Update: I re-installed Vista 64 cleanly (wiped out everything) and I am using the Nvidia video drivers from Microsoft. Flickr is still misbehaving on FireFox 3 for me.
On the upside, adding these lines to Adblock Plus’s whitelist did fix my problems with Facebook:
@@|http://*.facebook.com/ @@|http://*.fbcdn.net/
——————
On some of the installations I have, Firefox 3 and Flickr do not get along with each other. Here’s a screen shot of what’s happening.
What happens is that when new content comes from Flickr’s website, the whole page does not get re-drawn. I drew a red box around the new page. Switching tabs forces the page to be redrawn but this is happening often.
This is not limited to Flickr. Facebook has problems where I click on something and nothing happens. This only occurs in Firefox 3, in Firefox 2 I never had any issue. The mozilla support forums are pretty looking but not really useful.
I hate to say it, but Flickr and Facebook are more reliable in Internet 7 than Firefox 3.
Asa Dotzler says:
I can see from the screenshot that you have at least three extensions installed. I suspect AdBlock is the one causing you problems at Flickr and Facebook (I have seen dozens of reports of Adblock being the problem at Facebook with the solution being to whitelist facebook.com in AdBlock Plus)
I’d recommend disabling all three add-ons, checking out Flickr and Facebook, then enabling them one at a time with testing in between. When the pages go wonky, you’ve identified the culprit extension (again, I suspect AdBlock Plus, but it’s worth actually testing).
Once you’ve identified the offending extension you can try to fix things by either seeking an update to the extension, configuring the extension to not mess with those pages, or removing the extension.
It’s very rare that Firefox itself has problems with such major sites as Facebook and Flickr because the people developing those sites are Firefox fans and users. So, if you see something that obviously broken at a smart site like Flickr or Facebook, then extensions are the first place to look for the problem.
Good luck. I hope the fix is as easy as a slight mod to the AdBlock Plus whitelist.
– A
July 19, 2008 — 7:21 pm
Jan Dembowski says:
Asa,
Actually I did the following:
1. With Firefox not running, I ran firefox.exe -P
2. I deleted the default profile and created a new one. I lost all my settings and extensions (I knew would happen, I was trying to get to a blank slate).
3. With no extensions at all and just running the Firefox, I went to Flickr. I logged in, went to a someone’s photo stream.
4. I then went to another page and got the same result.
It’s really bizarre. The page is just not rendering correctly. When I switch to another tab and back, the page shows up perfectly.
I’m suspecting it’s my environment running Vista 64 and the latest Nvidia drivers.
I’ll keep trying, wish me luck.
Edit: Asa, I’ve whitelisted facebook.com and fbcdn.net (their CDN) and I’ll do the same for flickr.com.
Can’t hurt 🙂
July 19, 2008 — 7:37 pm
Andy says:
I’m experiencing the same issue and I’m running Vista 64 with nVidia video drivers.
Someone has reported the bug at bugzilla https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435459 but there does not seem to much activity on it.
I have tested flickr with an ATI video card in this system and everything was fine, so it is defintely an 64-bit nVidia driver issue.
July 30, 2008 — 8:28 pm
Jan Dembowski says:
Thanks for that bugzilla link. I’ll look at it from time to time so see if it gets addressed.
I had hoped that using a fresh Vista 64 install, SP1, and the Microsoft supplied Nvidia drivers would resolve it. But it didn’t, this is definitely a Flickr/Firefox 3/Vista 64/Nvidia issue.
July 30, 2008 — 9:30 pm
ralph says:
I’m having the exact same issue with Firefox 3 in Flickr. I also went through all of the normal troubleshooting techniques mentioned here – reinstalling firefox, rebuilding a new profile, running with no addons, etc. So far, nothing has corrected the problem in flickr.
Like everyone else who seems to be experiencing this issue, I’m running FF3 on Vista 64 with an Nvidia video card (in my case, a quadro fx 1600).
August 2, 2008 — 8:16 am
Pepijn says:
Hi Jan,
I’m the on who reported that bug. Would you mind adding your vote to it and perhaps leaving a comment? Perhaps we can get the kind people at Mozilla to take notice!
Cheers,
Pepijn
August 2, 2008 — 8:47 am
Jan Dembowski says:
@ralph
What’s funny is that the Javascript is trying to re-draw the page and getting a success code.
I have a suspicion that it’s a problem with the NVidia drivers but I can’t prove it.
@Pepijn
Sure, I’d be glad to.
I’m heading out at the moment, but when I get back I’ll head over to that Bugzilla posting and vote it up.
August 2, 2008 — 9:29 am
Thomas says:
I have the same problem.
nVidia – Vista 64
September 11, 2008 — 5:43 am
Jan Dembowski says:
Thomas,
Can you head over to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435459 and add a comment?
I’m hoping that more people commenting will get this one fixed.
Funny thing is this is not a bug in any other browser. Chrome beta handles those Flickr pages just fine. If only it had AdBlock…
September 11, 2008 — 6:26 am
Thomas says:
Will do!
September 11, 2008 — 7:00 am
ralph says:
I eventually gave up and switched to IE7. I’m all for the freeware cause and all that, but IE7 works with Flickr, x64, and Nvidia while firefox does not. When it comes down to it, they’re not all that different anyway. Both have pros and cons, both have occasional security flaws which need to be patched. As a flickr user, firefox 3 just wasn’t worth the trouble.
November 9, 2008 — 1:13 pm
Jan Dembowski says:
Ralph, I did almost the same. When I want to view Flickr I use Chrome.
November 9, 2008 — 5:28 pm
glib says:
I’ve been chasing this one for ages. Came across your page in my searching, but nothing here helped.
I seemed to have fixed it thanks to advice found on a forum, it seems facebook is serving different code to IE and firefox, and they screwed up their firefox code. If you grab the user agent switcher here:
http://chrispederick.com/work/user-agent-switcher/
and set yourself to IE, you should be fine.
Stupid facebook.
November 10, 2008 — 10:31 pm
Jan Dembowski says:
Glib,
That’s odd… I was able to get Facebook working with Firefox just by modifying how Ad Block Plus filters things (see above). Since I’ve made that adjustment I’ve never had any problems with Facebook.
Not so with Flickr. I have updated my NVidia drivers a couple of times since I noticed this problem and nothing works. I still get the page drawn incorrectly. It’s gotten to the point that I use Chrome just for Flickr.
November 11, 2008 — 6:18 am
Stefan says:
I’m having the same issue. Still. Driving me nuts. I use Flickr quite often.
March 6, 2009 — 5:52 pm
Jan Dembowski says:
Stefan,
If you haven’t already done so, vote for this bug at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435459
This problem is driving a lot of people batty.
March 7, 2009 — 10:33 am
Stig says:
I think I’ve had this problem since upgrading to FF3. I haven’t checked the problem before now in bugzilla (where I found the link to this page). But a friend of mine just asked me if I have the problem too, and I thought I better look it up. My friend has an Nvidia card, but I have an ATI !?
But it looks like it is fixed. The fix is just not included in the Firefox 3.0 branch:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=474886
May 7, 2009 — 2:48 pm
Jan Dembowski says:
Since 3.1 beta 3 and now 3.5 beta 4, it looks like this bug is fixed.
I’m looking forward to the next release.
May 7, 2009 — 3:49 pm