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Firefox 79 and Open Street Map

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Senex

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Does anyone else here use Firefox 79 as their main browser, and if so, do they experience any problems when trying to use Open Street Map? On my machine the tiles of large areas of the map simply don't render, making it useless. It's not the classic Firefox lack of memory (I've got 16GB RAM and it was nowhere near all in use.) And it's not an Open Street Map problem because it works perfectly for me on Internet Explorer and MS Edge on the machine on which it doesn't work on Firefox, and it also works perfectly for me on my iPad. I can't find anyone else reporting a similar problem in support forums, blogs, etc, but then this latest Firefox upgrade is only a couple of weeks old, I think.
 
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itfcfan

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I use Firefox and Chrome interchangeably. I just checked OSM on Firefox (v79 on Ubuntu v20), tried zooming in out and out and didn't face any problems (see attached screenshot). So there's nothing affecting *all* Firefox v79 users although that's not to say there isn't a problem affecting a sub-set of users.

In the past I've had occasional problems with "slippy" maps that rely on bitmap tiles (compared to the vector-based maps that Google Maps use) which I think has been down to request timeouts and the number of parallel HTTP requests limited by browsers.

One thing I suggest checking is the browser extensions/plugins you have enabled. Try disabling them all temporarily and retrying. Some extensions can interfere with HTTP requests. Good luck!
 

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najaB

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I don't use Firefox as my main browser, but I do use it quite frequently. I prefer to use the ESR version, you don't get releases as often but it's much more stable.

That said, I just updated to 79 (64-bit on Windows 10) and OSM loads just fine.
 

Senex

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Thanks to both of you for that — mine's also 64-bit and Windows 10, so if it's fine on your machine (najaB) it sounds like some problem at my end. I've tried the obvious remedy of starting Firefox in safe mode to see what happens (having had problems with add-ons causing things not to run right before), but the same problem remains.
 

Baxenden Bank

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I'm using Firefox 79 (64-bit). Open Street Map is generally fine but you can get slowness ie. some map tiles loading slowly and occasionally not loading. I simply assumed it was a download speed problem. I have the same, occasional, problem with Google Aerial.
 

Doctor Fegg

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I've not heard any similar reports and I hang out on an IRC chat channel with the OSM sysadmins for most of the day!

OSM uses tile caches all over the world, and I guess it's possible that (for some unknown reason) you're being resolved to a regional cache server that's under heavy load at the moment. https://tile.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/debug will show you which servers you're hitting (look for "cache server" and "render server"), https://hardware.openstreetmap.org will show you where they are, and https://dns.openstreetmap.org/tile.openstreetmap.org.html will show you which countries are supposed to map to which servers.
 

eoff

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I know that you can get old tiles if they are cached in the browser so perhaps the browser thinks it has already downloaded ones you see as blank. I think a SHIFT reload will start fresh.
 

Crossover

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Alternatively Ctrl + Shift + P (from memory) goes Private and I believe won’t use the cache (or at least save to it)

If you want absolutely belt and braces having tried a ‘hard refresh’ but don’t necessarily want to nuke all the cache etc permanently, the settings are saved in %AppData%. You should be able to rename the Mozilla folder to, say Mozilla.old and then launch the browser again which should create everything from scratch. After you should be able to remove the new Mozilla folder (after closing the app) and rename the renamed folder back again. I should state this is from memory - I do something like this with a few applications but it’s been a while I’ve had to do so with Firefox
 

Doctor Fegg

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I've asked around and it's probably a DNS issue. Firefox 79 now uses DNS over HTTPS. The way they've implemented this makes it difficult for OSM to work out where in the world you're accessing the site from. Consequently, you might get assigned to a tile server that's not optimal. If you change Firefox's settings to use traditional DNS then it should be fine again.
 

Senex

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Thanks for all the further advice. The servers I appear to be using are both in London (Cache: saphira, Tile: ysera), so they seem to be the appropriate ones. I've flushed the cache on Firefox and deleted its cookies, but that doesn't help. Neither does shift and a reload. And, as I said, starting and safe mode and so loading without any add-ins doesn't make any difference. In every case I see the whole map at very small scale, and then begin to lose large chunks as I magnify — see the attached screen-shot of server locations. However, if I open a private window and open OSM that way, it works perfectly! I didn't know Firefox 79 had brought in any address changes (and thanks Doctor Fegg for asking around about it) and am not sure what to do to revert to traditional DNS, and wouldn't that be a blunt instrument to sort out one site when that's the only one (apparently) with difficulties?
OSM servers.jpg
 

Baxenden Bank

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I followed the instructions at #6
My OSM looks at Cache: toothless (Jump Networks, London) and Render: ysera
If that's any help!
 

najaB

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am not sure what to do to revert to traditional DNS, and wouldn't that be a blunt instrument to sort out one site when that's the only one (apparently) with difficulties?
There are other reasons to use traditional DNS rather than DNS over HTTPS. It is a standard being driven by Google and Mozilla over the objections of pretty much everyone else in the industry.
 

etr221

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I use FF 79 with Windows 10 (Pro, 1909), OSM using Cache: saphira, Tile: ysera, and haven't noticed any real problem (sometimes a noticeable delay, but its a 'Where is it? OK here it is' sort of time - a second at most - an indication of fast broaod band internet is)
 
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