38398 - Problems viewing HTML attachments if one of them is Netscape home page

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Backend, defect)

Description

[Katsuhiko Momoi]

** observed with 5/5/2000 Win32 build **

Hopefully this has been noticed before,
Here's how to reproduce this problem:

1. Use 4.73 to compose HTML message.
2. Write a few lines in the body. 
3. Open an attachment pane, and drag and drop a (navigation) link from a web page 
   opened on a Browser window. Attach 1) http://www.yahoo.com and 2) http://home.netscape.com
4. Send this message to your mail account and view it with Mozilla.

Results:

The Yahoo attachment seems to load first, and then Netscape page attachment loads. In the message
view window, only part of the Netscape page is loaded. The Yahoo attachment is not displayed
and is not in the view window even when you scroll up and down. So what you see is a partially
loaded Netscape page.

Expected Results:

We should be able to display both attachments in their entirety in sequence, i.e. Yahoo page and then NS
page. 

Additional problem:

Sometimes, trying to display this message will lead to a crash. In my case, it happens
sometimes when I first open a mail box and click on this message. Als seems to occur
when you copy this message to another folder and then open that folder and try to
dispaly that message. 

A similar problem (though not completely the same has been reported in Bug 32737.

Talkback dumps available. Use [e-mail] as the E-mail address. When the search
results are dispalyed, incidents 10008413, 10008527, 10008931, and 10009097 recorded on 5/6
are all of the same crash.

Comment 1

[Katsuhiko Momoi]

Nominating for nsbeta2 since this is basic functionality impairment.

Comment 2

[Katsuhiko Momoi]

It turns out that we have this problem or the crashing 
problem only when the current Netscape Home Page is atatched.
So this might be something to do with a particular layout
problem with the Netscape Page.

I'll attach the Netscape Home page to this bug.
If I send this page attaching it locally to a message with
4.73, then I consitently crash with 5/8/2000 Win32 build when
trying to view it. If I attach a page like Yahoo in front of it,
then I get to display only part of the Netscape Page but nothing
of the Yahoo page.

I'll file a  crashing bug as a separate bug though
that and the display problem seems to be related.

Comment 3

[Katsuhiko Momoi]

Attachment: Netscape Home Page as of 5/8/2000. Attach this page to your msg using 4.73.

Comment 4

[Katsuhiko Momoi]

CC'ing rickg.

Comment 5

[leger]

Putting on [nsbeta2+] radar for beta2 fix.

Comment 6

[Scott MacGregor]

this is a dup of another bug..lemme try to dig itup.

Comment 7

[selmer (gone)]

Target M17.

Comment 8

[Scott MacGregor]

This should be fixed now.

Comment 9

[pmock]

Re-openning bug.
This problem still occurs in today commercial seamonkey win32 builds 2000-052408 
and MacOS 2000-052408-m16.

Following the original problem scenario, the Netscape home pages is the only 
visible page even though you attached the yahoo home page.  It does not matter 
what order I attach these web page.  

On Linux commercial seamonkey build 2000-052408-m16, it fails to load the page 
in the messenger pane.  The application freezes and the terminal window always 
says "STYLE CHANGE REFLOW. Blowing away all box caches".  

Comment 10

[David :Bienvenu]

I tried this today on win32 with a tip of the trunk build (release and debug) - 
both web pages were displayed. Someone probably fixed this in the last month. 
Please reopen if it's still broken for you.

Comment 11

[fenella]

Re-openning bug.
This problem still occurs in today commercial seamonkey builds:
Linux (2000-07-26-08 M17)
Win32 (2000-07-26-09 M17)
Same result as described by Peter earlier.
"Following the original problem scenario, the Netscape home pages is the only 
visible page even though you attached the yahoo home page.  It does not matter 
what order I attach these web page."  

Mac build not ready yet.

Comment 12

[Scott MacGregor]

I wouldn't hold the beta for this re-opened bug. Moving to beta3. 

Comment 13

[Jay Patel [:jay]]

Putting on [nsbeta2-] radar. Not critical to beta2. 

Comment 14

[laurel]

possible item for b2 release notes

Comment 15

[lchiang]

b3 need info.
Does this happen with any other pages/attachments? Perhaps try a few other 
combinations. Perhaps something with layout of Yahoo's page?

Comment 16

[pmock]

fyi
 This problem appears to occur only with the combination of attaching the 
netscape home page with another web page.  I can attach other combination of web 
pages besides the  netscape home page and have it load successfully on all 
platforms.

