Why is Firefox slow on editing a page and can't render some macros?

Question

Hello!

I'm currently using Confluence 6.1.1 behind an Apache reverse proxy. All worked fine so far until I tried using it in Firefox. Editing a page takes considerable time (at least 15s of seeing the spinner) and when I want to render some macros like {info}, I get the error:

Error while generating placeholder. Is the server available?

Everything works well in Safari and Chrome.

I have done a quick Google search and found this: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/Error-while-generating-placeholder-Is-the-server-available/qaq-p/123752

I've followed the suggestion, but that didn't help :-/

Any other recommendations?

BTW: Since upgrading to 6.1.1 from 6.0.6 I get an error that my base URL couldn't be checked, even though everything is configured as per Atlassian's recommendations. I just disabled the plugin for now, but maybe that has something to do with it. While I did not have this error message in 6.0.6, Firefox had a sluggish behaviour there as well.

nicktruch · Answer

I have exactly the same problem as described : "Error while generating placeholder. Is the server available?" when trying to use the {code} macro in Firefox an IE, everythings fine on Safari and Chrome.

I checked the page request and there is a "Firefox ne peut établir de connexion avec le serveur à l’adresse wss://wiki.univ-lyon2.fr/synchrony-proxy/v1/bayeux-sync1."

Any answer ?

JP _AC Bielefeld Leader_ · Answer

As Atlassian changed the collaborative editing connection handling in 6.1 it could be related to this change. Firefox has/had a somewhat buggy websocket implementation. With 6.1 Confluence uses a XHR (Ajax) fallback, if websockets aren't working as designed. We've got a simliar configuration in our company & I already asked Atlassian, if we should change our proxy configuration in 6.1/6.2 to make use of the (better) XHR handling with Firefox. Did you check the page requests with Firebug? Any errors coming up?