Problems with Washington Post sessions under 80.0.1

Discussion of bugs in Mozilla Firefox
Post Reply
dzillag
Posts: 44
Joined: October 17th, 2011, 2:52 pm

Problems with Washington Post sessions under 80.0.1

Post by dzillag »

I'm a paid Washington Post subscriber, billed through my Amazon account, and read several Post articles each day.

Two days ago, hours after updating to 80.0.1, I started having problems reading articles. Though logged in to my Post account, it would lock me out of reading the articles unless I cleared my cache and cookies, but even then, I could only read the small number of "free" articles allowed.

I called the Post today, and the rep made me sign in on Chrome, which I'd never done. I doubt I've spent more than 60 minutes in my life using Chrome. But everything worked.

Back to Firefox, and same problems.

I can't describe the problem in more detail. Just that prior to 80.0.1 I had no problems, and since 80.0.1, the Post tries to force me to sign in, even when I'm signed in, then won't accept my signin through Amazon. And it worked in Chrome. And I want it to work properly in Firefox.

Suggestions?
User avatar
DanRaisch
Moderator
Posts: 127185
Joined: September 23rd, 2004, 8:57 pm
Location: Somewhere on the right coast

Re: Problems with Washington Post sessions under 80.0.1

Post by DanRaisch »

Have you tried starting the program in Mozilla Safe Mode? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode
User avatar
therube
Posts: 21698
Joined: March 10th, 2004, 9:59 pm
Location: Maryland USA

Re: Problems with Washington Post sessions under 80.0.1

Post by therube »

I would test in a new, clean Profile.

If that still doesn't work (& assuming that 80.0.0 did) I'd put in 80.0.0 (disable updating) & confirm that it still works. If so, then maybe the changes... ?
Fire 750, bring back 250.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19) Gecko/20110420 SeaMonkey/2.0.14 Pinball CopyURL+ FetchTextURL FlashGot NoScript
dzillag
Posts: 44
Joined: October 17th, 2011, 2:52 pm

Re: Problems with Washington Post sessions under 80.0.1

Post by dzillag »

I don't know how well I "solved" this, but I added an email login to my Post subscription - I'd been logging in through Amazon before - and this seems to have fixed the problem.

Also, the problem was on my work computer, while my home computer, also Windows 10, also FF 80.0.1, was not having the problem.

Still murky as to why it happened, but since it's not happening now, I'll be content with that.
dzillag
Posts: 44
Joined: October 17th, 2011, 2:52 pm

Re: Problems with Washington Post sessions under 80.0.1

Post by dzillag »

We're six weeks since I last posted, and actually nothing has solved this problem. Rolling back to an earlier version didn't. I'm up to 81.0.3 and nothing has worked. Signing in using the correct credentials doesn't work. Safe mode doesn't fix it. My wife, on a different computer, has this problem too with Firefox.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... ll-matter/ is one article with which I have this problem today.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.html had the problem yesterday and works fine now.

It appears that the problem occurs only with current national news stories (and, again, a small minority of them - most open fine). I can't get this to happen with sports or features or entertainment stories.

I have tried working with the Post itself on this and gotten useless boilerplate answers (clear cache and cookies, sign out and sign back in, etc.). Other times, they told me to "just use a different browser." Firefox wasn't what it once was, but I don't want to change browsers just to read news - and yes, all these articles open properly in Edge and Chrome though not opening in Firefox.

Hoping someone can offer up suggestions here, as this community knows Firefox more than the Post's customer service department does.
John Liebson
Posts: 6920
Joined: July 29th, 2003, 1:09 pm

Re: Problems with Washington Post sessions under 80.0.1

Post by John Liebson »

This is not overly likely to help you: I have encountered no WaPo problems up to trying the one you just reported. This is with Windows 10 Pro version 1909 up-to-date as of last Tuesday and with Fx 81.0.2. I suspect that the suggestion of trying a new Fx profile would be the best way for you to see if you can find/fix the problem, rather than wasting time with meaningless so-called tech support.

I had to reply to an email about a problem I had reported last week, buy asking the respondent if he had even bothered to read what I had reported, which got me a great deal of further uselessness in the form of no further correspondence from the one who could apparently not be bothered to be of any help.
User avatar
therube
Posts: 21698
Joined: March 10th, 2004, 9:59 pm
Location: Maryland USA

Re: Problems with Washington Post sessions under 80.0.1

Post by therube »

I would test in a new, clean Profile.
Find an article that fails in your current Profile.

Create a new, clean Profile - make no changes, then log into Washington Post, then go & see if that same article again fails?
Fire 750, bring back 250.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19) Gecko/20110420 SeaMonkey/2.0.14 Pinball CopyURL+ FetchTextURL FlashGot NoScript
Post Reply