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"Firefox prevented this page from reloading"

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Rhino

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Feb 24, 2013, 2:56:55 PM2/24/13
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Does anyone know what causes the message "Firefox prevented this page
from reloading"? I see this occasionally on websites I visit; each time
I have to press the Allow button - sometimes twice - before I can see
the page.

Is it something about the pages themselves that makes Firefox cautious?
Is it possible to indicate to Firefox that these pages are safe going
forward so that I don't need to keep pressing Allow? Is there any danger
in doing so?

--
Rhino

Chris Ilias

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Feb 24, 2013, 3:12:07 PM2/24/13
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There's a setting for that, you probably have turned on.
1. Go to Tools-->Options-->Advanced-->General.
2. Uncheck "Warn me when websites try to redirect or reload the page"

--
Chris Ilias <http://ilias.ca>
Mailing list/Newsgroup moderator

VanguardLH

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Feb 24, 2013, 5:48:07 PM2/24/13
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While it is a handy security feature to let you know when a page tries
to redirect you to another page, I wish they had a sub-option "Only when
redirect goes to a different domain". Sites often use redirects (meta-
refresh or Javascripted refresh) when they change their layout. They
know some of their pages may still link to the old one, users have
cached copies of web pages, or users have direct links to web pages.
I'm not concerned about a site redirecting me within that site. It's
when they try to redirect me elsewhere (off-domain) that I want to know.

The infobar that Firefox displays when it has blocked the redirect is
nearly worthless. Yeah, it blocked the redirect but to WHERE? I should
not have to view the page code to figure out where they tried to send
me. Obviously Firefox already knows they tried that and to where
(because it saw it was different than the current site). It's like you
out doing some grocery shopping and you get a texted alert that says
"It's on fire." WHAT is on fire? Your home? Your car? Your hair?
Before I click to allow the redirect, I want to know where it goes.

They have a browser width infobar that pops up and yet they can't manage
to tell you to where they blocked a redirect. Argh!

Rhino

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Feb 24, 2013, 6:04:52 PM2/24/13
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Thanks, Chris. You're right, that setting was turned on. At least I know
how to turn it off now.

--
Rhino

Jeremy Nicoll - ml mozilla groups

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Feb 24, 2013, 6:04:58 PM2/24/13
to support...@lists.mozilla.org
VanguardLH <V...@nguard.LH> wrote:

>They have a browser width infobar that pops up and yet they can't manage
>to tell you to where they blocked a redirect. Argh!

Similarly the infobar that tells you FF blocked a popup, which gives options
to accept it here/there/everywhere but tells you nothing about what was
blocked... so you cna't decide whether to accept it.

And IIRC, the info bar for "something on this page needs a plugin, do you
want to install it" which gives you no clue what the object that can't be
handled actually is.

--
Jeremy Nicoll - my opinions are my own.

Rhino

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Feb 24, 2013, 6:17:56 PM2/24/13
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I agree with you completely about everything you said. There should be
an option to allow redirects if they stay on the same page. Also, the
message should contain a lot more information so that users can make a
better decision about what to do when it appears.

Neither of those ideas, especially the second one, should be hard to do.
As you pointed out, they already know that the redirect is going to
another site so showing its URL is pretty straight-forward. I say that
as someone who has written programs professionally.

What's the process to make feature requests for Firefox? I've never
looked into that. Maybe you could do a feature request for what you've
suggested?

--

I'm baffled about why I'm getting this warning on one of the sites I'm
visiting. This particular site has no redirects and does no page
reloading as far as I can tell. There is some javascript on each page
but I don't see any reloading or redirecting there. And the home page,
has no redirects or reloads. I don't see either reloading or redirecting
in the javascript. Any idea why Firefox thinks this site is a problem?

http://sfl.x10host.com


--
Rhino

VanguardLH

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Feb 25, 2013, 2:39:04 AM2/25/13
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Well, to a different web page but at the same [sub]domain.

> Also, the
> message should contain a lot more information so that users can make a
> better decision about what to do when it appears.

Looks like Mozilla has emulated Microsoft in providing non-informative
alerts.

> Neither of those ideas, especially the second one, should be hard to do.
> As you pointed out, they already know that the redirect is going to
> another site so showing its URL is pretty straight-forward. I say that
> as someone who has written programs professionally.

