152785 - Mozilla does not try an HTTPS connect

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1002724

(Core :: DOM: Navigation, enhancement)

Description

[Martin Sch]

If there is a "https://test.com" but no "http://test.com" and the user enters
only "test.com", mozilla tries the http connect, but not the https connect.
MSIE seems to try https if http fails.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

to UI design.

Comment 2

[guanxi]

Jens,

Please provide some details:
 - Provide an example of a url with this problem?
 - What operating system (Windows 98?) and build of Mozilla (look at the title
bar; mine is 2002072204) are you using?

Comment 3

[timeless]

ie5.01 for windows doesn't seem to do this.

Comment 4

[David Nesting]

I was unaware that IE did this, but this behavior is remarkably intuitive. 
Today, when we have a site that really needs to be entirely SSL, we end up
having to build a non-SSL version on port 80 to catch these types of entries and
issue an HTTP redirect.  While we'll probably have to continue to do this
workaround for some time in the future, it would be great if the functionality
were there to try multiple protocols when one is omitted.  I view our workaround
today to be a rather annoying kludge.

Perhaps a pref for "protocol search order" might be in order?

Comment 5

[José Jeria]

Also IE 6 SP 1 does not do this.

Comment 6

[Andrew Hagen]

Could someone please post a test URL for this?

Comment 7

[Andrew Hagen]

I received a test URL in e-mail from someone who wants to keep it anonymous.

No dupes. Confirming.

Regardless of whether IE does this, we should. 

Following up on comment 4, if HTTP and HTTPS fail, we should try Gopher and then
anonymous FTP.

Comment 8

[Dave Garrett]

This bug is ancient, though still valid, however the proposed strategy in comment 7 is no longer desired. Gopher is dead and plaintext FTP is not something we should be auto-falling-back to. This bug proposes trying HTTP, then HTTPS. Bug 1158191 proposes trying HTTPS, then HTTP. As this bug has effectively been abandoned for years, but bug 1158191 is now being actively discussed and tracked, I'm going to forward dupe this there.

Comment 9

[Dave Garrett]

Actually, bug 1002724 is the better place to dupe this to, as that proposes a fallback order similar to this. (all the same thing; one strategy will need picking)