113591 - Offline: network access when offline should error and explain how to go online

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: DOM: Navigation, enhancement)

Description

[José Jeria]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.6+)
Gecko/20011202
BuildID:    20011202

When I am in offline mode and click on link nothing happends. In IE you see on
the hand that the link requires you to be online. When i click on that link I
should be prompted if I want to go online.

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

That's beyond the scope of offline mail - not sure who would want to take this.
Either necko or someone on the browser side.

Comment 2

[gabriel]

Related bug 18213.

Comment 3

[Darin Fisher]

-> docshell

Comment 4

[Adam Lock]

Docshell has no concept of offline or online. Probably this is a cache / necko
issue.

Comment 5

[Gagan]

Nope. cache has nothing to do with this. The nsIIOService has an offline
attribute that should be used from wherever docshell/webshell handles a
link-click. Giving back to webshell/docshell. 

Is this needed for nsbeta1? 

Comment 6

[Hervé]

each time i use the offline mode, i fall into this.

really, there should be an alert window warning that Mozilla is in offline mode,
because it's disorienting when you forget you went into offline mode and you
click on a link and nothing happens... 

the first time i've met this bug, i even restarted Mozilla ! i thought it was
"dead" :-]

Comment 7

[David :Bienvenu]

yes, this can be very confusing. Adam, if you want to point me to a place in the
code where this check would go, I can try to do it myself, if it's not too
complicated.

Comment 8

[Adam Lock]

nsWebShell::HandleLinkClickEvent or nsDocShell::InternalLoad might be a good
place to look.

I think this bug needs careful consideration. You probably want a "Go online?"
dialog when the user clicks on a link, back / forward, bookmarks, global history
etc., but probably not for automatic actions such as meta refresh &
window.location.href changes (from JS).

Perhaps a load flag of some kind?

Comment 9

[David :Bienvenu]

yes, you're right, it does require careful consideration. The way this is
designed to work is that if running the url requires a new tcp connection, then
an error is returned. If the page is cached, then no new tcp connection is
required, and there's no need to put up an error. So clicking on a link should
put up that error only if running the url return NS_ERROR_OFFLINE. So it's not
on the click, but on the attempt to run the url as a result of the click that we
need the error handling.  So I'll look at that nsDocShell::InternalLoad method.
Cc'ing Rick, in case he has any suggestions.

Comment 10

[Hervé]

Adam, you wrote :
> You probably want a "Go online?"
> dialog when the user clicks on a link,
> back / forward, 
> bookmarks, 
> global history
> etc., 

i'm ok for all these.

> but probably not for automatic actions such as 
> meta refresh &
> window.location.href changes (from JS).

why not ? it can be a tricky problem too... imagine you have some page that
reloads itself until some point (for example you have a long computation on the
server and the browser asks every 10 seconds if it's finished), and the user is
offline... he/she will have a look at the "long computation" window and he/she
will think it's still not finished. 

Comment 11

[Adam Lock]

Now imagine you have a page or sidebar panel which wants to refresh itself every
minute. It would be incredibly annoying if you were in offline mode to have "Go
online?" continuously appear without warning where you were doing something else
such as reading email.

The same problem exists with JS. Banner adverts that want to refresh every so
often for example.

Comment 12

[Hervé]

i agree that it would be annoying...

Comment 13

[benc]

What can we do to get some user feedback here? Even the most minimal "you are
offline" message should appear.

Also, if I am offline and click on a link, the title clears in the browser tab I
am in....

Comment 14

[Steve Meredith (gone)]

IE changes the cursor when it's over a link in offline mode. This gives a little
feedback before clicking that something's up. See this screenshot
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=41992&action=view from bug 48845. 

Comment 15

[benc]

That's a good idea. New bug, please.

Comment 16

[José Jeria]

Was any new bug reported for the comment 14?

Comment 17

[Rob North]

This looks very much like a duplicate of bug 45421, or maybe depend on 45421.
What do you think?

Comment 18

[David :Bienvenu]

yep, they're definitely related, if not exactly the same (same problem,
different solutions asked for, perhaps)

Comment 19

[Alfonso Martinez]

*** Bug 157344 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 20

[José Jeria]

Any chance this gets fixed to Mozilla 1.2 now that bug 45421 is fixed? And also,
about comment 14, is there any bug on that or should one be filed?