The 2 ways that I know of redirection is to use meta-refresh and
Javascript. I've noticed some sites try to get sneaky and use a
meta-refresh inside a <NOSCRIPT> tag where it is illegal but some web
browsers, like Firefox, allow and comply. Mozilla didn't want to
address the mixed content (HTTP content delivered to an HTTPS page)
because blocking it would break a lot of badly designed web sites; i.e.,
Mozilla didn't want to be the leader in forcing web sites to stop mixing
secure and insecure content in a web page. Mozilla also won't enforce
erroring on meta-refresh inside a <NOSCRIPT> tag for the same reason
that it would break a lot of badly designed or sneaky web sites using
that trick. I see the NoScript add-on has an option to block that
trick; however, either I've not hit one of those sneaky sites using
meta-refresh inside <NOSCRIPT> or NoScript blocks with an alert.

For the meta-refresh method, it's pretty obvious how to detect that in
the page code: look for a <META> tag with an http-equiv parameter set to
"refresh". The Javascript timer method to reload the page (but specify
a different target), especially if it is obfuscated, could be tougher to
detect but one method would be that a page at one domain suddenly wants
to move to another page at a DIFFERENT domain but with no interaction
from the user, like clicking on a link. Instead of looking for just
meta-refresh, look for a page transition to another domain that involved
no human interaction on the first page. This would require monitoring
of behavior rather than parsing page code.

> What's the process to make feature requests for Firefox? I've never
> looked into that. Maybe you could do a feature request for what you've
> suggested?

I used the Help -> Submit Feedback menu to click on "I have an idea" on
their http://input.mozilla.org/en-US/feedback page; however, (1) They
allowed for only an extremely terse comment (a meager 250 characters),
and (2) I feel like it's tossing a coin into the wishing well and hoping
someone at Mozilla ever sees it.

Rhino

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Feb 25, 2013, 10:23:21 AM2/25/13
to
Sorry, I meant to say "allow redirects if they stay on the same DOMAIN".
All of that sounds do-able to me.

>> What's the process to make feature requests for Firefox? I've never
>> looked into that. Maybe you could do a feature request for what you've
>> suggested?
>
> I used the Help -> Submit Feedback menu to click on "I have an idea" on
> their http://input.mozilla.org/en-US/feedback page; however, (1) They
> allowed for only an extremely terse comment (a meager 250 characters),
> and (2) I feel like it's tossing a coin into the wishing well and hoping
> someone at Mozilla ever sees it.
>

A 250 character limit? Yikes, how are you supposed to make a persuasive
case with only a few words? Just describing what you want to do without
justifying it would take more than that! Maybe the first suggestion
needs to be: "Create a better process for making suggestions!".

If you have a website - or better yet, a blog - you could write a more
detailed proposal and then just send them a link. But it might be easier
to find a newsgroup here on the Mozilla news server and propose it there.

Do you see anything at http://sfl.x10host.com that would cause a page
reload? I'm darned if I can see anything like that. I wonder if Firefox
has a bug that is making it see page reloads that aren't there?

--
Rhino

--
Rhino

Rhino

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Feb 25, 2013, 10:50:14 AM2/25/13
to
For what it's worth, I did a bit of digging and found a mozilla.wishlist
newsgroup on this server. It seems to be exactly the place to go to make
a serious suggestion about changes to Firefox. It's certainly far more
usable than the "I have an idea" page you described since it has no
length limit. I wrote a post citing this thread and proposing that they
do exactly what you've suggested.

I also added a suggestion that they make major improvements to the way
they get feature requests from users :-)

While it is entirely possible - even likely - that they never act on
these suggestions, at least I/we tried....

--
Rhino

»Q«

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Feb 25, 2013, 2:57:52 PM2/25/13
to
On Mon, 25 Feb 2013 01:39:04 -0600
VanguardLH <V...@nguard.LH> wrote:

> I used the Help -> Submit Feedback menu to click on "I have an idea"
> on their http://input.mozilla.org/en-US/feedback page; however, (1)
> They allowed for only an extremely terse comment (a meager 250
> characters), and (2) I feel like it's tossing a coin into the wishing
> well and hoping someone at Mozilla ever sees it.

Another way to get eyeballs on it would be to file an enhancement bug.

