That’s a switch! Waterfox Classic good, Firefox bad

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For about the last week, I have been unable to get “Pay with Paypal” to work in Firefox. I’m using version 91.0.2, and every time I try, the Paypal page keeps looping around, asking me to confirm the payment, and when I do, it acts as if I hit “reload.”

I’ve tried disabling all addons, using a new profile, disabling the internal tracking protection, but it just does the same thing every time.

Next, I tried Waterfox G3. It’s based on Firefox ESR 78, I believe, which is still very much a supported browser. Same results, same steps taken to try to get it to work, and the same results once again.

So I tried Waterfox Classic next. It worked fine.

I stopped using Waterfox Classic as my main browser because it was failing to work with more and more pages. These failures often looked just like the one with Paypal, only this time it was modern Firefox that failed and WF Classic that came through.

It’s odd, but I haven’t been able to find any recent references to this issue on the web. I found lots of old (and by now, irrelevant) references to Paypal issues in Firefox, but I would think that if everyone was seeing this failure in Firefox, I’d see something about it on the web.

Maybe it’s just Firefox in Linux that is not working. I am not sure why that would be… it certainly used to work, and cross-platform browsers should be (and generally are) the same on the various platforms. I did try spoofing the useragent string to Chrome on Windows 10, and it failed with that too. I’d fire up the Windows VM and give it a try, but since the failure occurs at the last stage in paying someone, doing that would involve… well, paying someone, and I don’t have any need for that now that the previous transaction went through on Waterfox Classic. Next time I need to do that, I will give it a try.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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Ascaris, I have been using Waterfox for several years already, since IE 11 became destined to die in a few more years. That was the WF original browser, that then became the “Classic” one, but “Classic” has not been maintained too well and people are increasingly having trouble accessing with it more and more Web sites many use and use often: such as those of Amazon and HBO that stream movies, just to give one example. This is recent news, by the way.

If you actually wanted to switch to Waterfox, I would suggest checking out Waterfox “Current” (a.k.a “G3”) first, as it still works fine pretty much everywhere on the Web where  the site owner has not decreed that only FireFox and Chrome are welcome there. A page that is opend in a new tab may not look like much, but they have numerous little tiles mostly blank, for one to kick out things already there one does not like and put instead there, and in the blank ones, whatever one likes.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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I know well about Waterfox Classic. I used that from the release of Firefox 56 until some time ago, when I switched to Firefox proper because of the growing failures of Waterfox Classic.

Waterfox G3 failed in the Paypal test too. No plans to switch anything at present!

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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I have been paying for purchases through PayPal recently using Waterfox “Current” (G3): no problems. In fact, no problems at all with it, except for the sites that insist than one uses Chrome or FF, both of which I have and avoid using as much as possible, unless needs must. If one has issues using G3, that might not be coming from G3. Or maybe for people using Windows or Linux their version of G3 is not as sound as that for Macs.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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OscarCP wrote:

In fact, no problems at all with it, except for the sites that insist than one uses Chrome or FF, both of which I have and avoid using as much as possible, unless needs must.

Don’t let that stop you. Use whatever browser you want… we’ve already discussed how to do that in other threads. Spoof the useragent!

OscarCP wrote:

If one has issues using G3, that might not be coming from G3. Or maybe for people using Windows or Linux their version of G3 is not as sound as that for Macs.

Not just Waterfox G3, but Firefox 91 as well (but only on Linux; Windows was not a part of this). It would not mean they’re not as sound as on the Mac, but that there is something different… which would require further investigation.

Firefox and Waterfox G3 behaved the same way on my PCs (both of my Dell laptops, one of which is also called G3), which is to say that Paypal wasn’t working with them.

I tried Firefox with a brand new profile as well (always one of the first steps in troubleshooting), and it didn’t work. Waterfox Classic, though, worked fine (on the Dell G3; it’s not installed on the XPS).

I tried Paypal on another site today, and it worked in Firefox. I had it fail on two different sites before with the same Firefox installation and profile.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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Not encountered any recent or past issues with PayPal using Firefox ESR 78.14 on LM20.2/20.1/20.0 nor Windows 7 ESR 78.13 and previous versions for both systems.
I’d be looking at how firefox deals with cookies and what mitigations (intentional or not) are in place that may have been overlooked; check settings (especially sub-settings) in cookie management, and about:config

“It’s odd, but I haven’t been able to find any recent references to this issue on the web.”
indeed

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[Ascaris]

I created a brand new profile to test it. It had all of the default settings.

“It’s odd, but I haven’t been able to find any recent references to this issue on the web.”
indeed

I am not sure if you intended that as facetious or not, but seldom do I have a problem that I can’t find mentioned on the web from someone else having had it. It may not have the answer, but at least there’s someone else out there seeing it.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Ascaris. Reason: Added the stuff beyond the first line

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Ascaris wrote:

I tried Paypal on another site today, and it worked in Firefox. I had it fail on two different sites before with the same Firefox installation and profile.

Hmmm. Maybe there is a race/locking condition between FF processes? (Looping to ‘reload’.)
Check your number of FF tasks in Task Manager? See here. Basically:
Tools > Options > General > Performance > uncheck “Use recommended … “.

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