Show HN: A stupid hack to crash tab and/or browser

Karawebnetwork · on March 11, 2015

Well, now I have a tab that I cannot close. The whole browser is working correctly except for that tab.

Edit: Chrome, osx

Edit 2: Since I never close my computer and never close my chrome, I've pinned the tab so it's smaller. You have plagued my life for ages.

starnixgod · on March 11, 2015

No crash here. After a couple seconds of grinding Firefox prompts to kill the script.

Linux Mint 17.1 Firefox 36.0

runn1ng · on March 11, 2015

So it seems I am the weird case.

Ok. Thanks for telling me.

I found this out randomly when testing what can and what cannot be on this handler and how gracefully do browsers handle it. It seems that it's not that easy.

Cowicide · on March 11, 2015

On OS X Mavericks 10.9.5 with Safari 7.1.3, it didn't do anything but show a beachball after hitting refresh, but I was able to close the tab without trouble or any detectable negative effect on my browser, etc.

cs- · on March 11, 2015

Chrome on Linux doesn't care either, but cpus at 60-99%

zeekay · on March 11, 2015

At least on OS X, Firefox is as well behaved as you might expect when forcefully triggering an infinite loop on beforeunload.

runn1ng · on March 11, 2015

Interesting.

So it might be a Linux issue. I have reported it anyway.

cwt · on March 11, 2015

ran on macbook pro in chrome. tab went unresponsive for a few seconds when i hit back arrow. waited a second, hit x and a couple seconds later it closed.

runn1ng · on March 11, 2015

OK, it might be a linux thing

I have submitted the thing to bugzilla and chrome bug thing