VanguardLH

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Feb 25, 2013, 5:30:15 PM2/25/13
to
I have Firefox configured to block the redirection. When it pops up its
non-informative infobar, I right-click on the page to view the source.
What I see is:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="0.1">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" CONTENT="-1">
<TITLE></TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY><P></BODY>
</HTML>

Yeah, not helpful at all. All that whitespace in Firefox's interstitial
blank page and Firefox gives absolutely no information. Firefox is
presenting me not with the content of the site's web page (the first one
you visit) but with Firefox's replacement until I click its Continue
button.

So I used a real oldie web browser, SamSpade, to see the actual content
of the first web page (the one pointed to by that URL). When I had
SamSpade show me the web page, I didn't see any meta-refresh or a
javascripted doc reload. The only script on that first page is for
Google Analytics (GA). It's shtml which means the real guts of the
script (server-side includes) is up on the server where you won't ever
be able to see it (read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtml). So there
is no meta-refresh and only a mote of script to update info on page
visit to the server-side script. I doubt GA causes page redirections
but I'm no expert on what GA can and will not do.

Note that the server can do a redirection. When you visit a page, the
web server can map it to another page. The URL doesn't change that you
see but the server dishes up a different page. This remapping is needed
for, say, when a site changes a page and wants to slide visitors to the
new page until they get around to deleting the original one from their
own cache. I don't know that any client (web browser) is going to be
able to detect that type of redirection. That is a server-side
redirection (remapping) that your client should never know about. While
there is only the <SCRIPT> block for GA, other SHTML is referenced in
this web page. We users don't know what the server script is doing.

There's also the possibility that Firefox is puking out a bogus
redirection alert. I can get Firefox to visit that URL *without*
issuing a redirection alert. I visit, I get the redirect alert. I exit
Firefox (which is configured to flush all its history) and revisit the
URL and there is no redirect alert from Firefox. After getting to the
web page (with a redirect alert that I bypassed or there was no alert
and I went straight to the page) and exiting Firefox, I even used
CCleaner to purge Firefox history and cache and revisited the URL and
sometimes Firefox goes straight to the page without its redirect alert.
So, in this case, it appears Firefox's algorithm for detecting a
redirection is flawed and is false triggering on this site. I've seen
it happen on Google web searches, too. That's why I'm on the fence as
to whether I want to leave this redirect blocking option enabled in
Firefox. Tis a nuisance already when it alerts with absolutely no
information as to where goes the redirection but it also false alerts.

I can't see that the web page is doing any redirection; however, I also
cannot see what the server-side scripts are doing. If the server is
remapping the page, the client shouldn't be able to detect that. If it
is a false alert by Firefox, well, I don't know its code to know why it
*thinks* this page is doing a redirection.

I've had Firefox do this before where it halts on the redirection to
show its infobar but I can't see where the original page did any
redirection. So far, I've excused the interruption with me being
ignorant of what methods can cause a redirection other than the ones
that I know about and can see in a web page (meta-refresh and Javascript
doc load).

»Q«

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Feb 25, 2013, 6:16:31 PM2/25/13
to
On Sun, 24 Feb 2013 18:17:56 -0500
Rhino <no.offline.c...@example.com> wrote:

> I'm baffled about why I'm getting this warning on one of the sites
> I'm visiting. This particular site has no redirects and does no page
> reloading as far as I can tell. There is some javascript on each page
> but I don't see any reloading or redirecting there. And the home
> page, has no redirects or reloads. I don't see either reloading or
> redirecting in the javascript. Any idea why Firefox thinks this site
> is a problem?
>
> http://sfl.x10host.com

Not only do I not see anything there to cause it, but I
can't reproduce the warning you're seeing, using Fx 19.0. Do you get
the warning even in safe mode?

It's possible you're being served something different than I am. The
livehttpheaders extension might help you figure out what's going on.
<https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/live-http-headers/>

Chris Ilias

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Feb 25, 2013, 9:16:13 PM2/25/13
to
On 2013-02-25 10:50 AM, Rhino wrote:
> On 2013-02-25 10:23, Rhino wrote:
>> On 2013-02-25 02:39, VanguardLH wrote:
>>
>>> I used the Help -> Submit Feedback menu to click on "I have an idea" on
>>> their http://input.mozilla.org/en-US/feedback page; however, (1) They
>>> allowed for only an extremely terse comment (a meager 250 characters),
>>> and (2) I feel like it's tossing a coin into the wishing well and hoping
>>> someone at Mozilla ever sees it.
>>
>> A 250 character limit? Yikes, how are you supposed to make a persuasive
>> case with only a few words? Just describing what you want to do without
>> justifying it would take more than that! Maybe the first suggestion
>> needs to be: "Create a better process for making suggestions!".

