Fx not loading some pages or parts until refresh

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Argus
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Fx not loading some pages or parts until refresh

Post by Argus »

I have, during recent months, seen something similar to what Stuck described here, about Firefox and Twitter, (although no "oops something went wrong"-message) however not only at Twitter's site, but the BBC News, and to some extent at other, such as the Swedish national TV but in those cases the pages are downloaded but missing some parts. All is fixed by a refresh of the pages.

I'm only using Firefox, and have no intention of checking with some obsolete browser. It is quite possible that the error is on my end, some add-in/setting, although I have not changed anything but Fx versions (together with updated ver. of NoScript and uBlock Origin, and filter rules for the latter obviously). The changes are usually on the other end; they change layout, service providers, scripts, media players etc. And then something breaks.

Now that I pointed my finger in the other direction, :grin: what have I checked? Well, not much; as Stuck said, it's far easier, although in my opinion increasingly frustrating as more sites are added ..., to refresh the pages.

I do clean cache, cookies, and session more times than I would like to admit; so, that's out of the question. It's quite the opposite at times; it can in some cases help to have visited a site some short time earlier during the same session. But it should work with a clean cache etc.

Bookmarks, well, not that interesting in this case, however in, for example, the case of the BBC News I know that I have a bookmark to their .co.uk domain but get redirected to their .com domain. Perhaps a problem related to that? Nope, changed to .com and got the same result.

I have allowed session cookies for bbc.com.

Firefox console? I see one error "Uncaught (in promise)", well something wasn't "caught". It (in the console) complains about blocked cookies for .co.uk, shouldn't be needed, and a bunch of script and other resources.

But I have since a very long time allowed scripts for bbc.co.uk; bbc.com; bbci.co.uk, and more recently for something called gsconttxt.net (in this case bbc.gsconttxt.net) since otherwise all videos and many images were not loaded.

So, what's going on? Firefox DNS Prefetching? Hmm, nope, network.dns.disablePrefetch is already set to "true".

Not much research as I said; but I noticed that when Fx successfully loaded the page the BBC has a message there; they're hiring people! So, if anyone can press F12 in Fx they can get this secret message and perhaps help them help me download their news pages. :smile:
Firefox Console BBC 20210321.jpg
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HansV
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Re: Fx not loading some pages or parts until refresh

Post by HansV »

I have noticed that the BBC home page doesn't fully load at times (using Firefox too). It hasn't occurred frequently enough for me to worry about it...
Best wishes,
Hans

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Argus
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Re: Fx not loading some pages or parts until refresh

Post by Argus »

Hi. Ah, thanks for feedback. I don't know if I mentioned, but the page is completely blank, nada there.

I'm not worried, I'm displeased! :grin: At some point 2-3 years ago(?) they changed their media player version/software a couple of times, and after some time it got better. This time I've also tried to wait it out, but then the Swedish SVT started loading only half the pages ... :sigh:

(And there are certainly other really minor quirks, still annoying, that has been there in Fx for many years; such as the link, URL, at the bottom of the window, when hovering the mouse pointer over a link, still being there after you have clicked on the link and the new page has loaded and not going away until you hover above another link on the new page. Only on some sites though; such as the Swedish TV.)
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Re: Fx not loading some pages or parts until refresh

Post by Argus »

Since we are not likely to see any solution, since it was a) my b) little problem, perhaps I can add another anomaly in the world of Firefox to the same topic (not that I have or use any other browser). And anyhow, this is also about Firefox not doing something. :smile:

I'm using the latest version but have seen this 3-4 times in ver. 88-89-90, I think, i.e. the last couple of months.

Sometimes after having browsed one (1) site for a while, say an hour, it could be Twitter or anything I guess, and used few tabs 2-3, I notice that I can only browse on that site ... I.e. if I open a new tab or window to visit, say, the Lounge, it never loads. Fx stops loading new pages.

It is as if either the site is down or my connection is down. The latter is obviously not the case since I can still click on different tweets on the first tab and view them; however I haven't tried that for all of them. (It could of course be twitter sending the whole shebang down the broadband when you scroll in the browser, so that threads you haven't opened are already cached, it would explain why the site is a bit heavy compared to other, but I don't think that's the case at all.)

Obviously, if using a router the internet connection can be lost without the OS complaining in notifications or system log since it's happily communicating with the router, or rather it used to be like that, as we know in an attempt of "user friendliness" MSFT has added a ping sort of, so that Windows will check for a connection to the rest of the world, and complain if it's not there. I see nothing of that.

The first couple of times I simply closed the browser and also power cycled the router just for, well ...(and fetched a coffee if it was going to be a long evening, in a bad way). It worked. Restarting Fx is enough. (I should perhaps add that I wasn't running low on memory nor had lots of other things running.)

The above is not good; of course it could be worse, and it was the other day ... :groan: I was participating in a meeting (teams, zoom similar, via the browser, no "app"); it was quite long ... and after a while I noticed that Fx didn't want any more access to the web, I couldn't load any other pages. The link to the meeting was only valid for a limited time ..., and after the meeting I had to go back and look at some things from the meeting, no problem since as usual it's possible to pause, go back, and click "live" again, but during that time I couldn't close Fx to fix the problem (with not loading new pages) and then return to the meeting (since link no longer valid). :brickwall: :igiveup:

During the last case mentioned above I could still: use my email client and poll the mail server; I could download AV definitions; and if that wasn't enough of a check I could also use mobile and wifi for the same connection as the computer was using via the router. Guess it still could be some problem with the Internet connection, being slow (but my mail client would probably time out and complain and it was quick, so...); routing issues on net (though I tried several different sites) etc.

