Menus, tooltips and dropdowns are often misplaced on screen

[Pedro Côrte-Real]

I've noticed a few problems with misplaced elements in firefox UI that I am not sure are all the same bug:

- In what appears to be random chance tooltips and menus are often misplaced on screen. It's common but not fully reproducible. What I see is right-clicking an element on a page or hovering over a link and having the menu/tooltip show up somewhere different on the page. Doing it again immediately after often results in it appearing in the right place the second time.
- When using an external screen placed on top of the internal one with firefox maximized on the internal screen the URL bar's dropdown would consistently appear on the external screen, completely outside the firefox window, instead of the normal location

Let me know what extra information is needed do diagnose this. I'm running gnome-shell and have used both Xorg and Wayland sessions.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: firefox 61.0+build3-0ubuntu0.18.04.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-24.26-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-24-generic x86_64
AddonCompatCheckDisabled: False
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.2
Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: pedrocr 2259 F.... pulseaudio
BuildID: 20180703115938
Channel: Unavailable
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Mon Jul 9 15:00:50 2018
Extensions: extensions.sqlite corrupt or missing
ForcedLayersAccel: False
IfupdownConfig:
 # interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8)
 auto lo
 iface lo inet loopback
IncompatibleExtensions: Unavailable (corrupt or non-existant compatibility.ini or extensions.sqlite)
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-05-31 (39 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180426)
IpRoute:
 default via 10.120.200.1 dev wlp4s0 proto dhcp metric 600
 10.23.69.0/24 dev tun0 proto kernel scope link src 10.23.69.103
 10.120.200.0/22 dev wlp4s0 proto kernel scope link src 10.120.203.246 metric 600
 169.254.0.0/16 dev tun0 scope link metric 1000
Locales: extensions.sqlite corrupt or missing
MostRecentCrashID: bp-a9ef45a0-cbbc-451a-a76b-c36ed1180623
PrefErrors: Unexpected character ',' whilst parsing int @ /usr/lib/firefox/defaults/pref/vendor-gre.js:8
PrefSources: prefs.js
Profiles: Profile0 (Default) - LastVersion=61.0/20180703115938 (In use)
RunningIncompatibleAddons: False
SourcePackage: firefox
Themes: extensions.sqlite corrupt or missing
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 03/22/2018
dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.bios.version: N1CET66W (1.34 )
dmi.board.asset.tag: Not Available
dmi.board.name: 20FAS5TS00
dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.board.version: SDK0J40697 WIN
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.chassis.version: None
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvrN1CET66W(1.34):bd03/22/2018:svnLENOVO:pn20FAS5TS00:pvrThinkPadT460s:rvnLENOVO:rn20FAS5TS00:rvrSDK0J40697WIN:cvnLENOVO:ct10:cvrNone:
dmi.product.family: ThinkPad T460s
dmi.product.name: 20FAS5TS00
dmi.product.version: ThinkPad T460s
dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO

[Pedro Côrte-Real (pedrocr)]

This is an extremely annoying bug which creates quite a lot of lack of polish of the desktop. Should I be submitting it upstream or something?

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Thanks for the report Pedro. Let's try and narrow down the issue first, before reporting it upstream. I wonder if this could be specific to gnome shell. I've tested here (I'm on Ubuntu 18.10 and running firefox beta (63.0 beta 13) and I cannot see the issue.

Can you try the same setup with a Unity session (need to install unity-session)? Or maybe try a 18.10 live session and see if the issue is fixed there.

Thanks!

[Pedro Côrte-Real (pedrocr)]

I haven't been able to replicate it in a Unity session but I can't replicate this at will in gnome-shell either so it's hard to confirm it's a gnome-shell issue. I wouldn't be surprised though as it's been extremely buggy so far.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Thanks for the feedback Pedro. At this point, a bug report upstream wouldn't hurt, maybe that's a known issue.

[Pedro Côrte-Real (pedrocr)]

Created attachment 9017453
Screenshot of the first issue

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:62.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/62.0

Steps to reproduce:

I can reproduce this frequently but not yet on command. What I'm doing is normal usage:

- Entering data into the location bar which dropdowns the list of options
- Using the right click and mouseover to open tooltips and dropdown menus on pages

I'm using gnome-shell 3.28.3-0ubuntu0.18.04.2 on Ubuntu 18.04. Firefox is 62.0.3+build1-0ubuntu0.18.04.1. I've had the issue happen in all versions of firefox and gnome shell in Ubuntu 18.04 so far. I did a small test with Unity and couldn't reproduce the issue yet but since it doesn't happen 100% of the time longer testing would be required to make sure it's a gnome-shell specific issue.

