1043586 - In-content preferences "Use Current Pages" in General-Startup should not include about:preferences#general

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[Alice0775 White]

After landing in-content preferences , "Use Current Pages" in General-Startup includes about:preferences#general.
This is annoyance bug for me.

Steps To Reproduce:
1. Open several web pages
2. Attempt to set them to Startup page

Actual Results:
about:preferences#general is included

Actual Results:
about:preferences#general should not be included

Comment 1

[Alice0775 White]

(In reply to Alice0775 White from comment #0)
> After landing in-content preferences , "Use Current Pages" in
> General-Startup includes about:preferences#general.
> This is annoyance bug for me.
> 
> Steps To Reproduce:
> 1. Open several web pages
> 2. Attempt to set them to Startup page
> 


Steps To Reproduce:
1. Open several web pages
2. Open preferences
3. Select Content pane, Select General pane
4. Attempt to set them to Startup page

Comment 2

[Alice0775 White]

[Tracking Requested - why for this release]:

Comment 3

[Lawrence Mandel [:lmandel] (use needinfo)]

in-content prefs is not shipping in 34. Dropping tracking.

Comment 4

[Gingerbread Man]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0
Build ID: 20150513174244

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:41.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/41.0
Build ID: 20150518030202

Works for me. about:preferences isn't included when clicking Use Current pages.

Comment 5

[Alice0775 White]

maybe you forgot step3 of comment#1


> Steps To Reproduce:
> 1. Open several web pages
> 2. Open preferences
> 3. Select Content pane, Select General pane
> 4. Attempt to set them to Startup page

Comment 6

[Gingerbread Man]

(In reply to Alice0775 White from comment #5)
> maybe you forgot step3 of comment#1

Since the description no longer applies, let's tag it obsolete so that it doesn't cause confusion.

Yes, I can reproduce this with the STR at comment 1.

Comment 7

[atlanto]

Now it is worse on 42.0a2 or above.
STR:
Start Firefox, open options and click 'Use Current Pages'.
AR:
"|about:preferences" is added.

Because of
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/1372fb8872a1
Such a code-ish(something like the code) statement must not be committed and released.
(bug 1182769 is not resolved of course, btw)

Comment 8

[Jefferson]

This is a common problem on SuMo recently. For example:

https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1095080 - 19 Nov
https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1094791 - 18 Nov
https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1094741 - 18 Nov
https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1094435 - 16 Nov
https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1093874 - 13 Nov
https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1093851 - 13 Nov
https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1093808 - 12 Nov
https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1093653 - 12 Nov
https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1093254 - 10 Nov

It seems that users are generally able to resolve the issue with a manual edit, but lacking a save button, may re-create the problem by clicking "Use Current Pages" thinking it refers to saving the list in the box rather than inserting the open tabs.

Comment 9

[Underpass]

Left this message in the SUMO Contributors Forum:

https://support.mozilla.org/it/forums/contributors/711573?last=67399&page=2#post-67399

Comment 10

[Sören Hentzschel]

It causes also a lot of support requests in the German Firefox forum (compared to other support requests)…

Comment 11

[the-edmeister]

Is this Bug ever going to be fixed properly?

Needing to manually clear |about:preferences from the Home Page field in General is just plain silly.

Comment 12

[Markus Jaritz [:designakt] (UX)]

This is indeed a very odd behavior which makes it impossible to only set one page via this button, which I assume would be the most used case. (Unless off course you want this 1 page to be about:preferences)

I think we should ignore about:preferences in the case of this button.(unless it is the only open tab)
This will allow for one page to be set as Home Page, and also for multiple pages, expect that then about:preferences would be omitted. Which is an edge-case we can accept to not solve.

Comment 13

[Loic]

We have many users who "complain" about that on the French community board since a few weeks, it's really not user-friendly.

Comment 15

[Bruce Williams]

I've been trying out having multiple start pages for the past couple months, and it is very annoying that I can't get rid of that options tab.

Comment 16

[Jefferson]

(In reply to Bruce Williams from comment #15)
> I've been trying out having multiple start pages for the past couple months,
> and it is very annoying that I can't get rid of that options tab.

Bruce, you can get rid of it by editing it out in either of two places:

(1) On the Options page, General panel, click in the home page address field and delete whichever of these you find, which may be at the end:

|about:preferences
|about:preferences#general

Either tab out of, or click away from, that field to save your change.

Don't click the "Use current pages" button, or about:preferences will be added back, since it is one of the current pages. Just exiting the field is all you need to do.

(2) You can use the about:config preferences editor, as follows:

(A) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful.

