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Firefox 13 SVG Event Bug and a Workaround for ChemWriter

On June 15, the Mozilla Foundation released Firefox 13. Unfortunately, this release contained a bug that prevented ChemWriter from working correctly. The latest version of ChemWriter (2.14.7) provides a work-around for the issue. Customers deploying ChemWriter into environments using the most recent version of Firefox are strongly encouraged to update.

About the Firefox 13 Bug

The Firefox bug prevents Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) mouse hit detection from working correctly under some conditions. This test page illustrates the problem. Mouse hit detection of two simple examples is prevented as evidenced by lack of color change from red to green.

We've filed a bug report with the Firefox Bugzilla service. Apparently, a similar manifestation of the same bug was independently reported as well.

This issue bears some similarities to a longstanding bug in Google's Chrome Browser.

Conclusions

Firefox 13 introduced a fairly serious bug likely to cause many JavaScript components using evented SVG elements to stop working. Fortunately, the latest release of ChemWriter neutralizes the problem.