Firefox 13.0.1 in Lucid - problem with "Awesome bar"/"URL bar"/"Location bar" autocomplete/autofill: dropdown window not rendered/dissapears

[sdaau]

On a PC that I use (but has no keyboard), I have (currently)

$ cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS \n \l

Because it has no keyboard - I use "onboard" on it, and heavily rely on the URL/"Location"/"Awesome"/Address bar autocomplete; which is why I noticed the problem immediately. Just to make sure - here is the drop down window I'm talking about (even if the picture is from Firefox 3):

http://blog.mozilla.org/files/2008/04/2421200414_77674b14a4_o1.png
http://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2008/04/21/a-little-something-awesome-about-firefox-3/

I first updated the 'standalone' version of Firefox that I use (download from Mozilla) to 13.0.1. Upon first start, autocomplete did work; soon after that though, if you type say "y" in the bar, you would get no dropdown window with results (even if I know, that for that letter, at least 'youtube.com' should show) - and indeed, no dropdown for whatever you type.

At this point, I had an older version of Firefox 12 installed by Ubuntu (hereafter `ubufox`) - so I could compare: ubufox Firefox 12 had no problem with dropdowns.

Then I did sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade; this updated the ubufox to Firefox 13 (and possibly bumped Ubuntu version to 10.04.4, cannot recall). Then I tried ubufox 13 - same behavior with missing autocomplete dropdown window when you start typing. Now the ubufox version on the Lucid machine is (just brief, 'cause I'm retyping):

$ apt-cache policy firefox
firefox:
  Installed: 13.0.1+build1-0ubuntu0.10.04.1

As an experiment, I tried changing "browser.urlbar.autoFill" in about:config from its default false to 'true' - the result of this is now that there is still no dropdown - but autocomplete will react on typing; except it will fill the address bar with the first URL it finds (that is, as there is no dropdown, it will not show alternative matches) .. However this feature is not really useful for me - I'd rather keep it on false, and have the dropdown instead.

Another thing I tried is System/Preferences/Appearance/Visual Effects in Lucid, and change from "Normal" (my default settings) to "None". I'm guessing, this goes down to metacity as window manager - and in this case, when you start typing in address bar, you can see that a box starts being rendered right below the address/url bar - and then immediately disappears! If you then go back to Normal, the dropdown box again is back to not being rendered at all.

I managed temporarily to get the dropdown back on the Mozilla version, when I also updated all addons and restarted - but that lasted for only a couple of tries; and then a few new tabs opened, it was back to not rendering the autocomplete dropdown at all. I've also tried all kinds of things like minimizing then restoring the firefox window; raising the firefox About dialog window; doubleclicking on the firefox window topbar so the whole window "compacts" and "uncompacts" - none of this seems to have any effect on the appearance of the dropdown.

My guess is firefox doesn't talk to Gnome (window manager?) right, but there's no way for me to confirm that, as I cannot tell where are actual firefox logs - **not** firefox extensions logs - saved; I simply cannot find any webpages that mention Firefox logs but this:

Location of Firefox log files • mozillaZine Forums - http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=2773483

... and that one is not helpful, as most posters there don't see a difference between an application log and extensions loading logfile; and the '-console' switch mentioned there doesn't exist on Firefox 13 for linux.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[dino99 (9d9)]

That version is no more supported