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Cannot drag anything in browser - icons, tabs, etc.

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  • Last reply by lm108

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I just upgraded to Firefox 12.0 and have found that I can't drag anything anywhere. At first I thought it was a problem with the Menu Editor extension -- I was trying to reposition a menu element just after doing the upgrade from v11.0. In the Menu Editor Options window that can be done by simply clicking and dragging, but it didn't work.

I spent time fooling with that until I realized that other drag-type features don't work. In the order discovered:

  1. Cannot rearrange (drag and drop) tabs.
  2. Can't drag tab off Tab bar to open tab in another window.
  3. Cannot rearrange bookmarks and favicons on Bookmarks toolbar. The Bookmarks toolbar Context menu opens and its commands work.
  4. Can't drag tabs to Bookmarks toolbar or folder.
  5. [Opened Customize window] can't drag items to or from Customize window and can't rearrange or move Navigation toolbar or Add-on bar icons.

There may be more drag-related issues but these are the only ones I can think of and have found. I'm sure if I knew off the top of my head any extension interfaces that accomodate dragging they would fail to work. Basically no elements move when I click on it with the cursor and try to drag. I'm not getting any feedback graphic such as circle with slash.

This may be an extension conflict but before I start toggling numerous ad-ons someone might know if this is a new feature setting I don't know about, which has been the case before when I've upgraded.

I also saw a recent thread opened where the person has a similar problem (but on a Mac -- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/926256?s=can%27t+drag+and+drop&r=11&e=es&as=s). I'm wondering if perhaps there are other items this person also cannot move but hasn't discovered yet, and if that problem and mine might be related.

I just upgraded to Firefox 12.0 and have found that I can't drag anything anywhere. At first I thought it was a problem with the Menu Editor extension -- I was trying to reposition a menu element just after doing the upgrade from v11.0. In the Menu Editor Options window that can be done by simply clicking and dragging, but it didn't work. I spent time fooling with that until I realized that other drag-type features don't work. In the order discovered: # Cannot rearrange (drag and drop) tabs. # Can't drag tab off Tab bar to open tab in another window. # Cannot rearrange bookmarks and favicons on Bookmarks toolbar. The Bookmarks toolbar Context menu opens and its commands work. # Can't drag tabs to Bookmarks toolbar or folder. # [Opened Customize window] can't drag items to or from Customize window and can't rearrange or move Navigation toolbar or Add-on bar icons. There may be more drag-related issues but these are the only ones I can think of and have found. I'm sure if I knew off the top of my head any extension interfaces that accomodate dragging they would fail to work. Basically no elements move when I click on it with the cursor and try to drag. I'm not getting any feedback graphic such as circle with slash. This may be an extension conflict but before I start toggling numerous ad-ons someone might know if this is a new feature setting I don't know about, which has been the case before when I've upgraded. I also saw a recent thread opened where the person has a similar problem (but on a Mac -- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/926256?s=can%27t+drag+and+drop&r=11&e=es&as=s). I'm wondering if perhaps there are other items this person also cannot move but hasn't discovered yet, and if that problem and mine might be related.

Modified by lm108

Chosen solution

After following instructions per the following...

...I determined that neither my theme nor a corrupt localstore.rdf were the cause of my problems.

Then began troubleshooting extensions (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Troubleshooting-extensions-themes?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes).

Hardware Acceleration was eliminated as a cause since it was never activated.

Turns out that just like the Mac user in the thread I linked to above, Torbutton was the cause of the problem. I thought it unlikely just because it seemed so unrelated to how the problem was manifesting.

Although Torbutton was not disabled it was toggled off in the browser, so I considered it "not activated".

This message was posted on the front page of the Torbutton website last spring: "Now that the Tor Browser Bundle includes a patched version of Firefox, and because we don't have enough developer resources to keep up with the accelerated Firefox release schedule, the toggle model of Torbutton is no longer recommended. Users should be using Tor Browser Bundle, not installing Torbutton themselves."

Their "Active Torbutton Tickets" page includes two of the problems I was having as individual bugs, "Torbutton Addon interferes with toolbar buttons for add-ons (including its own)" and "torbutton disables the possibility to drag and save shortcut links".

They go into various reasons they no longer support the button in this blog post (https://blog.torproject.org/blog/toggle-or-not-toggle-end-torbutton). Mainly for security reasons, in part because they cannot keep up with the FF release schedule, and last because users are reporting more and more broken features and incompatibilites with each new release of FF.

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Chosen Solution

After following instructions per the following...

...I determined that neither my theme nor a corrupt localstore.rdf were the cause of my problems.

Then began troubleshooting extensions (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Troubleshooting-extensions-themes?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes).

Hardware Acceleration was eliminated as a cause since it was never activated.

Turns out that just like the Mac user in the thread I linked to above, Torbutton was the cause of the problem. I thought it unlikely just because it seemed so unrelated to how the problem was manifesting.

Although Torbutton was not disabled it was toggled off in the browser, so I considered it "not activated".

This message was posted on the front page of the Torbutton website last spring: "Now that the Tor Browser Bundle includes a patched version of Firefox, and because we don't have enough developer resources to keep up with the accelerated Firefox release schedule, the toggle model of Torbutton is no longer recommended. Users should be using Tor Browser Bundle, not installing Torbutton themselves."

Their "Active Torbutton Tickets" page includes two of the problems I was having as individual bugs, "Torbutton Addon interferes with toolbar buttons for add-ons (including its own)" and "torbutton disables the possibility to drag and save shortcut links".

They go into various reasons they no longer support the button in this blog post (https://blog.torproject.org/blog/toggle-or-not-toggle-end-torbutton). Mainly for security reasons, in part because they cannot keep up with the FF release schedule, and last because users are reporting more and more broken features and incompatibilites with each new release of FF.

Modified by lm108