The feedback system isn't intended for long arguments. It's meant to get
a census on what the common likes/dislikes are. If you'd like to get
into an actual discussion about Firefox development, that's what the
mozilla.dev.apps.firefox newsgroup is for. And design-specific issues
can be discussed in mozilla.dev.usability.

> For what it's worth, I did a bit of digging and found a mozilla.wishlist
> newsgroup on this server.

I don't think anyone is paid to gather data from mozilla.wishlist.

The Wanderer

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Feb 26, 2013, 10:19:05 AM2/26/13
to
On 02/25/2013 09:16 PM, Chris Ilias wrote:

>> On 2013-02-25 10:23, Rhino wrote:

>>> A 250 character limit? Yikes, how are you supposed to make a persuasive
>>> case with only a few words? Just describing what you want to do without
>>> justifying it would take more than that! Maybe the first suggestion needs
>>> to be: "Create a better process for making suggestions!".
>
> The feedback system isn't intended for long arguments. It's meant to get a
> census on what the common likes/dislikes are. If you'd like to get into an
> actual discussion about Firefox development, that's what the
> mozilla.dev.apps.firefox newsgroup is for. And design-specific issues can be
> discussed in mozilla.dev.usability.

I can say from experience (in other contexts) that there can be many times when
even describing a problem or suggestion clearly can take well over 250
characters...

--
The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

Every time you let somebody set a limit they start moving it.
- LiveJournal user antonia_tiger

Jay Garcia

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Feb 26, 2013, 10:59:19 AM2/26/13
to
On 26.02.2013 09:19, The Wanderer wrote:

--- Original Message ---

> On 02/25/2013 09:16 PM, Chris Ilias wrote:
>
>>> On 2013-02-25 10:23, Rhino wrote:
>
>>>> A 250 character limit? Yikes, how are you supposed to make a persuasive
>>>> case with only a few words? Just describing what you want to do without
>>>> justifying it would take more than that! Maybe the first suggestion
>>>> needs
>>>> to be: "Create a better process for making suggestions!".
>>
>> The feedback system isn't intended for long arguments. It's meant to
>> get a
>> census on what the common likes/dislikes are. If you'd like to get
>> into an
>> actual discussion about Firefox development, that's what the
>> mozilla.dev.apps.firefox newsgroup is for. And design-specific issues
>> can be
>> discussed in mozilla.dev.usability.
>
> I can say from experience (in other contexts) that there can be many
> times when
> even describing a problem or suggestion clearly can take well over 250
> characters...
>

If you need to expand further than the 250 character limit, then join
Test Pilot:

https://testpilot.mozillalabs.com/


--
Jay Garcia - www.ufaq.org - Netscape - Firefox - SeaMonkey - Thunderbird
Mozilla Contribute Coordinator Team - www.mozilla.org/contribute/
Mozilla Mozillian Member - www.mozillians.org
Mozilla Contributor Member - www.mozilla.org/credits/

Chris Ilias

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Feb 26, 2013, 8:45:42 PM2/26/13
to
On 2013-02-26 10:19 AM, The Wanderer wrote:
> On 02/25/2013 09:16 PM, Chris Ilias wrote:
>
>> The feedback system isn't intended for long arguments. It's meant to
>> get a
>> census on what the common likes/dislikes are. If you'd like to get
>> into an
>> actual discussion about Firefox development, that's what the
>> mozilla.dev.apps.firefox newsgroup is for. And design-specific issues
>> can be
>> discussed in mozilla.dev.usability.
>
> I can say from experience (in other contexts) that there can be many
> times when
> even describing a problem or suggestion clearly can take well over 250
> characters...

This really isn't the place to voice opinions about the feedback system
either. :) Besides the fact that what you just said is under under 250
characters, there are other options listed in this thread.
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