dictionary.com audio issues

[hazardass]

FF 59.0.1 with latest Flash

Can anyone else play the audio pronunciation for any words on http://www.dictionary.com/? For me it only works for the word of the day on the main page, but when I open the individual page for any word, the audio icon does nothing. Also, another thing that doesn't work on the individual word pages is that clicking on any random word on the page also does nothing (normally it should open the definition of the clicked word).

http://www.thesaurus.com/ works with no issues, but the UI there looks different from http://www.dictionary.com.

When I restart FF in safe mode, it all works. But if I manually disable all extensions in normal mode, and remove any CSS settings, it still doesn't work. What else does Safe mode do besides turning off extensions that makes it work?

No issues with other browsers. Same issue on 2 different computers, Win 7 and Win 10.

Any ideas? Thanks.

[LIMPET235]

For reference...
> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_Mode
or... Help > Re-start with Addons disabled or hold down your Shift key as you click the Firefox short cut..
Do not check any boxes.
This is a fault finding mode.
NB: Be careful of the "Delete all bookmarks except for back-ups" option.

Don't add any extensions or themes until it's working O.K.
If Firefox is O.K. in Safe Mode then it's possibly an extension/theme...etc causing it.
Run Firefox in normal mode & disable them all. Re-start Firefox.
Enable each in turn, or by ½'s, re-starting Firefox each time, till the faulty extension is found.
Either update or un-install it.

See this incomplete list, (Really needs updating.)
> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Problematic_extensions

When in Safe Mode...
* The status of plug-ins is not affected.
* Custom preferences are not affected.
* All extensions are disabled.
* The default theme is used, without a persona.
* userChrome.css and userContent.css are ignored.
* The JIT/Javascript compiler is disabled.
* The default toolbar layout is used.
* Hardware acceleration is disabled.

[hazardass]

Thanks for the tips.

This is getting weirder and weirder. So I finally found a setting that made a difference. My "Tracking Protection" was set to Always in the privacy menu. If I change that to Never or Only in Private Windows, then the dictionary audio works fine.
Here's where things get strange. If I leave tracking protection to always, and then restart with addons disabled, then it works again. So if TP was the issue, why would it work in safe mode with TP enabled?
Does this mean that the issue is actually some combination of TP with some addon in Normal mode, which gets disabled in Safe mode? It can't be because I disabled all extensions manually and it still didn't work with TP on.

[LIMPET235]

Hi,
It's known to "rectify" things after starting in Safe Mode & then restarting Firefox with all extensions enabled.
Possibly the way that extensions etc., are "reloaded" or ?
Answer is not clear as to why this occurs.

[hazardass]

I'm trying to manually turn off all those features you listed that get disabled in Safe mode. I tried disabling the extensions, and I also disabled hardware acceleration, that didn't help. I doubt very much that the toolbar layout has anything to do with this. The only thing I don't know how to disable manually is that JIT/Javascript compiler, and I think it may possibly help because basically all the 'clickable' things on dictionary.com are disabled, not just the audio icons. So it sounds like a script thing maybe, but i'm no expert.

Anyway, do you know how I can disable that compiler manually? Thx.

Oh and could you please confirm that everything works for you on that site, with Tracking protection enabled in normal mode etc.? Again, the issue only happens on individual word pages, not the main page.

[TheVisitor]

Oh and could you please confirm that everything works for you on that site, with Tracking protection enabled in normal mode etc.? Again, the issue only happens on individual word pages, not the main page.

Confirmed, I had to turn off 'tracking protection' to get other pages to announce the pronunciation.

[hazardass]

thank you Visitor! Phew so I wasn't going crazy then

Then I can't use TP because who knows what else it breaks on other websites... Too bad. I wonder if it's a bug.

[therube]

If I leave tracking protection to always, and then restart with addons disabled, then it works again. So if TP was the issue, why would it work in safe mode with TP enabled?

Does Safe Mode disable Tracking Protection?
(KB doesn't say so, though not sure?)

[TheVisitor]

If I leave tracking protection to always, and then restart with addons disabled, then it works again. So if TP was the issue, why would it work in safe mode with TP enabled?

Does Safe Mode disable Tracking Protection?
(KB doesn't say so, though not sure?)

It took less than a minute to test, YES .. Tracking Protection is 'disabled' in safe-mode.

[therube]

How did you test, or where did you look to see?

[TheVisitor]

How did you test, or where did you look to see?

I have 'Tracking Protection' enabled full time. Options->Privacy&Security put a check in the box
With TP enabled you see a shield in the url/navbar

I started the browser in 'safe-mode', no shield was shown, checked the setting in Options, and it was unchecked.

[therube]

Oh, that shield.
Likewise, the Pref seems to be, privacy.donottrackheader.enabled, where I was looking for "tracking".
(Though checking the Pref is not sufficient to determine if TP is enabled or not.)

Well since Safe Mode disables TP, that explains some of what the OP is seeing.

[hazardass]

The actual setting in the preferences doesn't change, and remains set to 'always' after restarting in Safe mode. That's why I thought it didn't disable it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRLY-LS ... e=youtu.be

But it's true that I don't see the shield icon on the page address bar. So it does disabled it then.

OK, then that explains it. Tracking Protection is the culprit here.
The one question that remains is why does it break dictionary.com but it doesn't break, say, http://www.thefreedictionary.com. Does that mean that all the clickable things on dictionary.com (audio icon, word links, etc.) all have some built-in tracking crap attached, or is it a Firefox issue, maybe misinterpreting something?