wierd firefox issue w/ nytimes.com

[Matt Price]

On Tue, 2009-02-24 at 14:36 -0500, Marc Lanctot wrote:
> Matt Price wrote:
> > hey folks
> > 
> > this is a little OT, but since i don't know where else to turn...
> > 
> > i've been having a little trouble with firefox for the last 2 months or
> > so.  this is running ubuntu intrepid, firefox version 3.0.6
> > +nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.10.1 .  At least one site I use a lot,
> > www.nytimes.com, renders very poorly -- I see the top banner and the
> > left column of what should be the main table, but the main body of the
> > site doesn't display at the top -- instead, I find it waaaayyyy down
> > below the very long left-hand column.  and below the first set of
> > stories, there's another loooooooong break, and then the rest of the
> > page.  I've created a new profile, and the new profile does NOT have the
> > same problem, so presumably the issue lies in my Default profile.  But4
> > I've disabled every add-in and wiped the cache without any effect.  Has
> > anyone else ever seen this problem -- and hopefully solved it?  Or if
> > not, any suggestions for a more systematic testing that isn't likely to
> > wreck my firefox setup -- I've done a fair bit of customization and
> > don't want to start from scratch.  anyway, thanks as always,
> > 
> 
> Just a suggestion.. a shot in the dark, really. This is probably a bad 
> thing to do in general.
> 
> Try a recursive copy of all the files in your old profile (under 
> ~/.mozilla/firefox) to the new profile, then try bringing up Firefox 
> with the new profile. It's possible that it's due to a custom setting 
> several versions ago that is stored somewhere outside your profile (but 
> attached to that profile) or an improperly updated file which may be 
> noticed when you bring up the new profile.
> 
> Assuming this even works.. if the problem occurs in the new profile 
> after the copy, then if you have enough patience you can repeat the 
> trial-and-error copying file-by-file to find the culprit. And then try a 
> profile that doesn't have a copy of that file but has everything else.
> 

well, this did work.  the culprit is content-prefs.sqlite, which i guess
stores site-specific preferences which somehow get automatically set
when you visit the site.  I'd really like to be able to just remove the
preferences for nytimes.com, but there's no obvious interface to the
database from within firefox, and i'm not familiar enough with sqlite to
feel comfortable just deleting an entry -- though i guess i probably
could do that and try.  
anyway thanks! 
matt

> Marc
> 
-- 
Matt Price
matt.price-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org
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