Bug 7617 – Wikipedia 'popups' javascript tool does not draw correctly

• Status: RESOLVED
• Resolution: WORKSFORME
• Component: New Bugs

[Matt Fago]

I filed this with Apple as Bug #4467372. Should it have been filed here instead? [text references screenshot attachment -- don't see where to attach that here]


Summary:
The Wikipedia 'popups' Javascript tool does not draw correctly when using Safari (but works correctly on all other tested browsers). See attached screenshots. For more information see:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:POPUP

the source code is available at:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/popups.js

Unfortunately, I am not well enough versed in Javascript to further locate the problem, and the script author does not have access to Safari.

Steps to Reproduce:
1) Create a Wikipedia account.
2) Install the popup tool as detailed at the first webpage above (clear cache etc)
3) Hover the cursor over a link on Wikipedia.

Expected Results:
A 'popup' should appear below the cursor after a second or so. Moving the cursor over the 'action' (or another) link on the popup should cause a drop-down menu to appear.

Actual Results:
Sometimes no popup appears other than a very small square box. Otherwise, the pull-down menus are not drawn correctly (see screenshots), making the tool essentially useless when using Safari.

[Matt Fago]

Created attachment 6877 [details]
Screenshot of popup drawing issues

Here is the screenshot mentioned in my report.

[Matt Fago]

Additionally, Safari takes (roughly) 3 times longer than Firefox for the popup to appear. This makes it very frustrating to say the least.

Note that the author of the tool does have a 'dumbed-down' mode without javascript pull-down menus that does work (slowly) in Safari.

Reporter, I installed and tried the popup utility, and don't see the drawing issue you are describing, with latest release of Safari. I did see the issue where just a small yellow square appeared instead of a popup, but when I reloaded the page, the popup rendered correctly.

For me, Safari and Firefox 1.5 took about the same time, a few seconds, to pop up the (ehm) popups. There is lots of network activity for each popup, which I guess is because the script loads the entire linked page before displaying anything.

Sorry, in the last comment I also meant to ask:

Reporter, can you still see the issues in your description of this bug?

[Matt Fago]

It appears the JS tool author set the default for Safari to use the 'dumbed-down' popups I mentioned previously (you should not currently see menus like in the previously attached screenshot).

To recreate the broken behavior it is necessary to add the following line to your monobook.js file on Wikipedia:
popupStructure='menus';

Once I do this, I get the same behavior as originally observed.

As far as the speed is concerned, 'a few seconds' makes the tool useless -- the entire idea is that it is supposed to be a very quick way to browse edits etc.  On my 1GHz 12" powerbook Firefox is nearly instantaneous. Note that the speed concerns are for 'diff' links on the 'Recent Changes' page, not 'normal' page links.  Internet bandwidth certainly plays a part in this, especially for 'normal' page links.

I added the extra javascript line, and I see the speed difference now. Here it takes typically almost a second for Firefox to view a diff popup, and about two seconds for WebKit.

How often do you see the small square box problem and the rendering problems, respectively? I've looked at quite a few popup menus, and at all the diff popups at the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges without seeing any of those issues. Are some pages especially affected, or is there some procedure that always reproduces any of those problems for you?

[Matt Fago]

Do you get the submenus as shown in the screenshot (you may have to clear the cache and reload the page)? I get the rendering issues 99% of the time.

(In reply to comment #7)
> Do you get the submenus as shown in the screenshot (you may have to clear the
> cache and reload the page)? I get the rendering issues 99% of the time.
> 
It appears I only checked in the latest nightly after adding that extra javascript line. Sorry about that.

I can see the rendering issues of the dropdowns now in latest release of Safari, but they don't appear in the latest nightly.

In the latest nightly, the only issue I see is that a popup very seldom just appears as a small yellow box. As I haven't tested as much in Firefox, I don't know if this is actually a bug.

Please download the latest nightly from http://nightly.webkit.org , and see if your issues are fixed there. If you have extensions (other than normal plugins) enabled for Safari, you should disable them before running the nightly, since they are known to cause trouble.

[Matt Fago]

Yes, I can verify that the menu drawing issue is solved. Thanks!!
BTW, is it just me, or are things slightly faster now?

I do still occasionally get the "empty square" -- I'll have to check into this more. Could be timeout issues with the server or something. Perhaps leave this bug open for a bit more?

Thanks again.

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

Closing as WORKSFORME per the above comment.