Intermittently NewsBlur opens stories in the current window instead of a new tab or window

I’m in Firefox 34.0 on Mac OS X but this has been happening for a while… when I click a story in the preview, instead of opening in a new tab it replaces the current window with the story, losing NewsBlur in the process. When I’m done reading, I close the tab and everything’s gone…

It’s intermittent and I don’t know the pattern that causes it yet. This didn’t used to happen. Is this a NewsBlur bug? Firefox? Some extension I’m running in FF? Help would be appreciated… 19 out of 20 stories, clicking the story opens a new tab, I read it, close it, and continue browsing stories. Then it opens in the same window and I have to start all over again…

Thanks,
Mike

2 Likes

Well here’s a good way to figure out if it’s NewsBlur. If you can remember the link that caused NewsBlur to open the story in the same window, try finding it again. If it happens once, it’ll happen again. Otherwise, I would blame FF.

It’s fairly random. In fact, after NewsBlur opens the story in the same window (instead of a new window) I can hit the browser’s back button, click the same story again, and have it work correctly the second time.

If there’s something I can do to trace this issue to its root cause, I’d appreciate the help. Just saying “must be Firefox” isn’t going to solve the problem, since a lot of users are in Firefox.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Thanks,
Mike

Sure, can you post a screenshot of all of your extensions?

Sure… not sure why a screenshot instead of a list, but why not? :slight_smile:

If there is specific error console output I should try to collect, let me know… and thanks for any help you can provide.

In fact, just for the sake of discussion, I’ll paste in the last lines in the Firefox browser console (Tools > Web Developer > Browser Console) as I clicked a Slashdot story that opened in the entire browser window instead of opening in a new window. Hope something promising is shown here…

 common.js:132
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:105
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:239
Blocked loading mixed active content "[http://cdn.taboola.com/libtrc/slashdot/loader.js"Learn More] original_story:269
Loading mixed (insecure) display content on a secure page "[http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/encryption_64.png"Learn More] slashdot
Loading mixed (insecure) display content on a secure page "[http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/opensource_64.png"Learn More] slashdot
Loading mixed (insecure) display content on a secure page "[http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/security_64.png"Learn More] slashdot
Loading mixed (insecure) display content on a secure page "[http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/software_64.png"Learn More] slashdot
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:1007
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:1461
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:1750
ReferenceError: D2 is not defined original_story:1900
Array [“url”, “/rss_feeds/original_story?story_hash=1198:04f2e2”] common.js:1691
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:105
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:239
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:1007
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:1471
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:1758
ReferenceError: D2 is not defined original_story:1908
ReferenceError: D2 is not defined original_story:3348
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:3406
ReferenceError: Slash is not defined original_story:3479
ReferenceError: D2 is not defined original_story:3493
ReferenceError: COMSCORE is not defined original_story:3566
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:3613
Array [“correct?”, Object, 22] common.js:1693
Array [“show_stories_error”, Object] common.js:199
Array [“url”, “/rss_feeds/original_story?story_hash=1198:1fdf2c”] common.js:1691
Loading mixed (insecure) display content on a secure page "[http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/space_64.png"Learn More] slashdot
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:105
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:239
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:1007
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:1461
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:1750
ReferenceError: D2 is not defined original_story:1900
ReferenceError: D2 is not defined original_story:4257
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:4385
ReferenceError: Slash is not defined original_story:4458
ReferenceError: D2 is not defined original_story:4472
ReferenceError: COMSCORE is not defined original_story:4545
Loading mixed (insecure) display content on a secure page "[http://slashdot.org/images/js.gif?485"Learn More] original_story:4582
ReferenceError: $ is not defined original_story:4592
Array [“correct?”, Object, 22] common.js:1693
Array [“show_stories_error”, Object] common.js:199
The connection to wss://newsblur.com/socket.io/1/websocket/hKSFgsEKAL2Z8XD0HyTz was interrupted while the page was loading. common.js:766
Array [“Lost connection to real-time pubsub. Falling back to polling.”] common.js:199
Array [“Setting refresh interval to every 80 seconds.”] common.js:199
Array [“Forcing socket disconnection…”, Object] common.js:1199
syntax error why-arent-we-using-ssh-for-everything:1

OK, I took the time to test Firefox add-ons against this problem (time consuming only because it’s an intermittent bug), but I narrowed it down. If I disable Ghostery, all links and article headers open in a new window just the way they’re supposed to.

So I found the culprit… Ghostery. But I’d rather not disable it entirely… is there any way to identify exactly which widget/tracker/etc. that Ghostery is blocking that Newsblur depends on?

If I can identify the right tracker to allow, I can keep using Ghostery generally and not see this Newsblur bug.

Thanks,
Mike

Interesting. This is not the first time I’ve heard that Ghostery causes issues on NewsBlur. Really, it’s just those two that I’ve heard cause 100% of extension-based issues. And Adblock is about 98%.

If you can figure out which piece of Ghostery is causing this, I can add it to the FAQ for other users. And perhaps even email them about it.