Hi, could you try clearing cache and eBay cookies as follows:

(1) Clear Firefox's Cache

See: How to clear the Firefox cache

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, click the lock icon at the left end of the address bar. After a moment, a "Clear Cookies and Site Data" button should appear at the bottom. Go ahead and click that.

In the dialog that opens, you will see one or more matches to the current address so you can remove the site's cookies individually without affecting other sites.

Then try reloading the page. Does that help?

- - - -

If the problem continues, can you access the layout instructions style sheets pulled from a different server:

https://ir.ebaystatic.com/rs/v/4ups3vxocu2mherdhxh5b2kdxml.css

The expected page is a wall of text starting with html,body,div,span,object,iframe

Does it load, or is there an error?

Problem was fixed using: (2) Remove the site's cookies (save any pending work first). While viewing a page on the site, click the lock icon at the left end of the address bar. After a moment, a "Clear Cookies and Site Data" button should appear at the bottom. Go ahead and click that. After doing this I reloaded the page and everything appeared correct. Thank you......Glenn

problema non risolto pulendo la cache come indicato grazie per il supporto

problema non risolto pulendo la cache come indicato grazie per il supporto

Any difference from clearing cookies?

Could you test in Firefox's Safe Mode: Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode

My wife had the same problem with eBay a few days ago. The page looked very similar to the screenshot posted by user rgabellini above. Nothing we tried cleared the problem. No refreshing, deleting cache, clearing site cookies and data - nothing worked to clear it up. I even tried loading ebay's Canadian site - ebay.ca - and the page looked the same.

To try and get a handle on the problem, I created a new 'testuser' profile and tried it with the clean profile -- the ebay page worked in the new profile. Thinking there may be something corrupted in the default profile, I extracted her default profile from a backup from a few weeks ago. I copied that old profile to the default profile - still no joy.

The way we 'fixed' the problem was to take a copy of her default profile and copy it to the new 'testuser' profile, believe it or not. I made a copy of the 'broken' default profile, renamed it to the name of the new 'testuser' profile, and the ebay page loaded correctly when using the 'testuser' profile. The new 'testuser' profile is now her default.

And I just now saw the same problem with ebay on my own machine, which is what brought me to the forum to see if others were seeing it. I'll probably try to correct it the same way. I'll be interested to know if you are able to come up with an explanation and a simpler solution.

On my machine, I opened eBay.com in a private browser, and it looked fine. When I went back to the regular browser and refreshed, the page came up correctly. Bizarre. I say that because on my wife's machine, we tried that and even the private browser was still messed up, which really confused us.

Hi bmbguy, here are two important differences between regular windows and private windows:

(1) Separate data

Private windows do not share the web cache or cookies from regular windows, there is a separate in-memory cache and cookie jar. So the original solution refers to those things.

(2) Potentially fewer extensions

By default, newly installed extensions are not allowed to run in private windows. You either have to check a box on the new installation notification or go to the Add-ons page and turn it on. So this could point to an add-on as a factor.

While most files can be copy/pasted between profiles, I think it's possible that your extension settings get reset when you do that. So despite looking similar, there might be some differences between the original profile and the test profile even after copying over the files.

jscher2000:

Yes, I assumed that private window data would be separate - that's kinda the whole idea, isn't it? That's why I was surprised when the private window did not work correctly in my wife's case - I thought for sure that it would. I wouldn't have bothered with the test profile if it had. And because of that I was surprised when it DID work in my case just now, and then when I went back to the regular browser window and refreshed it, the eBay page came up correctly.

In the case of the profile files, since I was able to copy all the files to a 'new' profile, and that one worked while the old one still did not, I assumed that there is a bit more to a new profile than just the files in the directory. Since we copied the old profile over to a 'new name,' her FF setup remained the same as it was and she was happy.

I have no idea what this eBay thing is all about, but it does appear limited to something going on with that site AFAIK. It was the only site my wife had problems on. And in both cases, hers and mine, it did seem to occur after making a purchase, for whatever that's worth.

I was going to offer to look at or try anything you wanted me to try to fix the problem, but it appears to have gone away for now. And I'm not just going to keep buying things on eBay to see if it'll come back again... :)

Just FYI, she's running Windows, I'm running Linux Mint.

It's back. This time, opening a private window yields same result. Tried clicking on the lock icon on address bar and clearing cookies and site data, no luck.

Hi bmbguy, your screenshot suggests that the style sheets which instruct Firefox on laying out the page are not being loaded.

Have you noticed any secure connection errors in Firefox since this problem began?

Here's an example of the addresses used for style sheets -- they are on a different eBay server:

https://ir.ebaystatic.com/rs/v/kw2xglkz02zqnovh0gatbvmpsmn.css?proc=DU:N

Can your Firefox load that directly? The expected content is a wall of text starting with

body .shpt{top:24px}#gh{*z-index:3}.gh-clearfix:after{content:".";display:block;

If the page can load directly, could you do a reload of the main eBay page bypassing the cache -- either

• Shift+click the reload button
• Ctrl+Shift+r (Mac: Command+Shift+r)
• Ctrl+F5 (Mac: Command+F5)

Any improvement?