For example, from win32 communicator 4.74 I sent the following combination of 
message with these attachments ...
 a) Netscape & Intel home page-> fails to render Intel page
 b) Intel & Netscape home page-> fails to render Intel page
 c) Intel & Mozilla home page -> successfully loads both home pages
 d) Mozilla & Intel home page -> successfully loads both home pages
 e) 2 gif file attachment -> successfully loads both home pages
 f) 1 png and 1 gif file attachment -> successfully loads both home pages
 g) Adobe & Microsoft home page -> successfully loads both home pages
 h) Yahoo & Microsoft home page -> successfully loads both home pages

My tests were performed using the following build:
 win32 commercial seamonkey build 2000-080909-m18
 linux commercial seamonkey build 2000-080808-m18
 macos commercial seamonkey build 2000-080908-m18

In short, it looks like there something that seamonkey doesn't like in the 
netscape home page.  If I let the application alone while trying to display the 
netscape & 2nd web page, it will finally display the error, "Alert! The 
operation timed out when attempting to contact home.netscape.com"

* Clearing white board status of [Need beta3 info] [beta3-] for re-evaluation.

Comment 17

[lchiang]

thanks for the detective work, Peter.  Modifying summary.

Comment 18

[lchiang]

selmer will try to find a new owner for this per mail triage.
+ per mail triage.

peter: what happens if you take the source of the email for the attachments and 
copy and paste to a .html page and view in the browser?

Comment 19

[Katsuhiko Momoi]

I have a bit of time to look at this now that PR2-J shipped.
As I reported on 5/9, this problem happens only if one of the pages
attached is the current Netscape Home page.

Here's what seems to be happening.

1. Current Netscape Home page has JS scripts which sniff
   user-agent and load a slightly different page
   when you are Mozilla/NS6 (as opposed to Comm 4.7x).
2. You can either attach a live NS home page or one that
   is downloaded to your hard disk, the result will be 
   the same.
3. In other words, the page we are sending and attching as 
   NS home page and viewing with Comm 4.7x is not the
   same as the one which will viewed by Mozilla mail.
   Somehow a different page needs to be loaded for Mozilla/NS 6
   honoring the JS functions on the page. And we seem to do
   that but then nothing else gets downloaded after that
   from an IMAP server.

4. I turned off both Browser and Mail JS functions but this did not
   change the result. Still the same problem.

5. Then, I deleted 3 JS subsections which sniff the 
   user-agent and switch the content from the NS home page
   saved locally. Attched it along with a live Yahoo URL
   and send it using Comm 4.7x.  After this both
   the NS Home page (Looking like the Comm 4.7x home
   page) and a Yahoo page loaded correctly on Mozilla/NS6.

6. What I find curious is that with Mozilla/NS6, we don't even
   download the 2nd attachment (i.e. Yahoo page in this case) 
   from an IMAP server when the JS scripts of this type
   are present. I copied an imap msg of this type using
   Mozilla into a local mail foler and the 2nd attachment was not copied
   at all.

So, there seems to be some weakness on our part in dealing
with the IMAP server when this type of content is to 
be downloaded. While this may be limited to NS home
page now, there is no guarantee that that will be the case.

What is strange is that this problem occurs even when the 
JS functions are turned off. Also that the Mozilla/NS6
targeted page is showing instead. How is that possible
when we turn off the JS function via the prefs?

Comment 20

[leger]

Putting on [nsbeta2-] since already [nsbeta3+]

Comment 21

[lchiang]

P2 per mail triage

Comment 22

[lchiang]

second pass: - per mail triage unfortunately.

Comment 23

[scottputterman]

sorry for the extra email. Removing mail2 keyword.

Comment 24

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Can we really have a relnote that says "Don't try attaching the Netscape home 
page to your messages"?

The blurb:
It seems unclear to me whether this bug requires either of a "developer" or 
"user" release note for Netscape 6 RTM. If anyone feels it does, can they please 
draft one and then nominate with the relnote-user or relnote-devel strings in 
the Status Whiteboard.

Thanks :-)

Gerv

Comment 25

[fenella]

Assign it to [e-mail]

Comment 26

[Bartaholic]

could not open audio attachment within mozilla(crushed) but when saved on hard
drive it played fine

Comment 27

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I don't see a problem from my horrible attempt to reproduce. but then, it's almost 10 years later, and pages and whatnot have changed.  If someone sees this problem, please clarify with updated testcase and summary.