1564034 - Confusing error message is displayed when a webpage can't be loaded

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Security, defect, P3)

Description

[Matthew Davis]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:67.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/67.0

Steps to reproduce:

I visited a web page for a domain which is only available inside my corporate network.

Actual results:

"Hmm. We're having trouble finding that site"

The console log is empty.

The Network tab in the developer toolbar does not show a status code for the only request. The "response" is empty.

Expected results:

There should be something to tell the user what went wrong.

e.g. Was it a DNS lookup failure?
e.g. Did the DNS lookup suceed, but the HTTP request timed out?
e.g. Was there a 404?
e.g. Something else?

I get that most users don't want detail. But many technical users do. So for them, there should be an "advanced" button, which reveals technical detail when clicked. Or something printed in the console. Or in the network response.

Comment 1

[Liviu Seplecan]

Hi @Matthew Davis, being an internal - corporate network - what can I do is only providing some info that could help you managing the problem then, setting a component for the issue, maybe some help from dev's team will be great for rendering your problem.
here are some points of view:
1st thing the IP: Ping it in both directions.
2nd DNS: lookup your server and check the path if you can't find it check if you have the correct entry in your internal DNS configuration.
3rd -Firewall: Internally you don't suppose to have any rule that blocks the internal traffic to your server.
4th- the antivirus in your server: check the antivirus is not eating or blocking the internal request.
5th- network traffic: check that you don't have anything blocking the access to your server.
Thanks.

Comment 2

[Matthew Davis]

Ah, my post must have been unclear.

I am not asking you to solve my connectivity issues.

What I am asking is for you to change Firefox error messages so that I can solve the issues myself.

I shouldn't have to run 5 different tests to narrow down the problem. I should just have to click on an "advanced" button on the firefox error page, which then says "DNS resolution failed", or "TCP timeout", or something like that.

Comment 3

[Liviu Seplecan]

Hi @Matthew Davis, based on the comment 2, this isn't an issue, right? so, in conclusion, I guess, it will be classified as an "enhancement". As I said above, we let dev's team to decide what will be the status of this.
Thanks.

Comment 4

[Matthew Davis]

I don't mind if you call it an "enhancement".

I initially marked it as a "bug" because I'm fairly sure older versions of Firefox provided detailed and useful error messages, and that changed when we went to Quantum.

Comment 5

[:Harald Kirschner :digitarald]

Honza, is the work from bug 1556451 related to how this should get fixed?

Comment 6

[Jan Honza Odvarko [:Honza] (always need-info? me)]

Attachment: image.png

What are the STRs for this?
How can I repro the problem?

If I type e.g. localhost:3333 (invalid in my local network) I am getting:

Unable to connect

and I am seeing an entry in the Network panel
See the attached screenshot.

Honza

Comment 7

[:Harald Kirschner :digitarald]

Requesting input from Matthew

Comment 8

[Matthew Davis]

To reproduce the behaviour, try to visit a domain that doesn't exist.

e.g. ashksdglsdkfjgsdkfngbdmn.com

i.e. the real error is a DNS lookup failure.

The suggestions on the error page are red herrings. "Check your network connection" implies that there's a problem connecting to the internet. But Firefox should know that it was able to successfully send a DNS request to a DNS server. The response happened to be null. But Firefox could still talk to the DNS server over the network, so "check you network connection" is a bit misleading.

Comment 9

[Matthew Davis]

Another way to reproduce this is to just disconnect from the wifi network (or pull out your network cable.)

Two different problems, same error message. That's something that needs to be fixed.

Comment 10

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The priority flag is not set for this bug.
:Honza, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 11

[Jan Honza Odvarko [:Honza] (always need-info? me)]

Thanks I can reproduce the problem now

My STR:

0. Open DevTools and select the Network panel
1. Load http://www.ashksdglsdkfjgsdkfngbdmn.com/
2. Observe the request in the Net panel. The status is missing -> BUG

Expected (from comment #0)

There should be something to tell the user what went wrong.

e.g. Was it a DNS lookup failure?
e.g. Did the DNS lookup suceed, but the HTTP request timed out?
e.g. Was there a 404?
e.g. Something else?