If the page cannot load directly, is there an error message?

Hi jscher2000,

I copied your link and the css file opened just fine in another tab. The shift+click refresh did not correct the problem.

Again, I was able to create a new test profile, and the page loads correctly in that new profile. I haven't copied the old profile to the new one yet -- I figure that the new one will eventually break too if I keep using eBay.

I'll keep this 'broken' setup so I can try and/or look at anything you'd like me to. Keep in mind that now I am using Firefox 79.0, 32-bit, on Linux Mint. This is an old, old computer, but we've seen the problem on multiple machines, so it does seem to be limited to eBay on Firefox at this point - as far as we know.

Hi bmbguy, I think you could copy certain files to the new profile (when Firefox is fully shut down) without a problem, such as

• places.sqlite -- bookmarks and history
• logins.json -- saved logins
• key4.db -- encryption key for saved logins

For these it would be helpful if you could test after each change:

• permissions.sqlite -- site specific permissions/blocks (e.g., cookies, popups)
• prefs.js -- most of what is customized in about:config

If all of that can be transferred without an issue arising, then you could reinstall extensions one or two at a time and see what happens.

In a Firefox profile that has the unstyled eBay problem, you could take a closer look at what Firefox is requesting using the Network Monitor tool. To open it in the lower part of the tab, you can use either:

• "3-bar" menu button > Web Developer > Network
• (menu bar) Tools > Web Developer > Network
• (Windows/Linux) Ctrl+Shift+e

When you Shift+Reload the page, Firefox should start listing all the files it is requesting, along with information about whether the request was successful. You can zero in on the CSS files using that filter button (see attached screenshot for reference). The "200" status indicates a successful retrieval. Are you getting a similar list?

I was messing with the network trace, and it didn't look like the CSS file was being loaded at all. Turned off my ad-blocker, still no luck.

Then I clicked the little blue shield next to the address bar - the FF tracking protection. I clicked the 'switch' to disable it, and the ebay page magically reloaded correctly. I went to the protection settings, and changed the setting from 'Strict' to 'Standard,' and now the eBay site is displaying correctly.

Looks like maybe 'Strict' may be a little too strict for eBay's site? I'm going to leave it set to 'Standard' and see how things go. At least now if the problem shows up on any of our other machines, that's the first place I'll look...

Edit: When I was looking through the tracking protection stuff, it looked like it was blocking requests from both ir.ebaystatic.com and i.ebayimg.com. If that's the case, that would explain why both styling/CSS and images weren't showing up.

Thank you bmbguy!!! I am having the same issue, my security settings are custom. I just clicked the blue shield and turned them off and now my page loaded. Very interesting indeed!!

Thanks all for reporting that.

The tracking protection list might not be updated again until Firefox 80, so it's good to know about this workaround for Firefox 79.

I wonder what is different in Strict? Hmm... time for more research.

jscher2000:

I don't know that much about the tracking protection, and I don't know when this machine got set to strict. All I know is that the page came right up as soon as I turned that switch off.

Just another thing to add to the list of 'things to try.'

Glad to hear it helped out somebody else too! And thanks for the time you spent.

For anyone who prefers Strict but it breaks eBay, could you check this:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste strict_list and pause while the list is filtered

Firefox has a built-in preference named

privacy.annotate_channels.strict_list.enabled

that is normally set to false. Is yours set to true?

Pretty much the only way I could break the eBay page was Strict on the Options page, and strict_list true (see attached screenshot).

But then it stopped being broken after 10 minutes of testing, so I'm not sure what is going on. Maybe it was a glitch in the files that got updated in the profile I was testing in?

jscher2000:

Just FYI...

I opened a browser with my test profile, which was a copy of my default from earlier today. It didn't show eBay broken right away, but broke as soon as I clicked the 'sign in' link and then the main site was broken again.

Tracking protection is set to 'Strict', but 'privacy.annotate_channels.strict_list.enabled' is set to false.

bmbguy: Thanks so much, I also had the same issue! Disabling the blue shield also worked for me! I have some privacy extensions installed and thought that the issue might be linked to them but when I disabled them, nothing changed. Disabling the blue shield worked for me! Thanks!!

jscher2000: My privacy.annotate_channels.strict_list.enabled was also set to false, like yours.

Hi, joining the party here with the same issue as my eBay looks like bmbguy's screenshot. Clearing cache, cookies, site data: no effect. Private window: no change. privacy.annotate_channels.strict_list.enabled set to false.

Disabling tracking protection: yay, it works! Checking Network monitor: a LOT of stuff is blocked, such as PNGs, GIFs, JSs, etc.

Not sure whether I'm happy with disabling tracking on eBay but at least it is back to working.

Thanks for this thread!