Bottom bar on front pages?

June 27, 2009 5:03 AM

Odd stationary footer bar on all front pages in Firefox?

I've been seeing this footer on all three of the main front pages...blue, green, gray. It's not on the front pages of Projects, Music, Jobs, etc. Nor is it on any interior pages. It's just on the front pages.

The oddest bit is that it has appeared only in Firefox. It's not there in Safari.

This is, of course, as nitpicky as anything can get, and not a complaint. More like a "Huh. That's weird." thing.
And, very possibly, something that's years old that I just now noticed.

posted by Thorzdad to Bugs at 5:03 AM (41 comments total)

I'm not seeing it. Are you running Greasemonkey, Stylish, or any other extension that modifies CSS?
posted by dunkadunc at 5:09 AM on June 27, 2009

Nope. None of the above.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:31 AM on June 27, 2009

And, I need to point out, it is only on Metafilter. No other website.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:48 AM on June 27, 2009

I see it as well. FF2 under OS X 10.4.
posted by NucleophilicAttack at 6:04 AM on June 27, 2009

Thorzdad, what Firefox/OS are you using? I'm running FF3.5, Vista and I'm not seeing it.
posted by dunkadunc at 6:09 AM on June 27, 2009

Not seeing it: FF3/XP.
posted by Kattullus at 6:42 AM on June 27, 2009

I see it: FF3/OS 10.5.7.

It's on all my pages. I think it's been there for a long time, because I'm pretty sure it looks completely normal to me. (Until recently, I ran the previous FF on OS 10.4.1whatever.)
posted by rtha at 7:15 AM on June 27, 2009

Try a different account on the same computer. Also, try clearing your cache and temporarily removing your user profile. On OS X you can find this in /Users/your username/Library/Application Support/ Move the Firefox folder to your desktop (close FF before doing this). FF will start up as if you've just installed it. To get back your old profile put the Firefox folder from your desktop back into ../Application Support/, replacing the newly created folder.
posted by 6550 at 7:23 AM on June 27, 2009

FWIW, I've got it too. Only on the MeFi front pages, and I'm pretty sure it only started a couple days ago. I've got FF2/OS 10.3.9. (My computer's old, okay?)

Glad it's not just me.
posted by sineala at 8:46 AM on June 27, 2009

It's the Status Bar (View -> Status Bar). I only just discovered you could turn it off.
posted by scruss at 9:53 AM on June 27, 2009

I've got it on the bottom of this page, haven't checked the other pages yet--but where yours says 'post a link', mine says 'add a post'. Strange.
posted by QuakerMel at 9:56 AM on June 27, 2009

FF3.0.11, OSX 10.5.7, no bar.

Sometimes I get something like that from NoScript, the yellow 'scripts allowed / denied' banner doesn't actually remove itself properly. But that's rare, and on any site, and not like what you described. Looks just like that, though.
posted by paisley henosis at 10:52 AM on June 27, 2009

scruss: It's the Status Bar (View -> Status Bar). I only just discovered you could turn it off.

The status bar is where it says 'Done' not the big white line above that.
posted by paisley henosis at 10:53 AM on June 27, 2009

Does it occur in firefox's safe mode?
posted by boo_radley at 11:56 AM on June 27, 2009

Are you on a Mac? That looks kind of like an empty horizontal scroller. Maybe something is making FF think it needs a horizontal scrollbar on those pages when it doesn't.

FWIW, I don't see it on FF 3.0.6, OSX 10.4.11.
posted by hattifattener at 12:06 PM on June 27, 2009

I see it, too. It's only on Metafilter, and it's definitely not the status bar. It's on the blue, the green, and the grey, but it does not appear when I view a thread.
posted by Houyhnhnm at 12:42 PM on June 27, 2009

It seems to be a scrollbar with zero degrees of freedom, i.e. Fx thought that the page needed horizontal scrolling but it doesn't, so the bar should not be there but it still remains.
posted by Rhomboid at 12:59 PM on June 27, 2009

Another not seeing it: FF3.0.10, OSX10.5.7.

(I believe Rhomboid is right that it is an empty scrollbar; I can force the effect to happen by adding overflow-x:scroll to the body element...)
posted by ook at 1:33 PM on June 27, 2009

Glad to know I'm not the only one seeing it. (FF2/Mac. 10.3.9)

It seems to be a scrollbar with zero degrees of freedom, i.e. Fx thought that the page needed horizontal scrolling but it doesn't, so the bar should not be there but it still remains.

