Unclosable Seamonkey Window

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vtpup
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Unclosable Seamonkey Window

#1 Post by vtpup »

Very occasionally I get a Seamonkey window that is located so high on the screen that I can't see the upper edge toolbar containing the close and minimize tools.

The window cannot be moved or reduced by grabbing the borders. This window also stays on top of the desktop window order, making it difficult to see any other remedial windows - htop for instance.

I've learned how to deal with this -- it won't respond to any graphical "close" method, but I usually invoke Htop, then to make it visible above the rogue Seamonkey window, I hit Alt and Tab together. Once in Htop I highlight the Seamonkey entry, and hit f9 and enter to kill.

Then if I re-open Seamonkey it usually throws an error message indicating it wasn't shutdown properly last time, and asking if I want to restore the old session, or start a new one. If I choose start a new one, all is well.

I can't see any consistency in when this occurs, and it isn't very frequent.

I'm currently running Tahrpup 6.0 with Tahrfix 8 on an Acer Aspire 5349 and Seamonkey 2.48. I run flashblock, adblock, and noscript extensions, and I allow limited web scripts temporarily only on an as needed basis. Java is not onboard.

My wife sees the same occasional behavior on a later Acer laptop, running the same Tahrpup and and Seamonkey versions.

Does anyone have an explanation? Or is anyone else experiencing this same behavior?
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#2 Post by 8Geee »

Best idea I have is that the default size of the Browser windoow is too large. Manually shrink it using the scaling box in upper right of screen (middle of three boxes).

You can also try using ALT key with left mouse to drag the position of the window such that you can shrink it.

Should be something else in about:config or Edit --> Preferences.

Edit*** found them! Open about:config and accept. Then in the search bar type dom.disable_window
After that make sure each item on the list is True (double click the item if False).
Close the Browser, and Restart the Graphical Server (or Restart X) located in menu --> Shutdown.
That should do it. Now the websites won't play with your screen size.

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vtpup
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#3 Post by vtpup »

Thanks 8gee for the quick reply.

Like I said, you can't shrink the rogue window, or move it,. Actually it isn't full screen to start with. The shrink box is not visible, and normal operations like grabbing a margin to shrink don't work.

Another weirdness is that it is on top of other windows, and appears in all three desktops if I switch them.

Sometimes I think it behaves more like a screen image affect than an actual window. I think some of the Seamonkey functions also don't work. But some do. Weird. I'll give a fuller description of what works and doesn't next time it happens.

I believe I've tried ALT right clicking the window to move the window but that has been ineffective. I have also right clicked on the lower taskbar Seamonkey tab to bring up its window options, but that doesn't work either. Can't remember for sure, but will try it and report specifics next time it happens.

However, thanks very much for the about:config window flags. I will try that if the all else fails.

I'd still like to know why this happens, also.
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#4 Post by bigpup »

I believe I've tried ALT right clicking the window to move the window
It is place mouse pointer someplace on the window.
alt hold + left click hold and the mouse pointer changes to crossed arrows.
Move the mouse to move the window.
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mikeslr
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Does your keyboard have a "Windows" Key?

#5 Post by mikeslr »

Hi vtpup,

Haven't had the problem. But your post made me curious about how to get Seamonkey to resize without being able to access the top panel.

My keyboard has "Window" Keys on the lowest row: Spacebar in the center, Atl-keys on each side of the Spacebar, then "Window" Keys on the other side of the Alt-keys.

Holding down either Window Key, while Right-Clicking Seamonkey's bottom panel will generate a popup menu, one of whose options include "Resize", "Move" and "Close".

I'm posting from chrome since selecting "Close", worked. :lol:

Re-opened Seamonkey. The Windows-Right-Click also generates the above menu from the Main Window, and any panel which appears at the Top.

Pressing the F10 Key generated a drop down menu with a "Quit" option, but this was from Seamonkey's Top panel, so I don't know if that will work if that panel was "off-screen."

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#6 Post by tallboy »

mikeslr wrote:Holding down either Window Key, while Right-Clicking Seamonkey's bottom panel will generate a popup menu, one of whose options include "Resize", "Move" and "Close".
You can also chose Maximize-y in the same menu to keep the max window hight within the the visible desktop.

I have 4 virtual desktops in my tray at the bottom of my screen. When I right-click on one of program windows in the tray, I can move it to another desktop, or just move it down to reach the buttons in the real window.
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#7 Post by vtpup »

Thanks guys, I haven't had a recurrence yet, but as I said, this "window" isn't a normal window and doesn't respond to most normal commands, like "close" -- it's not just that it is located too high.