Actual results:

Two things are happening that may be separate bugs or not:

- When using an external screen placed on top of the internal one with firefox maximized on the internal screen the URL bar's dropdown would consistently appear on the external screen, completely outside the firefox window, instead of the normal location. Screenshot is attached.

- In what appears to be random chance tooltips and menus are often misplaced on screen. It's common but not fully reproducible. What I see is right-clicking an element on a page or hovering over a link and having the menu/tooltip show up somewhere different on the page. Doing it again immediately after often results in it appearing in the right place the second time. I haven't gotten a screenshot yet.

Expected results:

- The dropdown appearing right below the URL bar
- The menus and tooltips appearing at the mouse location

[Pedro Côrte-Real (pedrocr)]

Bug submitted here:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1499336

I searched the related bugs and while there are a bunch of positioning bugs none seemed to be this one. The firefox subreddit only turned up one other person with a vaguely similar issue:

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/91kf3n/tooltips_and_context_menus_out_of_place/

[Daniel-aschilean (daniel-aschilean)]

I verified this issue on Ubuntu 18.04 with FF 64.0a1 (2018-10-19) (64-bit) and I cannot reproduce it.
Can you please test this in safe mode? Here is a link that can help you: https://goo.gl/AR5o9d.
I think it will be a good idea to retest this on the latest Firefox Nightly. Here is a link form where you can download it: https://nightly.mozilla.org.
If you still have the issue please create a new profile, you have the steps here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Managing-profiles#w_starting-the-profile-manager

[Pedro Côrte-Real (pedrocr)]

It's natural that you can't reproduce this at will. I can't either. Unfortunately the sequence of steps needed to reproduce this is not yet clear to me. I've been trying to find out what they are but don't have any conclusions yet. With that in mind, testing different versions or profiles is hard to do conclusively.

[Sledru (sledru)]

*** Bug 1240552 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Sledru (sledru)]

*** Bug 763312 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Pedro Côrte-Real (pedrocr)]

I've reproduced the issue in a new session in Firefox 65.0. I used Firefox sync to get my stuff over. Testing with a fully empty session is harder because I need bookmarks and other stuff to be able to use the browser and this doesn't happen at will.

[Pedro Côrte-Real (pedrocr)]

I see the tooltip and context menu issue repeatedly. I'm now on a fresh install of Ubuntu 19.04 on Wayland and running Firefox 66.0.4. So it doesn't seem to be anything too specific to my install.

[Enno (enno-rehling)]

I have a similar issue, in my case with the Bookmark bar's folders and the system menu. I also cannot reproduce this at will, but today it happened consistently enough to make a short recording. I'm on Pop_OS (System76's flavor of Ubuntu 19.04) with the default Gnome Desktop, Firefox 70.0.1 is installed from packages and maximized on the screen.

I have a recording, how and where can I upload that?

[buchs (buchsk)]

Created attachment 9137552
menus open offset to browser window - Ubuntu 18.04 FF 73.0.0.

Additional support for issue

[buchs (buchsk)]

I run on a laptop with two external monitors, arranged above the laptop screen in a "T" configuration. Hence the screenshot shows the black area in the lower left. I am clicking on a folder on the bookmarks toolbar and the menu shows up in an adjacent screen. This makes it considerably harder to use when there are a lot of windows open. This started happening for me with the 73.0.0 release of FF. Other menus and pop-ups, driven by the browser have similar issues.

[Enno (enno-rehling)]

I neglected to mention that my setup also has a laptop connected to an external screen (with very different resolutions). I don't think I've reproduced this with the screen detached, so maybe this is a clue to the origin of the bug?

[Enno (enno-rehling)]

Created attachment 9138112
Menus appearing in the wrong place

Here's the video I took earlier, finally figured out how to upload it.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Kyle Weber (kyew01)]

This happens to me as well. I too have two monitors, and sometimes the menu is even on the wrong monitor. Oddly enough, if I click off then right-click again (right away), the menu appears correctly. It's almost as if it is triggered by not being invoked after x amount of time.