Firefox enhanced Text boxes are VERY laggy in Firefox

[bhagwad]

Binary package hint: firefox

I'm using the latest Ubuntu 9.0.4 Jaunty release with a Sony VAIO laptop and an Intel chip.

Sites like Twitter and Wordpress have Javascript enhanced text boxes For example, twitter maintains a count of characters remaining in real time. Wordpress maintains a running count of words.

In these boxes, typing lags tremendously. And if you press the "Backspace" button, the screen never reflects how many characters have actually been deleted. The letters disappear one by one slowly and you don't know when it'll stop! This renders the boxes completely unusable.

The problem doesn't occur if I use Opera, so it's definitely a Firefox bug.

My guess is that these boxes are Ajax enhanced or something related to Javascript because when I turn Javascript off, it types and deletes normally.

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Thank you for reporting this issue to Ubuntu. Could you please try with a new profile? Many Firefox issues are caused by conflicting addons and extensions. You do not need to delete your old profile to test.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Bugs?action=show&redirect=DebuggingFirefox#Try with a new profile

[bhagwad (bhagwad)]

Hi.

Thanks for your suggestion. However, creating a new profile was one of the first things I tried, along with starting Firefox in SafeMode. No luck.

Also, it seems that I'm not the only one with this problem. I created this thread for the issue at the Ubuntu forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1148591 , and starting at comment #13, another user reported exactly the same symptoms.

Thank you once more for your help.

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Thank you. Could you please provide an strace while you are using the javascript box?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Strace#Using%20strace%20with%20already%20running%20programs

[bhagwad (bhagwad)]

I have attached the Strace as requested. The process ID is 19732. Hope you can make some sense of it!

Also, my guess is that the problem may not be Javascript, but styling. If I select "no style" in Firefox, then the problem disappears.

I'll try and post a video of the problem in the next comment.

Thanks!

[bhagwad (bhagwad)]

Here is a video of how backspace lags in wordpress in Firefox in Ubuntu.

All the while, the "backspace" key is being pressed continuously without release. You can see the lag for yourself...

Hope this helps someone understand the problem.

[bhagwad (bhagwad)]

Just thought I'd mention my specs here:

RAM - 3 GB
Intel 2.0 Ghz Dual Core
Intel 965 integrated graphics

In the above video, if I release the backspace key, the cursor will continue to delete for some time - meaning that the keys are being buffered. Don't know why it's so slow.

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Sorry, would you be able to provide one more strace. I gave you the wrong command:
strace -f -eopen firefox 2>&1 | tee strace-firefox.log

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Another thing you could do is enable apport before you run that strace and kill 2 birds with one stone:
sudo force_start=1 /etc/init.d/apport restart

After reboot, can you use apport-cli to submit it to Launchpad and note the bug # here:
apport-cli -c <crash-file-name in /var/crash>

Thanks.

[bhagwad (bhagwad)]

Here is the file from the new strace - hope this helps. The output starts coming as soon as I run it - hope you can decipher the backspaces if that's possible :)

[bhagwad (bhagwad)]

With regard to the "apport" command, do I run it before or after strace? Also, the output is on the screen. I've run apport-cli after strace and have pasted the output to a text file which is attached.

Hope this helps. If this isn't what you need, let me know how I can provide more info.

[José Ernesto Dávila Pantoja (josernestodavila)]

 We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!