Yifan Zhu, who wrote the patch to Firefox's Tooltip Listener, wrote to Ars that they first encountered the bug in Thunderbird on Linux, as "seemingly random segments of text floating on my screen." Switching frequently between virtual desktops left subject lines floating on their screen, which was "extremely annoying." Zhu learned to switch back to either Firefox or Thunderbird and move their cursor before switching back.
But it grew on them, so they researched and sought to submit the bug, but "To my horror, I realized this bug report has been open for more than 20 years, and still hasn't been fixed." Because it was "a minor 'cosmetic' issue not causing crashes," there was a good chance nobody would fix it—"Unless I do it myself," Zhu wrote.