Also note it appears on all desktops simultaneously, and it is "always on top" of the viewing order. So far, the only thing I can do is kill the entire seamonkey process.

As soon as it happens again, I'll report back what each of your suggestions do, I don't want to project without trying each one. I should say I'm well familiar with normal windows manipulations, and this isn't normal.
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#8 Post by vtpup »

Okay, it just happened again, and I can write down here what I saw, and tried:

Two desktop instances of Seamonkey actually opened. A normal appearing one, and on top of that, the "rogue" Seamonkey version.

The rogue version has a hidden upper window bar (the one that has the minimize, full screen, and close icons in the upper right corner.

The "File Edit View Go Bookmarks Tools Window Help" bar just below that IS visible, BUT is non-functional. Clicking on any of those tools does nothing.

Left, or right clicking, using the "Window" button, suggestions posed by you guys earlier has no effect on this upper rogue window.

Oddly a few things DO work with it. I can grab the lower right corner and resize the window. However, I cannot move it. I can use the scrollbars to move website contents up and down.

I can also bring up a menu for "Sent To, Stick, Shade Restore | Kill and Close" if I go to the bottom taskbar of my screen and Right click on the Seamonkey tab.

HOWEVER, clicking on "Close" in that menu closes the first (and proper performing) instance of Seamonkey, under the rogue window, but does not get rid of top window, which is the problem.

The tab on the lower taskbar disappears with the closure. There is no way subsequently to open the above "Send to.....etc" menu. Seamonkey continues to appear in the list of active processes in the Htop list. If I select it, hit F9 to kill it and hit ENTER to accept, the rogue window is properly killed.

I had to actually do that to type this report, so I couldn't test things further.

It was not possible to use the Tools menu to shut down extensions and addons. The entire Tools choice was unresponsive.
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#9 Post by norgo »

I had this problem under usage of a little bit outdated Firefox.
most probably the same in your case
the solution very simple ( in my case ) => press F11 key
and the stubborn window should end the full screen mode.

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#10 Post by tallboy »

Esc?
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#11 Post by vtpup »

Thanks guys, I'll try the F11 suggestion next time it happens, but I have my doubts. For one thing, the window is NOT full screen to begin with. It's a reduced size already, with its upper window bar off-screen.

And in general it does not respond to any commands, other than being able to scroll it, or re-size it.

This is not a normal window, as it appears in ALL 3 desktops simultaneously. And it cannot be moved or closed.

I'll let you know if F11 does anything.....


ps. not sure what ESC could do to change things...
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#12 Post by vtpup »

Just upgraded to Seamonkey 2.49.4. We'll see if this changes anything. Unfortunately if it works it will be take time to find out since this was a spotty occurrence before.
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#13 Post by vtpup »

Well, I didn't have to wait long -- just happened again.

1.) Upgrading to Seamonkey 2.49.4 does NOT prevent it from happening.

2.) I tried F11 -- it did not close the window. It did have an effect however, it made all actions inside the window freeze. In other words, I could scroll inside the window, or enlarge or reduce the window before hitting F11, but not after.

I checked all 3 desktops, and as usual the rogue Seamonkey window was present in all of them.

I have never been able to reproduce this problem by steps. It always seems to happen at irregular intervals. However this time I did notice that I opened Seamonkey Mail BEFORE I opened the browser, and everything seemed normal there.

When I opened the browser, the problem appeared, with a Seamonkey Mail window behind the rogue browser window. I could close out the Mail window, but not the rogue browser window. When I went to Htop to look at processes, I saw that Seamonkey -mail was still listed as active. When I killed that the rogue window disappeared.
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#14 Post by norgo »

@vtpup

you wrote that you are using Tahrpup 6.0
because this is an older version of Tahrpup my first question
what version of seamonkey you are using (gtk 2 or 3) and where from you got it ?
All dependencies okay ?
Is this version build for your distribution / version ?

Unfortunately your reported issue is not reproduceable and doesn't help us along.
You could launch seamonkey via console to get some output in case of trouble.

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#15 Post by vtpup »

Norgo, It is Tahrpup 6.0, upgraded to 6.0.5 via the Tahrpup upgrade utility.

The present Seamonkey version is 2.49.4, obtained directly from Mozilla.
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#16 Post by norgo »

to use applications built on a different system is generally not recommendable.

