1296240 - Password dialog might lose input focus, should be application modal as password keypresses can cause unexpected results in main window

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Security, defect)

Description

[psn]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; rv:51.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/51.0
Build ID: 20160817030202

Steps to reproduce:

Configuration was simple: Explorer and Daily in Windows 10 32-bit.
Both icons were pinned to taskbar for convenience.
In Daily passwords are not stored, and Incoming is the (last) active folder. 
Hence password dialog opens after start.

What to do.
Launch Explorer and wait for it's window.
Click on Daily's icon and immediately switch to another running application (Explorer).
Wait for flashing Daily's icon in taskbar.
Switch to Daily using Alt-Tab or click on the flashing icon.


Actual results:

Password request dialog would be the topmost, but inactive.
In Windows 10 visual difference is minimal and very easy to overlook.

All keyboard input bypasses the dialog and goes directly to the main window - try Alt-H (or anything else); it is possible to update Daily or create multiple dropdown menus ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1270587 ).

Another inconvenience: attempt to type password when dialog is inactive could change statuses or sorting order in e-mail list.



Expected results:

Password dialog should always behave like application modal (being active and receiving input focus).

To see the correct behaviour click on Daily's icon and wait for the password dialog.
Then switching between applications keeps the dialog as the topmost and active.

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Not good indeed

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

psn, did you see this problem when you were on windows 7?

I cannot reproduce this on win7. So I wonder if this is a win10-only issue.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Eric, have you seen any changes in win10 behavior, or can reproduce this?

I don't find any smoking guns in TB or non-TB reported bug queries, respectively https://mzl.la/2dwIEJK and https://mzl.la/2dwH9vk
But then, my eyes aren't this good late in the day

Comment 4

[psn]

How about XP 32-bit and Thunderbird 38.4.0? It does not matter if extensions were disabled or enabled.
I have this with the latest Daily 64-bit in WIndows 8.1.
I could try to find Windows 7, but obviously the issue is not specific to a single version of OS and/or client.

Attempts to check for the issue in safe mode provided more oddities:
1| The dialog after Shift+double click on desktop icon appears without input focus - very much like the discussed behaviour of the password dialog.
But this happens even when no other tasks are active in the desktop.
Focused dialog was expected, not unfocused (or iconized - I managed to have that too in Windows 10 32-bit).
2) Proceeding to Safe mode forces the program to open window in the foreground; so there is no way to check for the issue.
Also not exactly an exected/standard behaviour.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Indeed, password behavior in Thunderbird isn't the greatest. :(  It would be a great service to all users if someone (or group) were to sort the list, determine reproduction steps (as we are trying to do here), close those that no longer reproduce, and identify the most severe ones so a developer could focus on a couple to fix - and include yours. ;)  Perhaps your passion for this issue can help get us there?

Comment 6

[psn]

Currently what I see is that input focus might be assigned randomly (possibly because of multithreading).
Should that issue be sorted out, then hopefully most problems could go away, including this one with password dialog.

Do you have problems with reproducing this issue? It does not happen always, but often enough. In idle XP I used Far manager as foreground application; after 3-4 attemps password dialog had no input focus. Maybe it would help to start something in background and make system busy.

Additionally.
1) If it was not clear enough in my previous message: Daily Safe Mode dialog appears without input focus. It could be the intended behaviour, but it looks and feels incorrect.

2) I think needinfo flag used to be cleared when reply was sent, but it did not happen with two my reports. So it was cleared manually. Was it a bug in bugzilla?

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

phoenix, are you still using XP?

Comment 8

[Phoenix]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk, NI for questions) from comment #7)
> phoenix, are you still using XP?
Rarely, but it is still available on my laptop. Will look closely on steps, and check first on Server 2003 later this week...

Comment 9

[Eric Moore]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk, NI for questions) from comment #3)
> Eric, have you seen any changes in win10 behavior, or can reproduce this?
> 
> I don't find any smoking guns in TB or non-TB reported bug queries,
> respectively https://mzl.la/2dwIEJK and https://mzl.la/2dwH9vk
> But then, my eyes aren't this good late in the day

No.

I can't duplicate the problem, it always works as expected. I'm not aware of a reason why the behavior would be different under Windows 10. However, I'm using the 64 bit version. I know by the end of 2010 half of Windows 7 users were running 64 bit so I'd expect a much higher percentage of Windows 10 users to be using a 64 bit version of the operating system. 

I'm using the anniversary update (1607) with the latest cumulative patch. My impression is that most users on MozillaZine rely upon a saved password, so the fact I didn't notice anybody reporting a similar problem in the forums doesn't mean much.

Comment 10

[Phoenix]

I've finally find some time to try to reproduce this under XP. Unfortunately, my notebook doesn't support SSE2, so I've tested under Server 2003 in Terminal Services (may affect testing, of course).
As there are no steps from scratch in this bug, I did following:
1) Unpacked Daily, set up single pop3/smtp account
2) Didn't save account password, so "Enter your password" window is appearing on launch
3) Performed several Daily launches from Far and Explorer, instantly switching back from Daily to other window before password prompt appearing
4) All the times "Enter your password" window was topmost

Comment 11

[psn]

Point 3 should have been:
"switching to other application's window immediately after OS began launching Daily - before Daily window appears"
instead of:
"instantly switching back from Daily to other window before password prompt appearing".

That is, mail application starts in background. After start use Alt-Tab or click on taskbar button.
Possibly if OS is busy at the time, there would be more chances.

In Winsows 8.1 64-bit several attempts to reproduce right now failed.
However, click on taskbar button and selecting "Close window" produced the desired result: active Daily window and password dialog without focus.

Comment 12

[Phoenix]

(In reply to psn from comment #11)
> Point 3 should have been:
> "switching to other application's window immediately after OS began
> launching Daily - before Daily window appears"
> instead of:
> "instantly switching back from Daily to other window before password prompt
> appearing".
Tried both ways, no difference

Comment 13

[psn]

After launching Daily and switching to another application's window, waited until the Daily's taskbar button stops blinking. Then clicked on that highlighted taskbar button.

Got the desired effect with 32- and 64-bit Daily - Windows Server 2012r2 and 32-bit Windows 10 (1607).

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

No one else has been able to reproduce, and reporter is gone => incomplete