140939 - some bookmarks outside "ie favourites" immutable

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 89220

(SeaMonkey :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Craig Ringer]

The guy using this install fired up mozilla and filed all his IE bookmarks where
he wanted them using copy/paste. Now many bookmarks in his list are immutable,
and some folders have immutable contents too.
This makes sense given that mozilla can't edit IE bookmarks, however the
behavior is _very_ confusing. 
There is no visible way to copy an IE bookmark to the main Mozilla bookmarks
file in such a way as to create a normal Mozilla bookmark.

Reproducable: always with this bookmarks file, cannot test with others because
of user needs. I can nuke the bookmarks and re-import the user's file and
problem is still present. I can even import their bookmarks into moz on linux,
export back to win32 and the problem still ocurrs. Will attatch bookmarks file
if possible.
Should ocurr on new installs too.

Steps:
copy a folder of bookmarks from IE Favourites in the "manage bookmarks" window
and paste it into the main bookmarks area (say, personal toolbar folder).
Attempt to manipulate contents.

Actual behavior: 
silent failure of deletion by "del" of bookmarks within an IE folder;
right-click menu restricted for entries within an IE folder; inability to sort
bookmarks within an IE folder; silent failure to add/move a bookmark into an IE
folder.

Expected behavior:
Error messages when IE bookmark modifications attempted; Copying of IE
Bookmarks/folders results in normal useable Mozilla bookmarks and folders _or_
clearly marked "IE" bookmarks/folders (say, blue e icon instead of normal
bookmark/folder icon). 

Ideal behavior (RFE):
Ability to at user choice either (1) copy bookmark folder and contents to result
in normal moz bookmarks (useful for transition ie->moz) _or_ (2) "linking"
bookmark folder and contents (current behavior).

If mozilla used a bookmarks "folder" with .url files, the problem could be
described as creating symlinks to read-only folders and files when we should be
either copying them or ideally asking the user.

User-Agent is misleading as I'm reporting with .99 on Debian as the household
tech support guru :-/

Comment 1

[Craig Ringer]

Attachment: bookmarks file known to exhibit problem

In case you can't otherwise reproduce the problem, try this bookmarks file.

Comment 2

[Bruce Davidson]

*** Bug 140940 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3

[Rainer Bielefeld]

CFM with Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.0rc1) Gecko/20020425

Depends eventually on bug 68861 ?

I actually have 2 folders "Imported IE Favorites"
One works quite normally, the other not.
Sometimes I can work preferences of boommarks in the "non-working-one, sometimes
I can not and only copy the bookmarks.
When I copy bookmarks of the noh-working-one to other bookmark-folders,there
they "mutate" for example:

from
location: http://fettesoft.de/p56.html
location text: file:///C|/WINDOWS/Favoriten/Corel%20Draw%208.0%20OEM.url 

to
location: file:///C|/WINDOWS/Favoriten/Corel%20Draw%208.0%20OEM.url
location text: file:///C|/WINDOWS/Favoriten/Corel%20Draw%208.0%20OEM.url 

Text at location file:///C|/WINDOWS/Favoriten/Corel%20Draw%208.0%20OEM.url:

[DEFAULT]
BASEURL=http://www.fettesoft.de/p56.html

[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://www.fettesoft.de/p56.html
Modified=00EF0B70E082C1018E

Comment 4

[Craig Ringer]

What I've described above is not, as far as I can tell, related to Bug 66861.
This is not a problem with the import mechanism, rather with how Mozilla handles
imported IE bookmarks and especially IE folders when they're moved outside the
original "Imported IE Favourites" tree.

Eventual fix must be that described above in my report, total locking of IE
favourites (not a fix really), or giving moz the ability to manipulate ie fav
.urls and dirs. Of the three, I'm all for #1 - but I doubt I can do much about
it myself. Anybody know what code this touches and whether a novice might be
able to do anything about it?

Comment 5

[mental]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 89220 ***

Comment 6

[Craig Ringer]

The favourites items when moved outside the "IE Favourites" folder do function
correctly, unlike the reports related to Bug #89220.
The issue is that they cannot be edited, and the contents of folders cannot be
modified - bookmark items function correctly with this setup.

Also: test machine was win98se + mozilla rc1 using "Classic" theme usually,
tests with Modern had the same results.