869998 - no menu after a while

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Menus, defect)

Description

[a_geek]

After browsing for a while, I lose my context menu - not only inside web pages, but everywhere in the browser windows. Most notably, it's also lost in extensions' menus, like eg. in NoScript.

I found that the problem appears to be exacerbated by having many tabs open - below 100, it does not seem to appear often, but sometimes I have more (like currently ~250, and usually 150-200). At that point, I have trouble doing anything with the browser, as I eg. can't switch to tabs not currently visible, and need to close and re-start the browser. This takes some three to five minutes on my computer (4C/8gig). The bug strikes me almost every day, and sometimes multiple times per day.

This may or may not be related to #840378 - feel free to merge, if you think it is.

Comment 1

[a_geek]

Forgot to say that I lose the left click menus as well. On left-clicking anything, I get a short flash, but nothing else. This problem has now occurred twice within one hour, which makes it hard to work with this browser.

Comment 2

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

Since you mention bug 840378 I assume you're using Ubuntu builds.
You can try using Mozilla's builds instead until they fix it:
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/#firefox

> This takes some three to five minutes on my computer

There's been major improvements in this area lately, not sure exactly which
version they come in though.  You can try Beta/Aurora builds in the link above
and see if it helps (they're quite stable, the only issue might be that some
of your add-ons are incompatible).

Comment 3

[a_geek]

Nope, I use the upstream FF - currently, FF20.0.

Comment 4

[a_geek]

Uhh... about Aurora builds, I'll look into it. Can I somehow verify the integrity of these packages?

Comment 5

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

> Nope, I use the upstream FF - currently, FF20.0.

OK.
Can you check if the "firefox-globalmenu" package is installed on your system?
Any packages with "unity" in the name might be of interest too.
Do you see anything in Tools->Add-ons:Extensions/Plug-ins that might cause it?

> Can I somehow verify the integrity of these packages?
You can manually verify the checksum:
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla-aurora/

Comment 6

[a_geek]

In my version of Linux, Debian Wheezy, no packages by the names of firefox-globalmenu or anything with "unity" exist. I searched for them.

I also have no plugins installed. In my 'Extensions' section, I have several, but eg. nothing for gestures, and I use the default theme, too. How would I recognize an extension that would be a candidate to trigger this bug?

Comment 7

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

> How would I recognize an extension that would be a candidate to trigger this bug?

Good question :-)  You could try disabling them all (and restart) and then see
if the problem goes away I suppose.

The Ubuntu bug mentions that upstream Aurora isn't affected, but YMMV.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libdbusmenu-qt/+bug/1164953

Comment 8

[Ioana (away)]

Any results with no extensions?

If you haven't already tried this, you can try safe mode to disable all your extensions with a simple move:
http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode

Comment 9

[a_geek]

There are two general problems with requesting things to be checked while all extensions are disabled:

 1. Without any extensions, FF is imho absolutely unusable, from both a security/privacy and an ergonomic and functional point of view.

 2. Likewise, testing in the view of the combinatorical explosion when having more than a handful of addons installed, is thoroughly infeasible (I have several dozen addons installed).


I know that this answer doesn't help your goal in the slightest, nor does it help me getting the problem resolved, but maybe the project can think of better ways to make the application easier to debug, like providing the option to record all callbacks being registered, so I can, say, attach a debugger to the running process, issue a command (or send it a signal), then get all required debug info. :/

Comment 10

[Ioana (away)]

Testing with no extensions helps us realize if this is a Firefox bug or an extension bug. If it's an extension bug, nobody here will be able to do anything for it. The extension developer needs to be notified so he can fix it.

Can you at least provide the list of addons and plugins you have installed on your Firefox?

Comment 11

[a_geek]

I fully understand your rationale. What I'm asking for at this point, are other ideas / better ways to identify the problem.

I currently see no good way to supply the lists, so I'll probably have to ask for "WONTFIX".

Comment 12

[Ioana (away)]

(In reply to a_geek from comment #11)
> I fully understand your rationale. What I'm asking for at this point, are
> other ideas / better ways to identify the problem.
Unfortunately, since your issue is intermittent, it's quite difficult to find a reliable regression window. This will also make debugging it hard, no matter what logs you get.

 
> I currently see no good way to supply the lists, so I'll probably have to
> ask for "WONTFIX".

I'm moving this to Menus, hoping someone there knows more about how you can help in this specific case (what logs to get or anything else).

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

still bad?

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

needs new info