Oh the joy of tech.

At some point in the near future I will shuffle around some drives and install more/new SSDs (that have been waiting on a shelf way too long), so in another installation the abovementioned might vanish, who knows. Or perhaps I should enable all scrips/cookies/telemetry/etc. and magic will happen.

/Grumpy.
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Re: Fx not loading some pages or parts until refresh

Post by Argus »

As for the issue mentioned in the OP, Fx not loading some pages or parts until refresh, I my latest observations can be summarized in a tiny woohoo*.

Could be the latest version, changes on different sites, my ISP, magic or the Perseids.

* Since I might regret this, and it's not 100 %.
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Re: Fx not loading some pages or parts until refresh

Post by Argus »

Argus wrote:
29 Jul 2021, 18:41
Sometimes after having browsed one (1) site for a while, say an hour, it could be Twitter or anything I guess, and used few tabs 2-3, I notice that I can only browse on that site ... I.e. if I open a new tab or window to visit, say, the Lounge, it never loads. Fx stops loading new pages.
Happened again, really weird. Suddenly no access to other sites via Firefox apart from the site I already was on. I couldn't even log in to the router via another browser window.
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Re: Fx not loading some pages or parts until refresh

Post by HansV »

What happens if you open a command prompt window and type

ping unreachablesite.com

or

tracert unreachablesite.com

using the URL of a site that doesn't load in Firefox?
Best wishes,
Hans

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Argus
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Re: Fx not loading some pages or parts until refresh

Post by Argus »

Yes, I did a tracert to the lounge. :smile: Didn't save the output, but it looked normal, quite a few steps, with some timeouts close to the end but have seen that before, and since I think I saw an IP address at the end it seemed to work. And by the way, it could obviously "trace" my router.

I tried the following this time (apart from checking a couple of sites in other tabs), as per above.

The site that worked was in a private mode window (normal mode window left empty behind).

-Checked email via its client, it worked (well there were no new mails...), and its connection showed up in TcpView for a brief moment.
-Downloaded new AV definitions, although as we know MSFTs sites can be slow, they came eventually.
-Checked via wifi and mobile; also worked.
-And finally, though a I knew a restart of Fx was the solution, I tried to log in to the router for a "soft" restart via its UI (for some reasons since a couple of Fx versions I can't do that in private mode tabs) using the empty Fx normal mode window, but was greeted by Fx spinning wheel, and not a single blip in TcpView, so I restarted the router manually. That didn't help.

Logged out from the site in Fx, that went slow as the last time; restarted Fx (after some cache cleaning), and back to normal.
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Re: Fx not loading some pages or parts until refresh

Post by ChrisGreaves »

Argus wrote:
19 Aug 2021, 10:46
...
Logged out from the site in Fx, that went slow as the last time; restarted Fx (after some cache cleaning), and back to normal.
Argus, I have no solution; only a "I know how you feel" comment.

I get gloomy about the current state of computer tech. Firefox is but one example. As products mature the developer starts adding extra tail fins, cup-holders, and the works. Somewhere there is a formula that express the likelihood of problems occurring as an exponential function of the number of parts. Much as I admire the ability of SpaceX et al. to park TWO boosters simultaneously on land, let alone landing one on a small ship in the Atlantic Ocean, they could not pay me enough to "come in and tell us what is not working so that we can correct it".

I predict that some time within the next twenty years, a global move will be made to scrap every bit of existing computing and re-design it in a common format from the ground up. Our current mix of software is close to uncontrollable, and you no longer work for Argus, but exist only as a member of the Firefox destructive test team, and that will have to stop.

Human resources too must be stripped; your experience possibly arises from a New Manager's decision to scale back testing from six to five weeks, removing a wide margin of safety that is now paid for by users.

The days are long gone when the chauffeur, or at worst a passing motorist, could effect a fix to get us to the next village.

Cheers, sort of
fellow-gloomy of Bonavista
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Re: Fx not loading some pages or parts until refresh

Post by Argus »

Thanks for your reply, Chris. Perhaps it's a combination, but sure looks linked to Firefox (haven't noticed this (with Fx) on the mobile; but it's different in several ways; so is my use of the two browsers).

I don't know if I'll find a solution; I'll see if I can get some time to do some tests; so this is mostly public note-taking. Perhaps there is someone else out there with the same problem, or perhaps I can hope to annoy future generations. :evilgrin:

Image
https://xkcd.com/979
ChrisGreaves wrote:
19 Aug 2021, 14:43
The days are long gone when the chauffeur, or at worst a passing motorist, could effect a fix to get us to the next village.
It goes both ways. Perhaps you have seen the joke that some 50 years ago your car's owner's manual came with examples; how you could adjust the valves; nowadays they have to tell people not to drink from the contents of the battery.

P.S. Yes, the booster landings are truly amazing. Yet they are a result of the development in computing; with enough engines and computers they could make your desk fly. But perhaps not orbit the earth.
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Re: Fx not loading some pages or parts until refresh

Post by ChrisGreaves »

Argus wrote:
19 Aug 2021, 15:51
... this is mostly public note-taking. ... or perhaps I can hope to annoy future generations. :evilgrin:
Untitled4.png
:laugh:
Cheers
Chris
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