705425 - Make "this page is being redirected" notification tab-modal (XMLHttpRequest redirect prompt is unclear and disruptive)

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Stephan Sokolow]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:8.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/8.0
Build ID: 20111116091854

Steps to reproduce:

At unpredictable times, one of the tabs among the hundreds I keep in Tab Groups (I manage memory consumption using restarts and on-demand loading) performs an HTML HEAD, POST, or PUT request via XMLHttpRequest which returns "307 Temporary Redirect".

I've confirmed this happen in 8.0 (current stable as offered by Gentoo Linux's www-client/firefox ebuild), and both an older and up-to-date Aurora build which both identify as version 10.0a2. (The new build is dated 2011-11-26)

It can be explicitly tested against all three of those request types via  http://www.mnot.net/javascript/xmlhttprequest/


Actual results:

As is, it triggers a dialog which says only "This web page is being redirected to a new location. Would you like to resend the form data you have typed to the new location?"

The current implementation has four issues:

1. It steals focus by opening a new top-level window (it kept pausing my game of Atom Zombie Smasher)
2. It blocks the entire browser UI. (Which becomes a big problem if triggered repeatedly by a single malicious or broken tab)
3. It's not visually associated with the tab from which it originates.
4. It doesn't tell you anything about the redirect you're being asked to OK.

These mean that it greatly inconveniences me and that all I can do is click Cancel whenever it shows up because I have no clue what I'd be OKing otherwise.


Expected results:

I see all four problems being solved by two changes:

1. Use the same tab-scoped modal dialog implementation used by confirm() in current versions of Firefox.
2. Adjust the message to state the original URL which triggered the redirect and the URL to which the request is being redirected.