NoScript menu rendering issue ever since FF18

[señor]

I have the same menu rendering problem as well.

Current specs: Sony VAIO VGN-FZ290
Win7 x64 w/ SP1
Nvidia GeForce 8400M GT Driver Ver: 257.41 (this is modified 3rd party driver, seeing that Sony doesn't provide a 64bit video driver and the driver from Nvidia will not install)
FF 18.0.2 w/ NoScript 2.6.4.4

For me, I found that enabling "Use hardware acceleration when available" under Tools>Options>Advanced>General tab, made the menu rendering issue go away, but it created a new problem. While browsing using FF, my computer would randomly freeze. I would have to hold down the power button to turn it off and start it back up. The video driver version I was using at the time was 306.97. I just recently installed ver 257.41. I will enable hardware acceleration and see if my computer freezes. I will also test out FF 18.0.2 with no addons and hardware acceleration enabled to see if it's FF causing my computer to freeze.

I don't remember seeing this issue when I used FF 17. Hardware acceleration was disabled on FF17. Right now I'm running FF 18.0.2 w/ Noscript and with "hardware acceleration" disabled. So far no freezes, but I do have the NoScript menu rendering problem.

[FF18]

senor, good call!
Obviously not a video driver issue. I'm on AMD you're on Nvidia.

You're right, with hardware acceleration enabled, the problem seems to go away. With it disabled the problem persists.

Also, I finally found a way to consistently reproduce the error about 9 out of 10 times.

First, some more info.
I was on 18.0.1, and updated to 18.0.2, with no change in the problem.
Oddly enough, the hardware acceleration enabled option seems to solve it, but then my video cards kicks in and out of 3d clocks and doesn't improve any type of page loading. If anything, it seems slightly slower. In fact, it almost seems like it causes a slight delay in the menu opening, which seems to be part of the problem, as if the menu is rendering too quickly sometimes.
At first i had played with many options trying to get this problem to be easily reproducible, at least for me.
I use a rather fast setting for nglayout.initialpaint.delay. I believe default is 250. I use 4.
This is one of a couple of settings that i have to tweak with each rev of Firefox as Mozilla constantly changes a lot of internal stuff.
Putting it in the 100-200 range seemed to help slightly for some odd reason. I thought it only had to do with page rendering???



Anyway, here's how i can reproduce the problem.
First, my problem is that my computer and internet is too fast. (Yeah, I know, what a problem. )

The reason being, is that pretty much any website comes up instantly, except for my custom homepage. (yahoo). with the added feeds and such it takes a couple of seconds to load.

The key to this is that you need to close Firefox, clear your cache, and preferably flush your dns.

Then do the following.
1: open Firefox, and as soon as you click on it move your mouse over the noscript icon. The menu should pop up and say something like allow about:blank.
Leave the mouse on it and the menu changes to show the current page options.
2: Now I click on a feed link, for example http://denver.cbslocal.com/feed/ Now as it loads that page move the mouse back over the noscript icon and it should show the half invisible menu. I can do this and 9 out of 10 times it works. Even other links will do that. I can also type that page in directly to the url and go there and reproduce it.

The key, which is my earlier problem is finding a homepage slow enough to give the initial allow about:blank on the menu.
That seems to need to be listed first for this to consistently work. Once you have that step, any number of websites that are slightly slow seem to help in reproducing the problem.
I tried to find another website for people to try out as a home page since mine is setup custom, but i can't find one slow enough on my setup.


Obviously the problem still occurs on random websites at random times, but i can finally reproduce it consistently.

hope this helps.

[señor]

Update:
So far no menu rendering issues with hardware acceleration turned on. After I went back to the Nvidia driver ver. 257.41, my computer hasn't frozen up.

@FF18:
Have you tried creating a new Firefox profile to make sure it's not any addons or user settings causing slower page loadings.

To create a new profile:
Make sure to close all instances of Firefox. Press Windows key + R, to open the Run window. Then type firefox -p to start the profile manager. Choose Create Profile. Give your profile a name then click Finish. Now here you may choose your profile and click Start Firefox.

Every time you click on Firefox to open the browser, it will start with your Default Profile. So we don't have to type firefox -p every time we want to choose our New Profile, we're going to create a shortcut. On the desktop right-click and choose New>Shortcut. Browse to where your installation of firefox is located. In my case that's "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe". Now we're going to add 2 arguments to the end of this location.
1)-no-remote 2)-p "Profile Name" The 1st argument allows us to run more than one profile at a time. The 2nd one chooses which profile to run. So the target location will look something like this:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -no-remote -p "New Profile"

"New Profile" is the name of the new profile you just created. You will need the quotes if your profile name has a space in it and I think it's case sensitive so...yeah!

Give your shortcut a name and then click Finish. If everything went well, you'll be able to start your new profile every time you use that shortcut.

Now only install NoScript on this new profile and see how it behaves.

[FF18]

You must have misunderstood me.
Slow pages aren't a problem at all.
everything is lightning quick. When I click on something it pops up pretty much instantly fully loaded.
I had trouble trying to find a slow page to use as a start up page for testing, so others could duplicate everything i wrote.

I've actually tried slowing things down just to see if that is the issue.
it's a Firefox 18 problem most likely, as everything was fine with 17, and nothing was changed at all, except the update to 18.

