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sken frith

Diigo toolbar causing Firefox crash - 94 views

firefox 3.08 3.07 toolbar 3.1.6.13 bug crash crash (computing)

started by sken frith on 10 Apr 09
  • sken frith
    #1 sken frith on 10 Apr 09
     
    Diigo toolbar 3.1.6.13
    Firefox 3.08 (and Firefox 3.07)
    Mac PPC OSX 10.5.6

    The Diigo toolbar seems to be causing Firefox to crash. Unfortunately, I cannot provide a reliable list of reproducible steps, but this has occurred well over a dozen times. I have provided observations to Mozilla through the built-in Firefox crash reporter.

    The issue seems to be related to the tag field of the Diigo toolbar. Sometimes, the drop-down suggestion list lags and fails to populate before I've completed typing the text and hit tab or enter. When this occurs, Firefox hangs for a few seconds, then crashes. At first it seemed linked to clicking away-either to another area of the Diigo bookmark window or to another application window-during this drop-down menu lag, but crashes have also occurred without clicking away.
  • Graham Perrin
    #2 Graham Perrin on 10 Apr 09
     
    At my
    ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/
    I find no relevant logs; it seems that Firefox does not log crashes in an Apple- recommended way.

    In Finder, you might find a little relevant information at
    ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Crash Reports/
    and/or
    ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Crash Reports/submitted/

    Here, at the latter, I find nothing more recent than November 2008 and the reports comprise nothing more than a 'Crash ID'.

    If you can share with us the crash IDs that relate to your crashes, maybe we (or you) can find the relevant information within Mozilla Bugzilla.
  • sken frith
    #4 sken frith on 12 Apr 09
  • sken frith
    #6 sken frith on 12 Apr 09
     
    Thanks for the reminder regarding APE. I had been focusing on Firefox add-ons and overlooked that haxie.

    Normally when troubleshooting, I disable add-ons and selectively enable them to help pinpoint the issue, as helpfully suggested in this thread. Unfortunately, because I have yet to discern reliable, reproducible steps for the described behavior, testing the behavior against specific add-ons is difficult. An option would be to disable all add-ons except the Diigo toolbar and note whether a crash occurs within a week (the drop-down suggestion list lag that precedes a crash seems to occur about 2-3 times a week), then enable one add-on per week and observe. Aside from being slow, this option leaves room for much error. Without reproducible steps, the presence or absence of the behavior would not definitively indicate or exempt a specific add-on. I'm certainly willing to give it a go, though.

    Diigolet for Firefox and Safari is an option, of course as is the website. The bookmarklet functions, however, are more limited than the Diigo toolbar. Additionally, I heavily use the Diigo toolbar feature that allows me to automatically add a bookmark to Delicious-a feature not supported by the bookmarklet.
  • Graham Perrin
    #7 Graham Perrin on 12 Apr 09
     
    In the nine reports that I can see, your comments are useful - thanks!

    Cross reference http://groups.diigo.com/Diigo_HQ/forum/topic/dialogue-edit-your-bookmark-on-diigo-is-too-small-for-its-contents-43958#4

    > window changes shape

    * Do the crashes occur before or after the window changes shape?

    * Do the crashes occur when no suggestions are made?

    * Do the beach balls or crashes occur soon after, or coincide with, the black/white spinning cursor?

    - (I don't know whether that cursor is special to Firefox or to Diigo)

    - AFAIR I once saw the black/white spinning cursor whilst the menu of tags was dropping down and/or populating, on that occasion I thought the page in the background had finished loading so I wonder whether the spinning cursor indicated download of tags (not suggested tags) from my tag cloud

    - black and white spinning cursor not to be confused with the in-window spinning icon alongside suggested tags.
  • sken frith
    #13 sken frith on 13 Apr 09
     
    > The window grows when 'recommended' tags appear in the grey space below the white Tags: field. Recommended a.k.a. suggested, sorry for any confusion. If I can capture a movie of this change in window size, I will.

    Thanks for the movie. I see what you are referring to now-the horizontal group of recommended tags (labeled Recommended tags: field) below the Tags: field, rather than the drop-down list of suggestions that appears while typing in the Tags: field.

    The Edit bookmark window changes in height after the The Recommended tags: field is populated. If no tags appear in the Recommended tags: field, the window decreases in height after the black processing indicator disappears. If tags appear in the Recommended tags: field, the height of the window increases. For whatever reason, I don't often see tags in the Recommended tags: field unless I've previously bookmarked and tagged the page-then the Recommended tags: field is populated with the tags I've assigned, as expected.

    > In Appearance preferences for the OS, do you prefer scroll arrows
    > Together or At top and bottom?

    I set scroll arrows together in Preferences > Appearances.
  • Graham Perrin
    #14 Graham Perrin on 14 Apr 09
     
    A series of five screen shots:

    001



    002



    003



    004



    005


    AFAICT, without knowing/understanding code:

    * whilst the white canvas of the menu is drawing, whilst words are written to the canvas, whilst that canvas grows and shrinks according to the characters typed, with the possibility of a scroll bar and scroll arrows appearing and disappearing …

    * any number of things may be happening behind the menu

    * the window from which the menu is dropped may change shape

    * a stretch of the window may cause its head and/or foot to slip beyond the bounds of a user's display

    * a stretch in some circumstances might cause the window to automatically reposition so that its head is butted neatly against the main menu of Mac OS X

    - Mac OS X is very tidy about such things

    * and last but not least, the menu of tags is not opaque

    - transparency allows changes in the background to be seen through the white of the menu.

    If you'll pardon the pun: that seems like a fairly tall order!



    I wonder, how often is Gecko/Mozilla/Firefox 'pushed' in this way?

    I now:

    a) have a gut feeling that it's a bug in Mozilla code

    - one that may be difficult and/or very time consuming to reproduce/resolve

    - one that may require input from two or three developer communities in addition to the bugged user

    b) treat this topic as a point of reference, for when users next ask for more (and more and more) features to be added to dialogue boxes

    - there's only so much that can/should be added, before things become tricky

    - not forgetting users of netbooks and the like.

    A most interesting bug!

    I wonder, how will Diigo developers interpret it? …

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