125772 - Reload button should be disabled until URL starts loading

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: DOM: Navigation, defect)

Description

[Jonas Jørgensen]

If you open a link in a new window, click the Stop button (or press Esc) before
the URL starts to load, and then hit the Reload button, the URL bar will be cleared.

Since it has been decided that the URL should not be added to the session
history before it begins to load (see bug 95897), the Reload button should be
disabled in new windows until the URL is added to the session history so the
user won't accidentally lose the URL by clicking the Reload button, thinking
that it will act as the Go button.

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

See also bug 97641, "reload does nothing after moz fails to connect to home page
(or first page in a window)".

Comment 2

[[e-mail]]

Disabling the reload button seems be the wrong approach here: the reason why
people hit reload is that they notice that their attempt to reach the 
server doesnt seem to succeed, so they try again. Reload should in that
case just try again to open the page nad certainly NOT clear the URL.

Comment 3

[Jesse Ruderman]

Johann: but that would give "reload" a different meaning depending on whether
you clicked a slow link or opened a slow link in a new window.  I think it's
reasonable to disable the reload button when there's no previous page.

Comment 4

[Jonas Jørgensen]

> but that would give "reload" a different meaning

Technically speaking, yes. But from a users viewpoint, the logical behavior to
expect from reload if the first page fails to load is to retry.

Comment 5

[Jesse Ruderman]

Jonas: the case where the page fails to load is covered by bug 28586, "Should
use error page, not dialog, for inaccessible pages (placeholder)".  That would
make reload work as "retry" for links opened in the same window as well as for
links opened in new windows.

Comment 6

[Jonas Jørgensen]

28586 covers the case where the page fails to load, yes, but not the case where
the user hits the stop button before the page starts loading.

Comment 7

[A. Craig West]

I'm not picky about whether we choose to disable the reload in this case, or
change the meaning of reload to try again. Either one of them would get rid of
the dataloss. This will also relate to a few other bugs, such as Bug 103720.

Comment 8

[Radha on family leave (not reading bugmail)]

I think  this actually should get done in the  Browser code. Browser can enable
the reload button in OnLocationChange(). I'm not sure when we can disable it
though, as I believe this should be done for all types of loads including link
click, "Open in new window" and load through the urlbar. 

Comment 9

[Brant Gurganus]

By the definitions on <http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/bug_status.html#severity> and
<http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?format=guided>, crashing and dataloss
bugs are of critical or possibly higher severity.  Only changing open bugs to
minimize unnecessary spam.  Keywords to trigger this would be crash, topcrash,
topcrash+, zt4newcrash, dataloss.

Comment 10

[Stefan Borggraefe]

*** Bug 251033 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Mike]

WFM?

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.3a6pre) Gecko/20100628 Minefield/3.7a6pre

Comment 12

[O. Atsushi (Torisugari)]

At least dataloss was fixed long time ago. Tabbrowser fills in the URLbar with requested URI, if it is blank.