Nonetheless, there are some proposed fixes, and I expect a near-future release will have one of them.
This isn't that stereotypical "simple bug has been sitting around unresolved for years because (arrogant|understaffed|uncaring) developers can't be bothered" story that is unfortunately all too common in software (and not just open source software -- we just don't get to see it on a public bug tracker when it's in a proprietary product).
This is the process working.
Not sure why you’re so defensive and eager to shut it down that you have to post a barrage of comments to this thread, including saying roughly the same things in three comments.
You say that like the unreliability is the result of some extrinsic influence like the weather or unfair portrayal of the project by journalists and not a strong sign that the project has unmanageable tech debt or does not have the human resources necessary for the difficult task of competing with Chrome.
It's easy enough to work around, but it's also just terrible optics. Why does something like this take the better part of a year to fix?
1. Open https://www.google.com/ in a tab
2. Open https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nightly/ in the same tab
3. Click on Go back button (or Alt+Left Arrow)
4. Click on Go forward button (Alt+Right Arrow)
5. Select some text
6. Right click
Also, the scope is very specific and kinda justifies it being low priority. Maybe.
Note that there is another reproduction step sequence that I chose not to put in this comment for the sake of simplicity.
So I opened dev tools and saw there were network requests for google.com and play.google.com on the ftp page when it loaded even though there is nothing in the page source that would make those requests. When I force reload with cache disabled, these requests are not present. This looks like bad behavior by google.com somehow leaking into the next page.
So I found another random ftp page, and I can reproduce all of this there: https://ftp.wildfire.gov/public/incident_specific_data/
Is it the lack of js, not something more arcane in the ftp templating on those sites? I can reproduce all of this at http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ which is js free, and also at https://news.ycombinator.com/, which has js (be careful to select something like "### points" below a post, which has no hyperlink)
EDIT: I guess my theory was wrong, because I read at the bottom of the bugzilla:
So the issue here is that when a page goes to BFCache, it'd set the active browsing context to null, and the page that is about to show would update the active browsing context to itself. And these two operations are racy because they are triggered in different processes with different actionId. We are going to explore some potential solutions.
Based on the comments there, by setting BFCacheInParent to false in about:config, this bug is gone for me.
I might argue that this is quite minor in the face of... well... a Microsoft controlled browser, but what do I know
I know the kneejerk reaction is "how could something so basic be broken in any way???" but realistically I think it's just a testament to how complex the entire codepath of something as simple as a "copy" menu item has gotten. I mean reading the bug report, it looks like it weaves in and out a surprising number of different components in complex ways involving IPC. It makes sense but at the very least I still never think of a simple UI element like a copy button having this much going on.
If it has such a convoluted code path that it cannot even be debugged then that’s an issue with the architecture, not that the user has a crazy difficult edge case which every other browser seems to manage.
Judging by the comments a lot of people in this thread have been affected by this issue.
This is the real bug. Why is it not global?
Probably related to how if you go to google, leave the browser for terminal or ide, you still get a google hover text that brands everything else on your desktop depending on where your mouse was when you left the browser.
This is by design.
No, this is a new thing that happens on sites that weren't and aren't doing that. Also tab-switching fixes it.
This is a fine example of why people install plugins like ublock origin and similar.
That being said, I hate it, it's awful UX. If something is in the "Downloads" folder, it should never be automatically removed, it's not "Temp".
Not to mention that there's absolutely no indication in the UI that your downloads will be deleted. Also, there's no obvious way to make the downloaded file permanent, other than manually copying it outside the "Downloads" folder.
I use private browsing when doing legal work so an errant Google session doesn't hoover up anything it shouldn't, and I've had so many random documents and briefings just disappear that I'd convinced myself that I was just mistaken about saving them.
> I'm restricting comments to keep further discussion focused where it needs to be on fixing this bug and getting it into a shipping release as soon as can be reasonably done.
That said, I'm not gonna slag the Mozilla developers over it. I have places where I wish the Firefox crew approached certain things differently, and I've criticized them for not being responsive to the community in the past. But this seems like something that isn't easy to fix, but which they are committed to fixing. So I'm happy to just wait it out.[2]
[1][2]: "can't wait" -> metaphorically speaking, of course. :-)
For me this caused YouTube to use CPU for AV1 decoding (as my GPU has no decoding support), resulting in stuttering, dropped frames etc. I disabled AV1 support in my browser so that YouTube is "forced" to serve me VP9 and after that video decoding was offloaded to my GPU resolving the issue.
YouTube started serving AV1 by default rather recently for the higher bitrate quality settings.
I really don't get how people work, sometimes. Stuff like this tells me the privacy fight is just completely unwinnable. It's not even that people don't care; people actively make choices that make their privacy situation worse, because apparently enduring the most minor of annoyances is unthinkable as an alternative.
(And this isn't even an unloved bug that someone arrogantly thinks doesn't matter, and has been languishing for years. It's actively being worked on, and it turns out the various interactions involved makes tracking it down and fixing it difficult. And it looks like there are patches that might fix the problem after all.)
I'm afraid it is, in the current state of things.
Another depressing example is how we collectively seem to accepted to keep referring to "unique fingerprinting and observation throughout any activity of the web and apps" as "Cookies! :))", while way too many people even blame EU privacy laws for all the purposefully annoying and misleading dark patterns used by the very entities spying on them.
But you can't blame anyone for choosing convenience and preference over a threat that is utterly overwhelming to mitigate, to the point of feeling impossible to avoid anyway.
Not to mention that a number of people rely on very specific UI features -- OP could well be my colleague, who has a muscular condition and simply cannot press "Ctrl + C" without discomfortable effort, or by constantly moving his other hand between mouse and keyboard. Others in turn may even be completely unable to do either, and fully rely on a pointer device to use GUI applications.
The only chance to win the privacy war is by providing and maintaining free and open alternatives that respect and protect your privacy, and are not only on par with, but better and more user friendly than the existing spyware.
Same. I can’t fathom having a reaction like this to someone using a web browser that I didn’t.
Mozilla has done so many things to weaken users' trust in it (like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39166801) that at this point many regard them as the least worst (rather than best) alternative to the competition when it comes to privacy and the open web.
I'd like to hope that Ladybird will give us a genuine alternative, but Google has ensured that current web standards are so complex that even MSFT (another megacap tech company) threw in the towel on maintaining their own browser engine.
Current Firefox hasn't introduced anything unique to the browser and that's why their share is continuing to dwindle. Edge supports vertical tabs natively without any weird hacks to userchrome.css. Arc has an easy way to hide all browser chrome as well as "mini Arc" for different pages. Vivaldi has mouse gestures, etc.
I use Firefox every day and I don't think I have seen the problem. Well, I would never search Copy on a menu, Ctrl-C is so much easier.
I can see how this is frustrating to some, but sometimes that's how the priority nets out. It looks like the bug was triaged, investigated, took its time finding its way to the right developers, and now a fix will land soon.
This is mostly just the process working. I for one, am grateful for these folks' good work.
While from an engine side, the situation with bugs lingering for years, and web features that still can't be used way, way after even Safari managed to implement them is not insignificant.
It's not broken or actually bad software, but it's struggling to keep up with the Browsers it's meant to be an independent alternative for.
This makes UX and feature parity a HUGE concern!
Loosing market share through inconveniencing users in turns means web devs will have increasingly less incentive to. work around it's quirks and issues, which even further shifts the Browser market towards a handful of huge, profit oriented companies - which is without exaggeration a threat to maintaining an open web.
Agree: this is the process working.