Firefox 18 had some key things changed apparently, and it's causing some issues with addons. I did all the above so others could duplicate the issue with consistency.

Slowing the menu speed slightly seems to have helped somewhat, as the problem doesn't occur quite as often, and it was/is inconsistent anyway.

it almost seems like Firefox has some background stuff going on, or is maybe certain websites are set to refresh data more often causing Firefox to be too slow rendering the noscript menu.

The noscript menu is the only thing acting up, thus why I'm here.
I have no other speed, performance or other Firefox related issues besides this one problem that cropped up after updating from 17 to 18.

Thanks for the detailed steps on the new profile anyway though.

[FF18]

Well I went one better and just did a brand new Firefox 18 install on another computer with no previous version of Firefox, did NOT change anything, and went straight to installing noscript.

BAD news , I can duplicate the exact same menu problem.

I followed my steps above and the exact same problem happens.

Also, this computer has an Nvidia card in it AND Hardware Acceleration was enabled by default. Also, it is a slower computer than my primary one. (Same fast Internet connection).


So this is definitely a Firefox 18/Noscript problem.

GOOD news is I can stop trying every setting combo and change that i've been trying for the past few days, since a bare-bones stock Firefox 18.0.2(which looks horrible, hooray for the few full custom themes left) is the culprit.

[peternm22]

Add to me to the list of people having this problem since upgrading to Firefox 18 (Windows 7 64bit). Has anyone had any luck fixing it yet?

[Giorgio Maone]

Please CC yourself and add any info you deem useful or you get asked for at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=842494

[FF18]

Just upgraded the test system (bare-bones default Firefox install) to Firefox 19 and the problem is still there.

Nothing else changed other than the update to Firefox 19 on that system.
In fact it hasn't even been on since the last test.

I could even reproduce the problem just going back and forth between the pages listed in the example below.

For those that didn't see it in the earlier post, here's how i can reproduce the problem on 2 different computers, with different hardware. (Both Win 7 x64)
Also, Hardware acceleration enabled or disabled makes no difference. Default install Firefox with noscript as the only addon or highly customized (Tweaked with several addons) Firefox also makes no difference.

Clear all caches first so it has to reload from the web.

1: open Firefox, and as soon as you click on it move your mouse over the noscript icon. The menu should pop up and say something like forbid about:blank.
Leave the mouse on it and the menu changes to show the current page options.

2: Now I click on a feed link, (on my homepage) for example http://denver.cbslocal.com/feed/ Now as it loads that page move the mouse back over the noscript icon and it should show the half invisible menu. I can do this and 9 out of 10 times it works. Even other links will do that. I can also type that page in directly to the url and go there and reproduce it.

Plenty of other random sites can cause this too, including this website, even if i have been on the page for a while. The steps above are just an easy way to consistently reproduce the problem. Also it can be a short list in the menu or a long list, neither matters. Moving the mouse over it still shows the pop up description, and i can click the invisible things, such as options, and they still work. I can move the mouse to the side menus, such as untrusted and see the list and move back to the main menu and it is still partially invisible.
Only clicking the icon a second time or moving the mouse away so it disappears then re-hovering will render the menu correctly.

Hope this helps.

[SaltyTrout]

Sorry for being quiet for a while, I didn't have a lot of spare time on my hands. Indeed, nothing helps, I couldn't try hardware mode because that practically makes Firefox unusable for me, but not that it matters much anyway.. Added myself to the CC list and I was hoping it'd get fixed in FF19. It didn't.. but get this - the address bar history drop-down menu now suffers from the same thing occasionally when I type an address. Either Mozilla is seriously messing up something or now I actually am getting some sort of isolated issue...

[nonoitall]

I'm experiencing the same issue. (Also have seen it happen once with the address history drop-down, which was since version 19 installed IIRC.) In addition, around the same time this started, for me sometimes NoScript's menu is insanely small -- like 3 items or so fit within it, and I have to scroll like crazy to look over the whole menu. This significantly hampers the addon's usability.

I've been using one profile for a long time and noticed the issue a month or two ago, but wasn't really bothered by it until last night when I started with a fresh profile and realized what a pain it is to enable scripting on most of the pages I go to now using only a little three-line menu.

Example:


(It also happens when the NoScript button is placed up on one of the top toolbars, too.)

[therube]

Your screenshot has a black down-hash arrow next to the NoScript icon.
The other screenshot (above or in the bug) has a black down-hash arrow next to an Adblock Plus icon.

What's up with that?
(Looks like in FF, that is the norm with ABP? I have never seen that in SeaMonkey.)

There is also a vertical bar on the NoScript menu separating the icon on the menu from the textual data that I'm not seeing. (Perhaps that is related to a Windows theme which I likely have disabled?)

[FF18]

Looks like 19 has caused the problem to spread to other menus as well:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &t=2665649

I was going to post and reference them here, but it no longer allows guest posting, and I'm not going to create an account for that.

[FF18]

For some reason it cut off the url:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &t=2665649

[FF18]

Ok, preview works fine, but when I hit submit it cuts it off:

Code: Select all

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2665649

[Thrawn]

Ok, preview works fine, but when I hit submit it cuts it off:

Code: Select all

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2665649

Known issue; links get truncated. Funnily enough, if you were to submit without previewing, it would work, but then if you edited it, it would break...

The fix is to wrap in URL tags like so:

Code: Select all

[url=http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2665649]your link text here[/url]