1465295 - Meaning of checkboxes under Preferences > Advanced > Developer Tools is unclear

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(SeaMonkey :: Preferences, defect)

Description

[uphillfight]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0
Build ID: 20180518175514

Steps to reproduce:

Simply open the web browser, then go to Preferences > Advanced and look at the Developer Tools section. In this section, there are 3 checkboxes:

1. Allow a debugger to connect to SeaMonkey
2. Allow connections from other computers
3. Prompt for incoming connections

There is also a text field to allow users to choose the port for connection. Let's call this #4 to be more succinct.

The meaning of these options is unclear. Specifically, it is not clear how exactly to disable connections from other computers. If checkboxes #1 and #2 are cleared, there are a few ways to interpret the meaning of #3:

A. Override #1 and #2 and prompt when an incoming connection is requested
B. Override #1 and #2 and automatically allow all incoming connections without prompting
C. #3 does nothing whether the box is checked or not (in this case, why not just gray it out?)

Similar problems exist for allowing a port number to be set. The port number should be grayed out if it does nothing after #1 and #2 are unchecked.


Actual results:

#1 to #4 are all enabled regardless of the settings on #1 and #2. It is as if they all function independently, which cannot be the case because their functions clash.


Expected results:

If #1 and #2 are unchecked, #3 should either be disabled or its specific function clarified. If #1 and #2 are unchecked, #4 should be grayed out completely because it should be rendered irrelevant.

Comment 1

[Isaac Schemm]

Just did a little digging. These options were introduced in bug 973530. They map to these preferences in about:config:

* Allow a debugger to connect to SeaMonkey -> devtools.debugger.remote-enabled
* Allow connections from other computers -> devtools.debugger.force-local
* Prompt for incoming connections -> devtools.debugger.prompt-connection
* Port number for connection -> devtools.debugger.remote-port

Hopefully this helps.

Comment 2

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

If you are not a dev just leave the options allone. Default is not to allow incoming connections.

devtools including the options need an overhaul in future versions.