The Status column could display it.

Honza, is the work from bug 1556451 related to how this should get fixed?

Not sure, might be related

Honza

Comment 12

[str]

Same problem, more technical information is needed. In my case I see 2 different errors switching back and forward

• "We're having trouble finding that site"
  and
• "The connection has timed out"

I don't know the difference between the 2 messages.

• Was it a DNS lookup failure?
• Did the DNS lookup succeed, but the HTTP request timed out?
• Timeout trying to open the port to send the request, or timeout waiting for answer after the request went through?
• Was there a 404? (this one I think is not the case)
• Something else?

Comment 13

[lockywolf]

I agree with the OP.
The page should be saying something "DNS Name Resolution Failed, please check that there is no typos in the website address."

Comment 14

[Jan Honza Odvarko [:Honza] (always need-info? me)]

It looks like this is not related to DevTools Network panel.

It looks the the issue is related to the Error message displayed in the page content, correct?

Honza

Comment 15

[str]

(In reply to Jan Honza Odvarko [:Honza] (always need-info? me) from comment #14)

It looks the the issue is related to the Error message displayed in the page content, correct?

Correct.

Comment 16

[Jan Honza Odvarko [:Honza] (always need-info? me)]

Moving into the Toolkit component (not sure if it's the right one, so sorry if not)

Honza

Comment 17

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Attachment: Firefox 52 error message

So the real error is in the title of the web page which is unfortunate (Server not Found). It can only be seen by hovering over the tab.

And the reporter is correct - In Firefox 52, we put the true error on the web page (see attachment).

So the issue here is that we stopped putting the real error in the page and put it in the title bar where it is not discoverable. Ironically, in 52, we put the generic error in the title (Problem loading page) and the specific error in the page. With the new error messages, we reversed them making them less understandable.

I believe this bug belongs in networking.

Comment 18

[Honza Bambas (:mayhemer)]

This not a networking bug. This is up to our UX team to decide what is the best way, also for each individual platform and possibly about adjusting the netError.dtd page texts. None of that is in jurisdiction of the Necko team.

I'm moving this to Firefox General for retriage and finding the right component.

Comment 19

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Sorry, I have nothing to do with Firefox UX, I'm doing this only for Thunderbird.

Comment 20

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

I was actually doing triage and trying to figure out the right place :).

It looks like Firefox->Security has the bugs related to this page.

Comment 21

[Honza Bambas (:mayhemer)]

Justin, can you please advice how to proceed with this bug?

This is a low priority.

To sum: we have a design/UX issue with our network error pages, like when the host name cannot be found, or network times out. The main problem is that the summary of the problem, which is most significant, has moved to the page title which these days is nearly invisible because of the width of our tabs, or is not well visible on mobile. The description at the content is usually not enough to clear the reason we failed the load.

The solution here can be as simple as to shuffle stuff around, or to think about this a bit more in-depth when we are here and audit our error pages on multiple platforms and formats.

I would like a UX-like approach here as I don't think the engineering team of Necko should do this.

Thanks.

Comment 22

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

It would probably be useful to know (to comment 17) what work changed this and why -- was this a deliberate decision, or an oversight?

Bouncing to Blake.

Comment 23

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

I seem to remember this was a deliberate design choice… We revamped our error pages as part of… something? But maybe we didn't take this case into account.
Shorlander or Michelle may know more, so I'll send it to… rolls dice Michelle.

Comment 24

[mheubusch]

So, what we see now shows the illustration we created for Quantum but not the copy. Not sure where the copy displayed even came from.

We did have copy for Server not found and Malformed URL, as well as Network connection errors.

The copy for Server Not Found is below, but I wrote this based on my understanding that this was as specific as we can get. If we can create multiple versions of the core message with the specific details about the cause and solutions for an error, we absolutely should:

SERVER NOT FOUND
<title>Server Not Found</title>

<h1>Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site.</h1>
Image: Animal with binoculars

<text>We can’t connect to the server at <URL.com>.

If that address is correct, here are three other things you can try:
Try again later.
Check your network connection.
If you are connected but behind a firewall, check that Firefox has permission to access the Web. </text>