If that's it, it's kind of odd that there would be some bit of code on just the front pages that would make FF think the page needs a scrollbar.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:35 PM on June 27, 2009

The status bar is where it says 'Done' not the big white line above that.
o i am a bear of very little brain today
posted by scruss at 1:39 PM on June 27, 2009

The problem goes away if I inject #page { float:right } to the stylesheet.
posted by Rhomboid at 1:41 PM on June 27, 2009

If that's it, it's kind of odd that there would be some bit of code on just the front pages that would make FF think the page needs a scrollbar.

Well, it seems to be a bug in the rendering engine of Fx, in which case the specific ordering/presence of various box model elements (e.g. header, sidebar, tabs, "Welcome back", entries) triggers the issue. The thread pages have a different mix of elements than the front pages.
posted by Rhomboid at 1:45 PM on June 27, 2009

If that's it, it's kind of odd that there would be some bit of code on just the front pages that would make FF think the page needs a scrollbar.

If I had to bet, my money'd be on it being related to the sidebar, since that appears on the same pages where you're seeing the problem.
posted by ook at 2:19 PM on June 27, 2009

I'm surprised so many people aren't even using FF3 yet.
posted by dunkadunc at 2:44 PM on June 27, 2009

Well, it seems to be a bug in the rendering engine of Fx, in which case the specific ordering/presence of various box model elements (e.g. header, sidebar, tabs, "Welcome back", entries) triggers the issue. The thread pages have a different mix of elements than the front pages.

Then, then question becomes "What changed recently?" This is a new development. I've been using the same browser for quite awhile, yet this only cropped-up recently.

I'm surprised so many people aren't even using FF3 yet.
Doesn't run on my Mac. OS is too old.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:48 PM on June 27, 2009

I use Fx 2 for two reasons: one, that's what's shipped with my distro and trying to use a binary from moz.org just runs into all kinds of errors with mismatched GNOME libraries and such. Two, even if I could run Fx 3, when you have a highly customized Fx with tons of extensions -- each with their own pile of settings (like stylish, greasemonkey, etc.) -- then upgrading to a new version is never painless as you have to start with a clean profile and reinstall everything. Yes, I know you're supposed to be able to upgrade but that has always caused tons of problems for me in the past.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:04 PM on June 27, 2009

And BTW it's no one thing like the sidebar. Using Firebug you can right click on the sidebar DIV and delete it completely from the DOM tree and the dummy horizontal scrollbar still remains. You can also delete other elements on the page and nothing happens. It's only when you delete enough elements that the page changes significantly enough to sidestep whatever rendering bug this is tickling.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:18 PM on June 27, 2009

Ugh, well let me correct that: if you delete the sidebar on the blue it doesn't cause the dummy scrollbar to go away, but if you delete the sidebar on the gray it does. Very non-deterministic.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:20 PM on June 27, 2009

Probably related to this attempt to fix the iPhone layout.
posted by team lowkey at 3:55 PM on June 27, 2009

I would like to be able to test this, but it seems to be fine since I'm using the more professional white background on the site.
posted by disclaimer at 5:31 PM on June 27, 2009

Same as rtha - running OS 10.5.7 and I see it, but I think it's been that way for a while.
posted by garnetgirl at 5:44 AM on June 28, 2009

Are you running Adblock plus? Mine went sideways the other day, added a bunch strangeness to pages/context menus - it's a reported bug. Also, I'm not seeing it in the non-professional default mefi theme.

Rebooting cleared it up.
posted by disclaimer at 6:43 AM on June 28, 2009

I do have AdblockPlus, but it's disabled on MetaFilter.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:43 PM on June 28, 2009

I just noticed I have an actual horizontal scroll bar on all the front pages. It doesn't scroll but the bar is there (full width) with arrows at the ends and the three little lines in the middle. I don't know how long it's been there, could be new, could have been ages (I'm not terribly observant).

I'm using FF 2.0.0.20 (because I hated what they did to the address bar in FF3.0 so see no reason to upgrade to that shit), have adblock plus installed and running but no other scripts or greasemonkeys or whatever.
posted by shelleycat at 3:37 PM on June 28, 2009

Oh yeah, running Vista Home Premium.
posted by shelleycat at 3:40 PM on June 28, 2009

Firefox 3.0.11+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1; no bar.
posted by flabdablet at 7:57 PM on June 28, 2009

I no longer see it.
posted by Houyhnhnm at 3:42 PM on June 30, 2009

Its gone for me too. Nothing has changed on my end so I presume it was fixed?
posted by shelleycat at 3:50 AM on July 1, 2009

Gone here, too.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:37 AM on July 1, 2009

Huh. Gone!
posted by rtha at 10:42 AM on July 1, 2009

On a related note, the front page of MetaTalk (but not MetaFilter or AskMeFi) has gone weird; the sidebar does not float to the right but lines up with the "buy a shirt" graphic. Safari 4.0
posted by nowonmai at 8:12 AM on July 11, 2009