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window shrinks up

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When I need to reply or compose an e-mail message, a pop up window appears so I can begin composing the message. This window recently shrinks upwards and cannot be resized. It stays at the top of the screen and when I try to resize it, it automatically begins to shrink upwards into this long skinny rectangular shape. I can see the entire window if I hold the mouse down when I expand it, but once I let go of the mouse, it shrinks upwards again. This problem does not happen in Internet Explorer. I have no add ons, extensions, I have restarted the computer, uninstall firefox, start in safe mode (still happens), and run without add ons. Nothing seems to work.

When I need to reply or compose an e-mail message, a pop up window appears so I can begin composing the message. This window recently shrinks upwards and cannot be resized. It stays at the top of the screen and when I try to resize it, it automatically begins to shrink upwards into this long skinny rectangular shape. I can see the entire window if I hold the mouse down when I expand it, but once I let go of the mouse, it shrinks upwards again. This problem does not happen in Internet Explorer. I have no add ons, extensions, I have restarted the computer, uninstall firefox, start in safe mode (still happens), and run without add ons. Nothing seems to work.

All Replies (4)

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That's really, really odd.

When you tested in Safe Mode, do you mean Windows' Safe Mode, or Firefox's Safe Mode?

If you double-click the title bar of the window to maximize it, will it stay maximized? Obviously not a solution, but perhaps a workaround for now.


In case you have tried this:

When you have a problem with one particular site, a good "first thing to try" is clearing your Firefox cache and deleting your saved cookies for the site.

(1) Bypass Firefox's Cache

Use Ctrl+Shift+r to reload the page fresh from the server.

Alternately, you also can clear Firefox's cache completely using:

"3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Options > Advanced

On the Network mini-tab > Cached Web Content : "Clear Now"

If you have a large hard drive, this might take a few minutes.

(2) Remove the site's cookies (save any pending work first). While viewing a page on the site, try either:

  • right-click and choose View Page Info > Security > "View Cookies"
  • (menu bar) Tools > Page Info > Security > "View Cookies"

In the dialog that opens, you can remove the site's cookies individually.

Then try reloading the page. Does that help?

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Are you running SmarterMail or other SmarterTools? It displays this behavior under Firefox 31.0.

So far the only workarounds I've found are to either use a different browser or roll Firefox back to v30.0. While the suggestions above are valuable, none of them will help with this issue.

There is a SmarterMail patch which will supposedly cure this problem (by not triggering it) but it has to be loaded by your mail provider's administrators on their server. When mine have done so and I can verify whether the patch really works I'll post again.

There are at least 2 other active questions on this same issue. Please post again with your webmail client listed.

Modified by JBFixit

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The following SmarterMail patch (link is to release notes) solves this issue for those running SmarterMail. I don't know if that includes you.

http://www.smartertools.com/smartermail/releasenotes/v11.aspx - Version 11.7.5318 (2014-07-24)

The patch is applied by the administrators of your mail server. That could be in-house or a paid e-mail hosting provider. In my case it's Hostgator and they applied the patch on Saturday 8/2/2014.

If this solution does not apply to you, or if you have to deal with a delay before the patch can be loaded, jscher2000 gives us a likely workaround in question "Popup windows are small and cannot be resized".

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Here is that workaround:

You can block website scripts from resizing windows. Here's how:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste dom and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the dom.disable_window_move_resize preference to switch it from false to true.