Comment 21

[Adam Lock]

If someone wants to champion this bug please take it. There is no chance of it
being fixed for 1.2.

Comment 22

[Samir Gehani]

adt: nsbeta1-

Comment 23

[Darin Fisher]

*** Bug 189696 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 24

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

[Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007] (W98SE)

Bug still there. (annoying bug indeed)


[Netscape® Communicator 4.8 : en-20020722] (W98SE)

Leaving (K) '4xp' for the time being:
*The v4 warning dialog explains how to go online manually: Mozilla does not !
*Then the v4 has an "OK" button only and no way to go online at once !!

Comment 25

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Attachment: Fixes the '4xp' bug part (v1)

((This is my very first attempt with PatchMaker...))
(I'm using it in Build mode: this is the .chromediff, since the .diff content
was exactly the same...)

[Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007] (W98SE)
([Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.6a) Gecko/20031025] (nightly)
(W98SE) is the same.)

Addition to comment 24:

Gives instructions to the user, as NNv4 does.


(Tell me how to proceed from there. Thanks.)

Comment 26

[[e-mail]]

Comment on attachment 134194 [details] [diff] [review]
Fixes the '4xp' bug part (v1)

>--- en-US/locale/en-US/global/appstrings.properties.bak	2003-10-26 20:32:22.000000000 +0100
>+++ en-US/locale/en-US/global/appstrings.properties	2003-10-26 20:39:56.000000000 +0100
chromediffs aren't directly usable, because the folder names are wrong. 

>+netOffline=This document cannot be displayed while offline. To go online, unselect Work Offline from the File menu.
Unfortunately unselected is only an adjective, not a participle, or in plain
English, you can't unselect something, you can only deselect (or more probably
in this case, uncheck) it.

Comment 27

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Attachment: Fixes the '4xp' bug part (v2)

WorkInProgress:

Changed 'unselect' to 'uncheck', per comment 26.

Still a chromediff :-(
The CVS path should be
'(mozilla)/docshell/resources/locale/en-US/appstrings.properties'...

Comment 28

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Attachment: Fixes the '4xp' bug part (v3) [Checked in: comment 32]

Same fix as [Fixes the '4xp' bug part (v2)],

bug in CVS format (.diff) at last.

Comment 29

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Comment on attachment 134388 [details] [diff] [review]
Fixes the '4xp' bug part (v3)
[Checked in: comment 32]

I asked jag@t_l for sr=? on 29,
without news, now asking brendan@m_g...

(Again, it's my first patch: tell me if I'm doing wrong.)

Comment 30

[Brendan Eich [:brendan]]

Comment on attachment 134388 [details] [diff] [review]
Fixes the '4xp' bug part (v3)
[Checked in: comment 32]

Sure, looks ok to me.

/be

Comment 31

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Comment on attachment 134388 [details] [diff] [review]
Fixes the '4xp' bug part (v3)
[Checked in: comment 32]

:-)

Now, could someone please check in this patch on my behalf ?
It's my first one, and I don't have (yet) a CVS account.

Thanks !

Comment 32

[[e-mail]]

Checked in the instructions.

Comment 33

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Comment on attachment 134388 [details] [diff] [review]
Fixes the '4xp' bug part (v3)
[Checked in: comment 32]


Confirming Trunk check in, through LXR and BONSAI.

Now, 'approval1.4.2=?'.
(guessing that the patch applies to v1.4.1 as well...)

Comment 34

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Comment on attachment 134388 [details] [diff] [review]
Fixes the '4xp' bug part (v3)
[Checked in: comment 32]

We're not taking any DTD or properties changes for the 1.4 releases.

Comment 35

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Removing:
*(K) 4xp
since this part is fixed.

Comment 36

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

Hi folks,

this bug is still (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6b)
Gecko/2003120508) highly annoying.  I use Offline Mode mainly for reading
newsgroup messages offline to save online costs when participating in Usenet. 
When I go through the messages and find an interesting hyperlink in it, I just
click it.  Usually I will not check if that tiny offline icon in the bottom
right corner of the screen (I have Mozilla maximized because of Tabbed Browsing)
shows `you are online' before I click the hyperlink and thus often get the
recently checked-in message on how to go online (of which I already know!).