Today I downloaded SM 2.49.4 from seamonkey homepage for testing under Tahrpup 6.0.5.
After installation of some dependencies SM worked under Tahrpup without hanging or freezing.( tested for 3 hours )
The downloaded version has crash-reporter built-in, so you could look for saved crash reports.
type following command into address line: about:crashes
maybe this helps along.

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#17 Post by tallboy »

vtpup, using top or htop, can you see if you have one or two instances of the browser running?
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#18 Post by vtpup »

Thank you both.

Tallboy, there was only one instance of Seamonkey in htop, but multiple threads, which I understand is normal behavior.

Norgo, I'm not sure what you mean about using applications built on a different system. As I said, the current version of Seamonkey I'm using is the tarred version supplied by Mozilla for Linux. Not a specific puppy .pet or sfs. Previously I used Seamonkeys' auto upgrade for the last couple years to get from Tahrpup's earlier distributed version to 2.48.

But at 2.48 auto-upgrade stopped working and Mozilla required re-installing from scratch by its users. BTW the rogue window problem started previous to 2.48. It happened very occasionally for several months.

I've been using Seamonkey intensively for 8 years from Puppy 4.11 through multiple puplet versions, on many computers and not had any problems with that browser until this recent odd behavior.

After trying multiple solutions proposed here with no real effect (though grateful for those suggestions) a few days ago I removed most all extensions.

These included Adblock Plus, and a couple others bundled by Tahrpup's creators (DOM Inspector, Chatzilla) which I have never used. I left No-script in place, since I routinely block unwanted scripts when web surfing.

I have not had a recurrence of the problem since, so suspecting that the problem is caused by either an interaction between extensions, or a single extension itself. I decided to also remove No-script, and then install each extension in a new version back gradually one by one over a week, to test.

Unfortunately, that turned out not to be possible. NONE of the extensions I used to use are now available for Seamonkey 2.49.4.

The most important to me are No-script, and Ad-block -- though I could have lived without that last one if had been the culprit.

These extensions ARE available for Firefox. So I cannot restore to the state my browser used to be if I stay with Seamonkey, which I vastly prefer to Firefox and Thunderbird. But without those critical extensions, I'm no longer comfortable running Seamonkey, so all of the attempts to find out what is wrong are now moot.

I'm forced to switch to Firefox and Thunderbird. I think that's very unfortunate, but nothing I can do about it.

I appreciate the help people have tried to provide here. My conclusion to this issue is that it was probably related to important extensions being incompatible with Seamonkey's recent automatic upgrades, and reinstalling the latest version of Seamonkey was not a solution because those extensions are not available for it.

Bummer.
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#19 Post by norgo »

@vtpup

general an application should become compiled at the same OS and version as it is made for.
Why ?
Applications often have a lot of dependencies and are working only if all needed deps are present and located in the expected path.
Otherwise the application won't work or works faulty.
If needed deps are installable afterward you are lucky.
Missing or too low version of important system libs prevent application to work ( and nothing you can do ) although app is build for linux.
So it's recommended to use only apps which are made for your system.

If a desired application isn't to obtain via PPM or other internet sources you could ask for it in section ( REQUESTS ) in our forum
There are plenty of Tahrpup user and developer.

It's a good way to test one after one addon/extension to find the culprit for the strange behave of your SM version.
You are right, version 10.x of No-script is not compatible to SM 2.49.4, but version 5.1.9 should work.

Please let us know if you found out what addon was to blame for SM misbehave and your experiences
thank you

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#20 Post by vtpup »

Thanks, Norgo, I do understand about dependencies, and have actually packaged .pets in the past myself. I'm fairly confident that there are no missing or faulty dependencies for Seamonkey 2.49.4, and remember, a prior version number which was not installed from Mozilla also showed this same problem.

I'm not saying "impossible" to your suggestion -- anything is possible, and I've been wrong enough times in my life to know not to be overly confident!. But my guess, at present the most likely culprit is an extension.

I have 2.49.4 now working with Noscript 5. and will use that for testing. I have no other extensions enabled so far. If that works for awhile, I will try adding Adblock plus (which is my guess as the problem) and then see what happens. Then I will gradually add the other minor extensions that were running when I observed the problem before.

Finally I will also reinstall Tahrpup 6.05 if those fail to locate the problem, as suggested to me privately.
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[color=blue]Acer R11 and C720 Chromebks Bionicpup64[/color]
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