Javascript makes Browser unusable

[meist3r]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

When accessing certain sites the browser becomes unusable during Javascript calls.

Let me explain this with a practical example:
On this page http://www.gametrailers.com/player/34277.html there are several elements that are loaded with Javascript automatically. The comments list specifically needs user interaction to load more comments. This particular site has 1700 comments which should be displayed in one enormous column after clicking on the "Show all comments" field.

When I click the field to load all comments the FF window becomes unusable. It locks up completely. Even though it's a lot of comments data wise that is not really exciting since they are usually not more than 2 lines long. Sometimes waiting solves the problem but it can take several minutes until the window becomes usable again. When I switch to another workspace and back nothing of the FF window is rendered except for a few artifacts. All operations concerning FF come to a screeching halt when this happens, downloads won't continue and all I can do is to Force Quit the browser and re-open it again.

I don't know for certain if this is bad programming on the website's Javascript side or with the rendering in Firefox. I can't really compare this to earlier version because the largest comments section so far had about 600-700 comments and I never had any problems with that neither with FF3B5 nor all pre-3 versions.

I use FF 3 RC1 on Ubuntu Hardy with the proprietary ATi fglrx driver which I have extracted into .deb packages for my distro.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Jun 12 00:49:20 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~rc1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-18-generic i686

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 11:03:48PM -0000, meist3r wrote:
>
> ** Attachment added: "Dependencies.txt"
> http://launchpadlibrarian.net/15221863/Dependencies.txt
>
> ** Attachment added: "ExtensionSummary.txt"
> http://launchpadlibrarian.net/15221864/ExtensionSummary.txt

try to disable your extensions in tools -> addons. maybe that boosts
your performance a bit.

In any case, its known that javascript can cause severe issues and
there is no general solution for this.

 status invalid

 - Alexander