Characters mixing up in address bar

[Florian W.]

I hope this wasn't reported already, but couldn't find any recent reports.

This is a relatively new bug, I don't think it was in v34.

I often move the cursor to the address bar using F6 and instantly start typing my URL / search term afterwards. F6 leads to a quite noticable freeze while the suggestions box (or whatever that box below the bar is called) loads, at least on my aging ~5 years old system. Same issue when opening a new tab and starting to type, the suggestions take a while to load so chromium freezes for some time.

That's not a big issue, but any characters I type during the freeze may come up in wrong order once chromium unfreezes. Sometimes they are ordered correctly, but quite often some of the letters are swapped. So it's not just in rare circumstances, but the freeze is not that easily reproducible because it seems to happen only when the bar wasn't used for some time. When there's no (or only a very short) freeze, there's no bug.

At first I thought that my typing skills have suffered a lot because I was googling for slightly wrong terms all the time, but then noticed that chromium (or something that handles input and passes it to chromium?) is to blame, not me. [Or maybe I really hit the keys in a wrong order all the time while thinking that it is correct, but that seems unlikely, since I usually fix those finger syncing typos unconsciously.]

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: chromium-browser 36.0.1985.125-0ubuntu1.14.04.0~pkg1029
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-34.60-generic 3.13.11.4
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-34-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.3
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Wed Aug 20 17:23:39 2014
Desktop-Session:
 DESKTOP_SESSION = ubuntu
 XDG_CONFIG_DIRS = /etc/xdg/xdg-ubuntu:/usr/share/upstart/xdg:/etc/xdg
 XDG_DATA_DIRS = /usr/share/ubuntu:/usr/share/gnome:/usr/local/share/:/usr/share/
Env:
 MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH = None
 LD_LIBRARY_PATH = None
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-03-10 (527 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Release amd64 (20121017.5)
SourcePackage: chromium-browser
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to trusty on 2014-04-22 (120 days ago)
gconf-keys: /desktop/gnome/applications/browser/exec = b'/usr/bin/chromium-browser\n'/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/https/command = b'/usr/bin/chromium-browser %s\n'/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/https/enabled = b'true\n'/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command = b'/usr/bin/chromium-browser %s\n'/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/enabled = b'true\n'/desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager = b''/apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager = b''/desktop/gnome/interface/icon_theme = b'gnome\n'/desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_theme = b'Clearlooks\n'
modified.conffile..etc.default.chromium.browser: [deleted]
mtime.conffile..etc.chromium.browser.default: 2014-04-23T00:11:40.712095

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Florian W. (florian-will)]

Someone recently confirmed this, but I haven't experienced the bug in recent weeks. Possibly since updating to 37?

Does this still affect anyone? If not, I'll close the bug in a few days.

[alex (directedglaph)]

I am the one who confirmed your bug. It still affects me on 38.0.2125.111.

It is quite subtle and minor nuisance. I'm not sure how to make this reproducible for someone else but I suspect it will require a large browsing history so you trigger a "relatively" long search in the suggestions list when you start typing. Clearing cache does not work.

On my machine, if I open a new tab and immediately and rapidly type "asdf", it always comes out mixed up. Now, if I press Esc so the address bar clears, and repeat this process, most of the time "adsf" comes out, otherwise "afsd" comes out. However, if I backspace out the characters and retype, "asdf" comes out correctly.

If I do the mirror analogue with my right hand, ";lkj", it always comes out correctly. The main difference appears to be that when I type "a", a list of suggestions immediately appears, whereas when I type ";", there are no suggestions.

[Chad Miller (cmiller)]

Does this happen with recent versions? Do you know what "input method" you're using, offhand? (It's okay if that means nothing to you.)

[Florian W. (florian-will)]

I was still able to reproduce this using Version 39.0.2171.65-0ubuntu0.14.04.1.1064 (hope we can get an update soon btw :D), but it appears to be much more difficult now. It no longer happens when I type at my normal typing speed. Maybe that's because the omnibar suggestions apparently load pretty fast now, it used to be much slower. Only characters typed while the suggestions load (i.e. chromium appears to be frozen during that time) are mixed up.

The only way I can reproduce this now is:
- Open a new tab
- Concentrate and try to type "asdf" as fast as possible using the left hand
- Usually comes up as "adsf" in omnibar, like in 90% of attempts

I verified that my "asdf" typing skills are okay by opening gedit and typing "asdf" as fast as possible 20 times. That worked correctly.

I'm not sure which input method I'm using. It's a USB keyboard. I tried to find out how to identify my system's input method, but Google just tells me how to type Japanese characters.

[Willem Mali (willem-mali)]

I can confirm this, I have been experiencing this bug for about half a year. I run Lubuntu 14.04 LTS, on a cheap laptop. It happens when typing in any new tab or window, or after just having switched tabs, frequency seemingly depending on overall CPU usage. As my CPU often runs in the 70-100% range while browsing this is really annoying, but generally I just enter text artificially slow. It happens mostly every single time I type something in the address bar.

I could do some more diagnostics tomorrow, if there's anything that could be of use I can post it.

[alex (directedglaph)]

Confirming again on 43.0.2357.81 (Developer Build) Ubuntu 15.04 (64-bit). Using the default En input method, developer mode enabled.

The "asdf" test now always comes out fine for me, but using "post" nearly always comes out as "psot"; in this case, "asdf" yields no suggestions while "post" yields several. This happens as long as the tab is new, and does not depend on how long it was open. If the predictions get populated in any way (by typing anything, not restricted to "p", like I can type "int") then clearing the bar and typing "post" seems to always come out fine.

Also, it never seems to happen in incognito. I do have extensions that are not enabled in incognito, but disabling all of these does not change behavior in non-incognito. I did not try restarting the browser with the extensions disabled.

[joeytwiddle (joey-6)]

May be related to iBus: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=427780

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Upstream report is a duplicate of #410649 which
is showing "Fixed (Closed)" as of 2016-07-15

No further comments here for over three years
so closing as fixed.