877340 - Facebook always goes back to 'top'

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: Preinstalled B2G Apps, defect, P2)

Description

[Karen Rudnitski [:kar]]

Nexus 4. Facebook mobile site. Start scrolling down, tap on a story to check out comments or whatever, hit the 'back' button using the Android soft key, and Facebook brings me back to the 'top'. Sometimes to the VERY top, sometimes to the first listed story. Super annoying if I want to interact or look at stories way down the list and I haven't finished scrolling down. 

Evangelism or something we can help fix?

Comment 1

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

I've seen the same thing for ages in Safari (iOS) and Chrome; can you confirm?

Comment 2

[Karen Rudnitski [:kar]]

I see it on Chrome (I don't have my iphone on me). But that is besides the point. Firefox USED to work correctly, but hasn't for a while now. And even if others always go back to the top, it's such a poor experience. If we could fix it, it would make my reading experience (and engagement) so much the better. And we know that I like driving towards a beautiful, seamless, mobile browsing experience.

Comment 3

[Wesley Johnston (:wesj)]

Our fast-bf-cache should make this work (and I think does for me)... Maybe we're purging it in some cases?

Comment 4

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

Can we get a regression range, if this is a real regression? If this is due to a Firefox change, we should find out why it changed.

Comment 5

[Teodora Vermesan (:TeoVermesan)]

On LG Nexus 4 using Firefox for Android 15.0a1 (2012-05-01) I still see the issue. I don't think this is a regression.

Comment 6

[Karen Rudnitski [:kar]]

It would be a regression from months ago, not a recent one.

Also in case it helps: Chrome takes you to the very top, consistently (which is a bad UX anyway). But Fx takes you *near* the top. Also a bad UX, although on top of that, a puzzling one as a user.

Comment 7

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

Teodora used a build from 13 months ago. This may involve some something Facebook is doing.

Comment 8

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

This is an Android bug, not a FF OS bug - back over to Mobile

Comment 9

[Lawrence Mandel [:lmandel] (use needinfo)]

I don't want to play bugzilla tag but...

1. I can reproduce this issue on B2G using the Facebook back button
2. Harald manages Mozilla's relationship with Facebook
3. The Web compat team does not handle Web improvements and this is an issue across browsers according to comment 1.

Comment 10

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

(In reply to Lawrence Mandel [:lmandel] from comment #9)
> I don't want to play bugzilla tag but...
> 
> 1. I can reproduce this issue on B2G using the Facebook back button
> 2. Harald manages Mozilla's relationship with Facebook
> 3. The Web compat team does not handle Web improvements and this is an issue
> across browsers according to comment 1.

I'm not sure that implies that were going to outreach on this, but I'll let Harald figure that out.

Comment 11

[Hallvord R. M. Steen [:hallvors]]

(Just 5 cents: I think it is a job for Facebook's QA to push for such improvements, not us. Sure it's annoying but if it's annoying cross-browser they should be able to figure that out without us spending resources on the issue. If, however, some browsers are better at back/forward-caching their DOM manipulations, this should be moved to Core so we can figure out what we can do better..)

Comment 12

[Elisa Helton]

I reproduced this on a ZTE device Build 20130828 FFOS v1.1

If I click on any post in my newsfeed, hitting 'back' takes me back to the top (or close to the top) of my newsfeed, forcing me to scroll back down to the position that I stopped at before.

Comment 13

[Hallvord R. M. Steen [:hallvors]]

As far as I understand this, it's because back/forward cache is not used when navigating - and this is actually known issue with Facebook: 

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=840299#c0

(Haven't checked if these headers are still used. They might also have unload events or other stuff that per the list on https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Using_Firefox_1.5_caching disables bfcache)

Comment 14

[chuanxin hu]

This is an known problem across all interfaces and hard to fix. So we are not going to fix this.

Comment 15

[Hallvord R. M. Steen [:hallvors]]

Had a closer look - this is not about bfcache, Facebook doesn't really do navigation - it just updates the DOM and changes the #hash to create faux back/forward navigation. This, however, implies it also needs to take responsibility for restoring the scroll position. With a long newsfeed this issue becomes a serious user experience problem - having to scroll down all the time! I strongly suggest that you look into a fix for this.

Comment 16

[Elisa Helton]

Response from [e-mail]: This is a known issue with our msite on all devices. Solutions are being explored, but I can’t say when it will be resolved.

Comment 17

[Nicole Fong]

Hi [e-mail], This bug has been open for almost 9 months.  Do you have any updates on this issue and when it may be fixed?  If possible, can you please provide fix by February 18th?

Comment 18

[Colby Rabideau]

I have no updates to report on this one. The team responsible is away of the issue and exploring how best to fix the problem, but I can't give a fix date.

Comment 19

[joseenrique.alvarezfernandez]

Weird.

Using Facebook app on OPENC v1.3, if I tap on a history to read it and see comments I don't get a back button but the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. If I tap on the back button on that navigation bar, the app returns me to where I was and NOT the top of the stories.

Can anyone else take a look at it.

Comment 20

[Nicole Fong]

On my Buri v1.3, I don't even have a back button.  It quickly appears on the top left corner, but then gets replaced by the 3 bars for the menu.

Comment 21

[Nicole Fong]

Colby - this bug has been open for over a year.  Are there any updates on when this bug may be fixed?

Comment 22

[joseenrique.alvarezfernandez]

If I understood correctly the steps to reproduce this bug, I wasn't able to reproduce it. 
What i did:
- Sign in to FB
- Scroll down a little bit
- Tap on the comments on any story on the timeline
- Open the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen and tap on the back arrow
- You'll return to the story where you were

I've tested on ZTE OPEN C with v1.3 and Flame with v2.0