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The Guardian website and apparent memory blowout

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 26 views
  • Last reply by mrjames

mrjames
mrjames
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The issue where Firefox on Android does apparent background restarts is still occurring in the most recent release builds.

This was first discussed in the now archived topic https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1379604

It is 100% reproducible. Steps:

1. Go to https://www.theguardian.com/uk 2. Open in background tab one or two internal links to stories in that website 3. Firefox is hang for e.g. 40s then reloads from scratch all open tabs including to other sites 4. The device will behave as if it was recently restarted with all other apps doing UI refresh activity when you next access them

The repro steps are truly simple.

Should we raise this as an iss with the website instead? e.g. Chrome does not and never has had a problem like this on that website.

Cheers,


108.2.0 (Build #2015925643), 78718ba91+ AC: 108.2.0, 9174b4e74f GV: 108.0.2-20230104165113 AS: 95.0.1

The issue where Firefox on Android does apparent background restarts is still occurring in the most recent release builds. This was first discussed in the now archived topic https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1379604 It is 100% reproducible. Steps: 1. Go to https://www.theguardian.com/uk 2. Open in background tab one or two internal links to stories in that website 3. Firefox is hang for e.g. 40s then reloads from scratch all open tabs including to other sites 4. The device will behave as if it was recently restarted with all other apps doing UI refresh activity when you next access them The repro steps are truly simple. Should we raise this as an iss with the website instead? e.g. Chrome does not and never has had a problem like this on that website. Cheers, 108.2.0 (Build #2015925643), 78718ba91+ AC: 108.2.0, 9174b4e74f GV: 108.0.2-20230104165113 AS: 95.0.1

All Replies (2)

Paul
Paul
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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Hi

Thank you for your feedback. This appears to be linked to an existing issue that our developers are looking into. You can follow progress on this and add comments at:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1752594

mrjames
mrjames Question owner
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Hi, Paul. Thanks for the feedback.

Summary: There is FF data in app Storage that is causing this problem. I don't know why it impacts the Guardian so extremely.

The issue appears to be similar to the linked bug, but the issue I describe is more systemic, not just a tab refreshing, but whole-brower hangs and apparent Android Launcher restart. Very much like a memory blow-out.

NEW information: I noticed my User Data as reported in the Android system view was about 600MB. Clearing Browing from FF or clearing Cache from Android storage setting did not reduce User data. Clearing all user data, basically resetting FF, seems to have made this memory blow-out problem go away. I don't know what data structure has grown or why it trashes FF when opening specifically background tabs for the Guardian (if they are using / abusing local storage etc, surely it shouldn't be able to trash the whole browser?) If there was some way to clear website specific storage I could experiment.

NEWER information: After clicking around the website for half and hour the BEHAVIOUR HAS RETURNED. So that's a reproducible way to both trigger and remove the behaviour, for those playing at home.

Cheers

Modified by mrjames