159537 - If you type in a URL, and it cannot be resolved, the address-bar gets overwritten with "(about: blank)"

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 104778

(SeaMonkey :: Location Bar, defect)

Description

[resigned]

Reproduce:

 1. Open a new window/tab/whatever
 2. Type in a web address for a non-existent domain, e.g. www.alksndgiahtiwaig.com
   2.1. (OR: if like many you are behind a dial-up connection, try a real domain
whilst the modem is re-dialling/off-line, assuming the modem re-dial takes
longer than the mozilla DNS-lookup-timeout :)
 4. Wait...until it times-out.
 5. Popup dialog something like: "domain cannot be found etc blah"
 6. The URL you carefully typed in has now been deleted and replaced with
"(about: blank)".

Problems:

 1. If you make a typo in a long URL, you are prevented from correcting it!
 2. If you are trying to reach a domain that has some kind of overloaded server
problem, (or similar with DNS? Perhaps?) - so that it stops responding to
http-requests for short periods of time - you CANNOT just type in the address,
and keep hitting reload until it works.
 3. If you are on dialup, and open a couple of new tabs/windows, just as the
modem hangsup, there is NO WAY to establish where these tabs/windows were
pointing to. On other browsers, you just:
    a. wait for modem to re-connect
    b. select each window/tab and hit refresh.

Really not sure which component this is sourced in! Guessing "Networking".

Comment 1

[Robert Wall]

See bug 90919(URL bar should not lose focus until (non-error) page starts to
load).  

Comment 2

[Andrew Hagen]

This would be a fairly important problem. Normal severity. Reporter, please use
the Bugzilla Helper to report bugs. WFM trunk 1.1 beta 2002072504 Windows 98.
The bug might be limited to Linux. Reporter, what build/version of Mozilla are
you using?

Comment 3

[resigned]

According to about-Mozilla:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020529

Other (possibly relevant) info:
 X11 = XFree86 v 4.2.0
 Window manager = IceWM
 Kernel = 2.4.18 (though I doubt *that* matters!)

...though I doubt it is anything to do with any of that :).

Comment 4

[R.K.Aa.]

Unable to reproduce with a current CVS  build, Linux.

Reporter: The build you use is old. This may have been fixed with the checkin
for bug 152127: "Prevent tabs from getting renamed to "(Untitled)" at seemingly
random times. Also fixes bugs 101827, 101831, 102924, 108189, 108350, 108421,
111118, 124028, 134815, 141839, 144431, 144984, 150669, 158171"

Comment 5

[Wesha]

   Reporter: could you please  read  the  Bug  Writing  Guidelines  at
http://www.mozilla.org/quality/bug-writing-guidelines.html to see  the
kinds of information we need in a bug report. Please report back  with
more information (like BuildID and steps to reproduce)  after  reading
those guidelines and consider using  the  Bugzilla  Helper  to  report
future bugs.

   The Helper can be found at
   http://www.mozilla.org/quality/help/bug-form.html

   Your build is too old a build to report bugs against now.
The problem you are reporting may well have been fixed already.

   Could you please download a recent nightly build from
   ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/
   and then let us know if you still see this problem?

   Thanks for your help in testing Mozilla.

Comment 6

[resigned]

> Your build is too old a build to report bugs against now.
> The problem you are reporting may well have been fixed already.
>
>   Could you please download a recent nightly build from
>   ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/
>   and then let us know if you still see this problem?

I'm sorry, but the simple answer is "No".
I'm permanently on dialup connection, so download speeds are terrible.
There is no way I can keep downloading Mozilla with any frequency (it generally
takes approx 3-4 hours to download a single version at the moment), and
certainly not every time I find a bug or RFE in the stable version (normally
find one every couple of days).

I'm sorry - I hadn't realised - obviously I can't really participate in the
debugging process; setting to INVALID (if this bug really does still exist,
it'll eventually get logged by someone else who *can* afford the money and time
to download recent builds).

FWVLIW this process seems incompatible with the majority of non-techy users. "I
found a bug, what do I do?" "Download a new version, re-install/upgrade, hope
nothing breaks (try to install to a different path etc), and try to reproduce it".

Not that I disagree with the process - I quite understand the necessity and
wisdom of the system - but it clearly isn't perfect.

Comment 7

[benc]

I'm willing to leave this open for a while, I've seen it myself, but not really
bothered to investigate too much. 

adam: Why don't we leave this open for a while, until you have time to download
a later build. If you can get good steps, great! If you cannot get this w/ the
new build, we'll invalidate it then.

If you want to do mozilla 1.1beta, or wait until 1.1 milestone, that is fine w/ me.

Comment 8

[[e-mail]]

wfm on winxp, build 2002072508

I remember this error from earlier times. Looks like it has been fixed by now.

Comment 9

[[e-mail]]

Correction: I can confirm, but only for the following:

1. enter false URL
2. click Ok on Alert
3. Location contains the false URL (as expected) 
4. click on different tab
5. return to original tab

===> the Location is about:blank instead of the false URL

changing status to NEW, setting OS to all

Comment 10

[benc]

->URL bar

Comment 11

[Andrew Hagen]

*** Bug 172659 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 12

[Torben]

*** Bug 178419 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 13

[Torben]

I have seen this on macs too (latest build tried 2002110108), changing plattform.

This bug is also very simmilar to bug 104778, but I am keeping this open for
now. A patch is however attached to bug 104778, someone might want to try to see
if this also cures this bug (will do it myself if I get time, but cannot promise
anything). You do not need to compile moz yourself to try the patch, it only
changes to .js-files.

Comment 14

[Torben]

Done some checking; even though the patch to bug 104778 are far from perfect (do
not try this at home), I am quite sure this this is a dupe of bug 104788.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 104788 ***

Comment 15

[Torben]

Argh, wrong dupe #, will reopen and reresolve.

Comment 16

[Torben]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 104778 ***