The same problem occurs when I have closed the Internet connection but want to
access resources via my local web server.  Mozilla then tells me that I must go
"online", even if no Internet connection is required for accessing my local web
server which is exactly why I installed the local server in the first place! 
Although I have managed to use Alt+F, W to toggle Offline/Online mode, this is
quite ridiculous.

I understand that e.g. refreshing sidebars are a problem.  But as for me, I do
not use such sidebars.  And AIUI the "how to go online" message will appear even
if the "Go online" button I suggest herewith is not implemented.  So I suggest
that developers of such sidebars should always check the online state of Mozilla
before they attempt to refresh the sidebar.  If the API does not provide such a
property, it needs to be created.

As for me, Mozilla does not need to call the Internet Connection Wizard like IE
and other applications do if I configured my Internet Settings accordingly
(although that would be also a nice feature in Mozilla for 32 bit Windows and
other OSes that support such).  It is enough that it does not (only) tell me
*how* to go "online" (since I already *know* that) but (also) provides a "Go
online" button in the same dialog window with which I can go "online" if that is
required for the resource to be accessed.

We should care more for usability than for grammar here.


PointedEars

Comment 37

[benc]

RESOLVED/FIXED: Mac OS X, Mozilla 1.6b

I'm narrowing this bug to the current implementation and marking it fixed.
Before, we had NO error message, which was clearly worse than where we are now.

Neil: If you can verify, that would be great.

Thomas, each issue you raise should be put into a separate bug.

If we want to add a "go online" button to this dialog, that should be a new bug. 

The problem w/ not being able to access your local server is bug 87717.

The sidebars and refesh stuff can be tackled separately as well, because they
will related to aspects of offline caching.

Comment 38

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

> If we want to add a "go online" button to this dialog, that should be a new bug.

Well, this issue really is/was the current bug !
My "temporary" '4xp part' fix was only added as a meantime solution.

I would prefer to have this bug reopened/restored,
but, if you confirm your decision, I'll file a new bug...

Comment 39

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

> Thomas, each issue you raise should be put into a separate bug.

I agree with Serge, the issue I raised *is* the issue of this bug, so the bug
should not be marked "fixed" because it is _not_ fixed.  Instead, it should be
reopened and marked "fixed" only if we actually *have* the button.
 
What I oversaw in comment 36 is, that it is true that it *would* cause i.e.
refreshing sidebars to prompt to go online.  But it does already with the alert
message.  It makes exactly no difference to the user if he/she needs to click
away an alert or a confirm message, and I think it is not our task to workaround
buggy sidebars aso. (*they* must check if Moz is in Offline Mode before trying
to refresh anyway) but to implement that *choice* like

,----------------------------------------------------.
| This document cannot be displayed in Offline Mode. |
|                                                    |
| Do you want to go online?                          |
|                                                    |
|                  [ Yes ]   [ No ]                  |
`----------------------------------------------------'

where "Yes" will trigger what is triggered by File, [_] Work Offline, or
clicking the Online/Offline Mode button in the status bar, to end the nagging
especially in the situations I described.


\V/ PointedEars

Comment 40

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

> What I oversaw in comment 36 is, [...]

_overlooked_, not to be misunderstood.  Sorry for spamming.

Comment 41

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

Could someone who has the required permissions please change the bug status? 
That it was marked RESOLVED FIXED was not correct, because it is just not fixed!

Comment 42

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

File a new bug instead...

Comment 43

[benc]

File a new bug. It doesn't matter if this bug is 4xp, the other bug can be 4xp
as well.

Look, someone was kind enough to write a patch to hook up the error message.
This is already a difficult thing to do. You want to keep making progess, put
another bug into the system. You don't get any extra momentum by working off
this bug.

Comment 44

[Maruan Tahhan]

<a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=189696">Bug 189696</a> is
REOPEN - its about the "go online?" option, so may continue there...

Comment 45

[benc]

V/fixed: macos x, 1.7.2.

Maraun: that bug is about having an error dialog that offers a "go online"
button. I've updated that summary to be more clear.