I've been having a problem with Firefox the last few days. Instead of the minimize, maximize, and close boxes in the upper right hand corner, I only see a little spinning circle there, as if something Firefox is still processing something. Has anyone had this or know how to fix it? I can't tell if it's actually a glitch or my settings are just wrong. Thanks.

P.S. I can post a screenshot if anyone doesn't know what I mean.

I don't get very well what do you mean.

Firefox has a small circle in the upper right corner with acts as you describe. However, that has nothing to do with the max/min/close buttons that you can see (or can't see, in your case) in the window frame.

Those are part of your window manager, and are not handled by firefox. They are as well on a separate frame. The circle is inside firefox, the window buttons are outside the firefox area, in the window frame.

So, whatever you are looking for I think that it has to do with some configuration in your window manager and not firefox.

The close box widget, etc. are controlled by your window manager, and are not part of FF itself.

Is your FF window maximized? Has the entire window titlebar disappeared? The only thing I can think of that would hide the titlebar is if you've accidentally turned on the full-screen mode. Toggling F11 should bring it back to normal in that case.

If it's not full-screen mode, then you've probably got something going on with your window manager.

I think David the H. hit the problem.

I am having the same problem since updating to Ubuntu 8.10, I just haven't taken any time to try to find out why as it does not really bother me too much. Anyway, for me it is only happening with Firefox--no other programs. It is not that Firefox is started in fullscreen though (I do not think). When firefox is in full screen mode you can move the cursor to the top and still get the close buttons--that doesn't happen in this situation, also in Firefox fullscreen mode you do not have the menu bar at the top but since updating to Ubuntu 8.10 I have the menu bar just not the title bar. To get the title bar back I have to hit F11 to go to fullscreen and then F11 again to leave fullscreen-- then the title bar reappears with the close/minimize/maximize buttons.

When updating to Ubuntu 8.10 it installed the Ubuntu Firefox Modification extension which I thought was probably causing the issue but I disabled that and it does not solve the problem. I have also tried disabling all extensions to see if maybe it was some extension causing the issue but that did not help. Anyway, when I have time I will dig into it further going through settings in Firefox and windows manager--if I find a solution before someone else does I will post it here.

George

What version of firefox were you using in the previous version of ubuntu and which one are you using now?

It must be metacity (the gnome wm) messing something up. But I really can't guess what. I don't know much about metacity and it's not very configurable, so if it's a wm issues it might be hard to troubleshoot. Firefox is very messy about how it set the properties for its windows. Maybe it's setting some wrong property that makes metacity think that ff is on a trasient window, an that's why it doesn't put the decoration. Since downgrading gnome is not an option, I guess that you might be able to downgrade (or upgrade) firefox, and see if that helps at all.

However, at this point, you seem to be not the only one having trouble with ubuntu 8.10

I use Compiz for my WM, so I just changed it to metacity and that solves the problem. If it starts to bug me then I will look through the compiz settings and see if I can find what is causing it. But I think that pretty much confirms that the problem is with the WM.

To the OP: are you using the same setup-- Distro Ubuntu 8.10 with Compiz as your WM? If so try to switch to metacity to see if the resolves the problem. To switch WM hit F2 and enter:
To switch back to compiz:
That still doesn't resolve the problem but at least it gives a start for where to look.

I tinkered around until I found the solution. In Compiz Setting Manager/Utilities/Workarounds I disabled Legacy Fullscreen Support. This worked for me, hopefully it will work for others.

hi all. i'm using the latest version of firefox i.e 3.0.2 on fedora 9 [2.6.26.6 kernel] and 've noticed a weird problem, it happens at least once a day, it just vanishes as if some one explicitly killed the process, i'm not able to figure out whats the problem, has anyone faced similar problems ? can anyon let me know the fix...it really freaks me .... one more problem is that in the begining it starts in offline mode, evertime i've to change that but it seems that this option never gets stored to corresponding config file, or something similar. do help me out...
thank you very much.

Firefox likes to crash from time to time, that's nothing new. Disable all the extensions, try uninstalling them, and start firefox from a terminal windows (that way, if it crashes you might get some output there).

You could try to save your bookmarks and the things you value the most, and the move out of scope the ~/.mozilla/ dir to any other locaiton. Try to start FF with a clean config and see if the problems persist. If they are gone, then there might be something odd in your config, or in some of your extensions.

I got the same problem on FireFox too. It happen to me when I try to move the FireFox Windows with hold down ALT key and drag windows to move it. You will loss the title bar and can not move windows.I think it is the Firefox bug.

Solution is to set it full screen mode with menu View>Full Screen then click Restore button on top right hand side. Your title bar will return.

Yes I saw the 3 buttons appear in full screen mode. Another workaround which works is to install the Firefox add on MinimizeToTray revived (MinTrayR) 1.0.1 then with Customize place the add the button to the toolbar.
Moshe