1494353 - The back button is enabled but nonfunctional when about:preferences is accessed from other menus

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1766143

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect, P3)

Description

[Iulia Cristescu, QA [:JuliaC] (away, please needinfo? [e-mail])]

[Affected versions]:
- 64.0a1 (2018-09-25)
- 63.0b9 build1 (20180924202103) 
- 62.0.2 build1 (20180920131237)

[Affected platforms]:
- Windows 10 x64
- Ubuntu 16.04 x64
- macOS 10.13

[Steps to reproduce]:
1. Launch Firefox 
2. Enable Content Blocking (set browser.contentblocking.ui.enabled to true and restart the browser) 
3. Open the Hamburger Menu and click the "Open Content Blocking Preferences"
4. Inspect the back button and click it  

[Expected result]:
- [step 4] The back button is disabled

[Actual result]:
- [step 4] The back button is enabled, but the user is kept on the same page when using it

[Regression range]:
- This is not a recent regression, as the issue is reproducible all the way back to 62 builds (62.0a1 (2018-06-21))
- I will provide more details as soon as possible

[Additional notes]:
- This is also reproducible using the Tracking Protection specific control from the Hamburger Menu

Comment 1

[(no longer active)]

This isn't a new bug and isn't specific to this UI.  Here is the cause:

https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/ce57be88b8aa2ad03ace1b9684cd6c361be5109f/browser/components/preferences/in-content/preferences.js#141
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/ce57be88b8aa2ad03ace1b9684cd6c361be5109f/browser/components/preferences/in-content/preferences.js#168

Any call to gotoPref() that specifies a subcategory is affected.

The fix would of course be to use pushState properly.

Comment 2

[Tanvi Vyas[:tanvi]]

Thanks for filing this!  This doesn't block Content Blocking, but is a bug in Firefox.

Comment 5

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to (no longer active) from comment #1)

The fix would of course be to use pushState properly.

pushState doesn't work on about: pages, see bug 1767001.

Bug 1766143 is newer but has more context, so duping forward.