Facebook "like" causes lockup
If I hover over the "like" icon on a FB post, when the icon options window tries to open, the application locks up and I get the pinwheel of death. It does this every time with no exceptions. But if I click "like" fast enough that the options window does not open up, it registers the like and does not crash. So it is the launching of the options bubble that causes the crash. I tried fresh install of your app no change. G5 dual 1.8 OS10.5.8 TenFour 4.0
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31 Posted by shelbyism on 02 Dec, 2017 07:18 PM
Interesting. Turning OFF the chat function in chat preferences
actually makes surfing the FB site much lighter and quicker. Plus
people leave you alone!
Support Staff 32 Posted by Cameron Kaiser on 02 Dec, 2017 11:44 PM
Chris, are you able to narrow the window a little further? I'm trying to determine if it's something specific about 45 as a base (will be very hard to fix) or one of our local changes (may be more amenable)?
33 Posted by Michael on 03 Dec, 2017 02:23 AM
If it helps any, I had Facebook Chat on while experiencing the "Like" issue, but it was still on when the issue resolved itself. I've since turned CHAT off and it made no difference; "Like" still works.
Support Staff 34 Posted by Chris (chtrusch... on 03 Dec, 2017 07:55 AM
TFF 45.4.0 doesn't have the pproblem, TFF 45.5.0b1 does. I don't see any versions inbetweed these two I could test. Are there?
35 Posted by shelbyism on 03 Dec, 2017 04:03 PM
I saved all my old versions lol
What's the safest old version to use?
S
Support Staff 36 Posted by Chris (chtrusch... on 03 Dec, 2017 06:11 PM
TenFourFox 45.4.0 is the last version that works correctly for this Facebook feature. (Whether or not you can talk about 'correct' when it comes to FB's JS is a different question). However, it's not safe to use for security reasons, and I do not recommend using 45.4.0. What I recommend instead (for now) is a workaround: Just click 'Like', without hovering, then move the mouse away quickly. This way you can still 'like' like you used to do before FB introduced the popup feature.
Support Staff 37 Posted by Cameron Kaiser on 04 Dec, 2017 02:04 AM
Unfortunately, no, but that does narrow down the regression window substantially, thanks. I'll see what I can find in the changesets. This implies it's our bug locally.
Support Staff 38 Posted by Cameron Kaiser on 04 Dec, 2017 02:10 AM
This problem has been accepted into the worklist as issue 453: https://github.com/classilla/tenfourfox/issues/453
39 Posted by shelbyism on 04 Dec, 2017 02:44 AM
Thanks! good work...
Support Staff 40 Posted by Cameron Kaiser on 04 Dec, 2017 02:46 AM
Please don't assume this will be fixed by the next release; there's only one of me and I don't use Facebook personally. I'll try to look into it for anything that jumps out as a possible regression, though.
41 Posted by shelbyism on 04 Dec, 2017 02:47 AM
It's cool, i just meant good job figuring out there was a problem and
where it might be... it's a process.
42 Posted by shelbyism on 04 Dec, 2017 03:23 PM
Nothing personal. But I think it's a flaw in design logistics to build
a browser that is not tested and viable on perhaps the most popular
website on the planet. Even if you never use it personally. Just sayin.
Support Staff 43 Posted by Chris (chtrusch... on 04 Dec, 2017 08:12 PM
Just to make this clear: Beta versions are released on a regular basis on the blog
http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/
Nothing of this kind was reported by the test audience at the time the v45.5 betas were released (September & October 2016), very likely because Facebook hadn't introduced the code change yet that's now causing the problem. Therefore we didn't really have a chance to catch this bug. Additionally, Facebook is a really mean website that uses a lot of unconventional Javascript coding. They may test in Firefox when they introduce new features or code changes, but from our experiences we can be reasonably sure they don't test in TenFourFox.
44 Posted by shelbyism on 04 Dec, 2017 08:23 PM
Ok. I'm a good citizen. Thanks
45 Posted by Michael on 04 Dec, 2017 08:24 PM
I refer to Facebook as "bloatware." Too many "features."
46 Posted by shelbyism on 04 Dec, 2017 08:34 PM
Truth. Say it one more time, I'll deactivate my account. At least for
a day.
47 Posted by shelbyism on 12 Dec, 2017 04:39 PM
Interesting, I am fining 38.10 to be the best latest version on FB and
it displays a message from FB stating "update your browser to enjoy
all of the latest features of FB" which ironically means less of the
browser choking bullshit that they call features. :)
Support Staff 48 Posted by Chris (chtrusch... on 22 Dec, 2017 09:42 PM
For AdBlock and uBlock experts there's another workaround for the Facebook problem: Add a filter:
www.facebook.com##div._khz
This will remove all Like buttons completely from the Facebook site. You won't be able to Like, but you also can't hover over the Like buttons accidentally.
If you use uBlock Origin, you can toggle cosmetic filtering per site, i.e. you can switch the Like buttons on and off as necessary (no page reload needed).
And yes, you guessed it, my personal account is now also affected by the problem. Facebook has changed its design today (for me) in a way that Like buttons are now 'hoverable' not only for posts, but for all comments. This means the whole website has become a minefield and it's almost impossible to use it without locking up the browser.
49 Posted by Michael on 22 Dec, 2017 10:46 PM
And now the "Like" buttons are AGAIN causing lockup for me. Grrrrr!
50 Posted by shelbyism on 23 Dec, 2017 12:17 PM
Just for the record, the latest build also hangs up sometimes for me
the same way when I use the deep menu options on ebay.com (another
dynamic website)
Support Staff 51 Posted by Cameron Kaiser on 23 Dec, 2017 11:13 PM
Can you be more specific about "deep menu options"? Steps to reproduce are more helpful than descriptions. I don't get any freezes on eBay and I use it fairly heavily for parts purchases, so it's possible this is something unrelated that manifests in the same way.