(B) In the search box above the list, type or paste HOME and pause while the list is filtered

(C) Double-click the browser.startup.homepage preference and edit out whichever of these you find

|about:preferences
|about:preferences#general

For personal assistance with your home page and other settings, you can use the support forum: 

https://support.mozilla.org/questions/firefox

There's a link at the top of every page to ask a new question. Articles are suggested during the new question flow, and if they don't look useful, keep scrolling down to continue with the form.

Comment 17

[Markus Jaritz [:designakt] (UX)]

Removing uiwanted as I described the preferred UX solution in comment #12

Comment 19

[Mark Schmidt :marksc]

I'm surprised this has slipped under the radar so long after in-content prefs shipped. For future reference, it helps to needinfo the right people. If you don't know who that is- just ask me. ;)

Lawrence, this appears to affect all versions of Firefox from 38-45. Can we finally give it some love?

Comment 20

[Zbynek Burget]

Just for refine:
firefox-esr 38.5.2 -> UNaffected
firefox 43 -> affected
firefox 44.0b4 -> affected
firefox 45.0a2 (2015-12-18) -> affected

Comment 21

[Lawrence Mandel [:lmandel] (use needinfo)]

I don't think this rises to the level of tracking but it is a papercut/polish bug that we should address.

jaws - Thought I'd start with you as you were the driver for in-content prefs. Do we have the ability to filter out about:preferences or maybe the more general about: pages from the home page field?

Comment 22

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Attachment: Patch

This was a mistake in bug 1182769, but I've added a test here to confirm that it works and make sure that it keeps working.

Comment 23

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Comment on attachment 8703647 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch

Review of attachment 8703647 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

::: browser/components/preferences/in-content/tests/browser_homepages_filter_aboutpreferences.js
@@ +15,5 @@
> +     "about:blank and about:home should be the only homepages set");
> +
> +  Services.prefs.setCharPref("browser.startup.homepage", oldHomepagePref);
> +  gBrowser.removeCurrentTab();
> +  gBrowser.removeCurrentTab();

Nit:

yield BrowserTestUtils.removeTab(gBrowser.currentTab);
for both of these.

Comment 24

[:Gijs (he/him)]

PS: next time, please submit for review through mozreview. Thanks!

Comment 25

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/fx-team/rev/33484cfc0ec5b571b057057f68438202964f113f
Bug 1043586 - Tweak how about:preferences gets filtered out of current set of tabs for homepages. r=Gijs

Comment 26

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/33484cfc0ec5

Comment 28

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Comment on attachment 8703647 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch

Approval Request Comment
[Feature/regressing bug #]: bug was thought to be fixed by bug 1182769
[User impact if declined]: users who set multiple pages as their home page will always have a preferences page in the list
[Describe test coverage new/current, TreeHerder]: automated test included
[Risks and why]: none expected
[String/UUID change made/needed]: none

Comment 29

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Attachment: Patch for Beta44

Approval Request Comment
[Feature/regressing bug #]: bug was thought to be fixed by bug 1182769
[User impact if declined]: users who set multiple pages as their home page will always have a preferences page in the list
[Describe test coverage new/current, TreeHerder]: automated test included
[Risks and why]: none expected
[String/UUID change made/needed]: none

Comment 30

[Ritu Kothari (:ritu) (Inactive, please n-i to RyanVM, jcristau, or pascal)]

Alice0775 White, could you verify this issue is fixed as expected on a latest Nightly build? Thanks!

Comment 31

[Ritu Kothari (:ritu) (Inactive, please n-i to RyanVM, jcristau, or pascal)]

Comment on attachment 8707088 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch for Beta44

I am denying this based on the more stringent Beta44 uplift criteria that allows only for fixing critical (recent) regressions, sec and stability issues. To me this fix, does not meet that bar. 

We have lived several releases with this issue and unfortunately we will have to wontfix this for Fx44 as we are about to enter RC in a week.

Comment 32

[Alice0775 White]

(In reply to Ritu Kothari (:ritu) from comment #30)
> Alice0775 White, could you verify this issue is fixed as expected on a
> latest Nightly build? Thanks!

Verified.
No longer reproduce the problem.

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/e790bba372f14241addda469a4bdb7ab00786ab3
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:46.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/46.0 ID:20160112030227

Comment 33

[Sylvestre Ledru [:Sylvestre]]

Comment on attachment 8703647 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch

Taking it in aurora.

Comment 34

[Wes Kocher (:KWierso) (Not reading bugmail; email directly if needed)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-aurora/rev/41a8d4d5521f

Comment 38

[Mohammad Maruf Islam]

I have reproduced this bug with Firefox Nightly 34.0a1 (Build ID: 20140724030201) on 
Windows 8.1, 64-bit with the instructions from comment 0.

Verified as fixed with Firefox beta 45.0b9 (Build ID: 20160222143322)
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0

Verified as fixed with Firefox Aurora 46.0a2 (Build ID: 20160303004038)
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:46.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/46.0