BrowserWorks
Waterfox freezes on any Wikipedia page and only Wikipedia
What happened?
Browsing any Wikipedia page will cause that entire browser window to stop responding and cause video playback in another window to enter a buffer loop. It will occasionally start responding and video will resume but the second I try to interact with the page again it goes white and eventually pops up the "not responding" error again. Letting the browser be force closed and re-opening it once everything loads again it will do it again.
To ensure it's not my firefox profile or extensions I built Waterfox from source and can confirm the hang still occurs on that with no extensions and not logged into my Firefox account and in just a Wikipedia tab. The hangs seem to be a second or less vs 10-15 seconds in my normal Waterfox with 10-15 tabs open at any given time. I still have 50% of my 32gb of ram free and CPU usage is around 20%.
Reproducible?
- [ ] I have checked that this issue cannot be reproduced on Mozilla Firefox.
Version
G6
What platform are you seeing the problem on?
Windows
Relevant log output
No response
Don't have regular Firefox installed currently, but I'd assume verifying it still happens in a built from source copy of Waterfox in a brand new profile works just as well.
I've been having a very similar issue since forever. I keep hoping the next update will fix it. I don't get the hangups from just browsing, though. I get the browser freezing up when I try and highlight text. This is necessary because I'm visually impaired and must use TTS for long bits of text.
When I try to highlight even just a small bit of text. I move the mouse one fraction of a millimeter too far, and suddenly, it highlights all the text all the way to the bottom of the page. And then freezes. I can hear my CPU cooling spinning up pretty fiercely, it's doing "something". The youtube video usually going in the other browser window will freeze up last.
Until the most recent update, a workaround I had was that, if I reacted quickly enough, I could close the browser window wherein the problem originated. That would take some seconds to process, though. After the most recent update, that doesn't work, and I have to kill the entire process and restart.
Windows 11, 64 bit, G6.0.20 (64 bit)
I've been having a very similar issue since forever. I keep hoping the next update will fix it. I don't get the hangups from just browsing, though. I get the browser freezing up when I try and highlight text. This is necessary because I'm visually impaired and must use TTS for long bits of text.
this is usually what causes it for me too. I highlight so I don't lose my place constantly and as long as I'm extremely careful to not select text it's usually totally fine. It's only happening to wikipedia too, I can highlight to my hearts content in any of my uni textbooks or Reddit or whatever.
I upgraded to the latest beta release of waterfox to fix another site last night and while I was just able to highlight test more than once before the behavior occurred again I still had to close it via task manager. At least I didn't lose what I had written here.
I just got an idea to try and see if this occurs on another site using architecture related to/derived from Wikipedia's. When I highlight madly on the Kerbal Space Program Wiki, no problems. It must be something about how the pages in Wikipedia are constructed.
I also just remembered that a long while ago, I had for a while used a special Wikipedia-Reader extension that would display the pages in a different format. I will now go hunt that down and see what that does, if anything.
WOW THAT WORKED FAST! I just googled for a firefox extension to display wikipedia and got "Modern for Wikipedia" from the Firefox extensions library. It shows Wikipedia in a modified format, not much different from English Wikipedia's more recent layout.
I can highlight like a mad person, nothing untorward happens.
I would not call it a solution to the issue, though, only a workaround.
The extension is here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/modern-for-wikipedia/
I can highlight like a mad person, nothing untorward happens.
I would not call it a solution to the issue, though, only a workaround.
The extension is here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/modern-for-wikipedia/
You good sir/ma'am are a lifesaver, my love of reading Wikipedia when I'm bored can continue!
historical incidences of this implicate windows itself or the system display drivers.
historical incidences of this implicate windows itself or the system display drivers.
latest build of windows 11 24h2 and latest nvidia drivers for my RTX 4080 super.
historical incidences of this implicate windows itself or the system display drivers.
I have no doubt you have the relevant experience with those historical incidents. But I find it remarkably unlikely that the issues surrounding those incidents apply here, or apply in the same manner.
This problem started no later than Windows 10, and on a previous computer. That had Nvidia RTX something or other, always updated drivers, always updated Windows, always updated Waterfox. I'm presently using the on-board graphics of a system since built from new, that's AMD Radeon, and I always update those drivers, also. I should find it remarkably unlikely that the same issues persist across two different iterations of Windows and however many versions I've updated through, and across display drivers for two different graphics systems from two entirely different vendors, and through all of those updates.
When I open Wikipedia, sans any fancy extensions, in Opera or in Edge, each with its own browser engine distinct from Waterfox, the problem does not occur. I just tested it, to make sure.
So I would find it remarkably unlikely that if the issue lies in Windows or in display drivers, it is not an issue that could or should be addressed on the browser end. Other browser engines seem to either not encounter the problem at all, or to have such a seamless fix, I can't even notice anything untoward going on.
@zoeyronain I just had an idea and sought to replicate the issue on >German< Wikipedia. They never updated the site layout, it still looks like Wikipedia used to look years ago. I seem to be unable to replicate the issue there!
Would you mind checking? Select "Deutsch" from the language menu. Be sure to disable "Modern for Wikipedia" if you have that running already. Seeing that changing the site layout by extension fixes the problem, it would not surprise me if the problem lies in Waterfox's rendering of the current layout. That might also explain how the problem does not occur on other sites using the Wikipedia architecture. Such that I've tested all still use the old-timey layout, like German Wikipedia.
I've also found that I can once more convince Windows to close the Waterfox window wherein the Wikipedia-Freeze begins, so I don't have to completely restart the whole browser. It seems to have worked twice when I just made sure disabling Modern for Wikipedia would let the issue reemerge. Rather than trying to click the x in the corner of the browser window, or the x in the task-preview that I have become used to using, I go to the old "Close Window" in the context menu I get when right-clicking the Waterfox window's button in the Taskbar.