52 Posted by shelbyism on 23 Dec, 2017 11:29 PM
Ok sure i just wasn't paying attention before.
Sent from my LG Mobile
------ Original message------From: Cameron Kaiser Date: Sat, Dec 23, 2017 6:13 PMTo: [email blocked];Cc: Subject:Re: Facebook "like" causes lockup [Problems #8490]
53 Posted by Pierre dery on 04 Jan, 2018 01:09 AM
This problem about like will bring me crasy :-( I think that all similard problem from face book came from the time when microsift messenger make a deal whith facebook. Of course microsoft maybe dont like mac! There also a slow problem when we make correction on facebook chat! I found that when we erase cookie (those one are not facebook one) it come fatser!
54 Posted by polluks on 05 Jan, 2018 09:21 PM
Also the chat does not work 100% anymore: You write a message, press return but the text stays in the edit box.
55 Posted by Bo on 05 Jan, 2018 11:13 PM
Yup.
Tapped out on my Pod
56 Posted by shelbyism on 06 Jan, 2018 03:26 PM
It is getting really bad now. Almost unusable on FB. I went back to
version 45.4.0 just to use on FB and even it is starting to choke on
their latest scripts, but "staggers" along. I use the up to date
version for other sites. But ebay is starting to get sluggish and
gives me pinwheels when I try to use deep menus selections. It's
getting pretty ugly for tenfour :( I hope it survives.
57 Posted by kathiallyson on 06 Jan, 2018 03:39 PM
thanks Cameron and Chris, I am having this problem too, will study conversation and see if I can fix it.
[edit] I feel compelled to add… TFF works beautifully everywhere else—and there is no real alternative, not even iCab, of which I am a registered user. You would never know my Power Mac G5 is going on 13 years old except when it's trying to deal with Facebook. Facebook has been making some UI changes and Webkit is not happy with them either. The site is a disaster and I don't blame you Cameron for not wanting to have its fat ugly tail wagging the mighty dog of your browser. I'd gladly give up on FB for my G5 but don't want to use it on my Mac Mini for reasons related to Facebook, not to technology or my machines.
Support Staff 58 Posted by Cameron Kaiser on 06 Jan, 2018 07:07 PM
(note: this is to nobody in particular, just to everyone participating in this bug report)
Tobias, the maintainer of Leopard WebKit, and I have been discussing this problem as LWK was also affected. We've concluded the root cause is little-endian typed array emulation, which both our browsers implement for integer values only. Facebook, however, is using it for floating point numbers, of which neither of us support little-endian emulation for performance reasons. As long as it writes floats and read floats, the endianness stays the same. The working hypothesis appears to be that Facebook mixes integer and float access to the same tract of memory and the implicit type contract is violated, which only works if the endianness of everything is the same. It then uses these defective values to build a graphics path with illegal values and these values cause the hang. Little-endian emulation landed in 45.5, so that explains why 45.4 appears to work because in 45.4 and earlier everything was big-endian.
Neither of us are reverting little-endian emulation because certain sites like WhatsApp Web require it to even work at all and I'm not breaking them just to make a minor Facebook feature function. Implementing byteswapping for floats and doubles is also a non-starter because it would require a lot of additional engineering, would slow down the browser and may cause problems with DOM features expecting native byte ordering for float arrays. Because of that, just assume that the Likes panel is not going to be ever displayed correctly until Facebook decides to make some other change.
However, I agree the browser should not crash. Tobias' solution, which I will implement in FPR6, will be to bounds-check CoreGraphics paths, which is where the browser hang occurs. This will slow things down slightly but I don't think it is avoidable. It will not be in FPR5 because I can't guarantee it wouldn't regress something else, so it needs a standard beta test cycle.
In the meantime, the workaround is to go to
about:configand setgfx.canvas.azure.backendstocairo(instead ofcg, which is the default). Cairo is the slower graphics backend used in early versions of TenFourFox. It may cause some slowdowns on other sites, but the likes popup will now appear (just with mostly blank areas).To the general point about Facebook: putting my antipathy for Facebook aside and the fact that I refuse to use it personally, debugging issues on Facebook is incredibly difficult for a developer without special access. Facebook has historically been unresponsive or unhelpful when I've asked for developer assistance, and they use heavily minified scripts for performance that are very difficult to parse without knowing already what they do. Meanwhile, it gets bigger and more complicated on a regular basis, so even if nothing in the browser broke, it will only ever get slower and slower over time. I'm the sole regular developer on TenFourFox, and I'm not going to put a large amount of effort into something I know is a mismatch for our systems even if I supported Facebook, which I don't.
Your takeaway from that is I'll fix the bugs I can easily fix, but many bugs will not be easily fixed, and many of them are just going to be there indefinitely. I really recommend looking at https://mbasic.facebook.com/ and seeing how much of that will work for you, but if you want a full-featured Facebook experience, you're not going to get it from TenFourFox. Ever. I'll do the best I feel is reasonably worth the effort, but if you disagree with my priorities, your solution is to find a browser that matches your priorities. I'm sorry that there are few other options, but that doesn't obligate me to expend substantial effort on a site that doesn't care about us to begin with.
Anyway, rant over. Chris has confirmed the workaround works for him. The more definitive mitigation will be in FPR6b1.
59 Posted by shelbyism on 06 Jan, 2018 07:22 PM
thanks for the explanation cameron
60 Posted by Bo on 06 Jan, 2018 07:27 PM
Thanks so much! Very understandable.
Tapped out on my Pod