"Detected page unload event" after window.location.reload() [FireFox bug]

[latobibor]

Hi,

In our angular 1.5.5 app we are using window.location.reload() to reload the page at a certain operation that unfortunately needs it. However, while we are running the tests we have issues with on FireFox which throws "Detected page unload event" exception when the next element is requested. We don't see it happening on Chrome.

• Node Version: 7.0.0
• Protractor Version: 4.0.10
• Angular Version: 1.5.5
• Browser(s): FireFox v46
• Operating System and Version Windows 10
• geckodriver: 0.9.0
• selenium: 2.53.1

A seemingly relevant line from the exception:
From: Task: Protractor.waitForAngular() - Locator: By(css selector, .form-signin-heading)

How we reload our site in the production code (simplified version):

$window.location.reload();

The command that failed (after the reload):

browser.wait(EC.visibilityOf(/* our element */), 10000);

We managed to make a workaround of the issue with this hack:

const capabilities = await browser.driver.getCapabilities();
if (capabilities.get('browserName') === 'firefox') {
  log.step('We have to refresh firefox because language change triggers an "external" reload');
  await browser.refresh();
}

[sjelin]

This is a known issue, and unfortunately there's really nothing we can do about it. Basically, selenium can't predict location changes like $window.location.reload(), which means it ends up scheduling commands during the transition, which causes the problem. It's nothing to do with protractor or angular, and selenium can't fix it. We might introduce features like in #3872 to mitigate the problem though