB window on occasion.

Using Windows 7 64-bit with Firefox 20.0.1 (release update channel).