1603485 - Links from mac About Firefox dialog fail to open if no open windows

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Toolkit :: UI Widgets, defect)

Description

[Doug Hill]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.14; rv:71.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/71.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Launch Firefox and close all open windows.
2. Select Menu item Firefox>About Firefox
3. Click link for What's new

Actual results:

Nothing

Expected results:

A new window is opened with the What's new documentation.

Comment 1

[Clara Guerrero ( Need Info Brindusa Tot Please)]

Hi Doug,

Thanks for the details. I wasn't able to reproduce on MacOS 10.14.5 on Firefox Nightly version 73.0a1 (2019-12-12) (64-bit) nor Firefox Release 71.0 (64-bit).

Could you check if this also occurs to you while using a new profile? You can find the steps to do that here:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Managing-profiles#w_starting-the-profile-manager

Best regards, Clara.

Comment 2

[Doug Hill]

Hello Clara,

Thanks for following up on this bug report.

I went ahead and created a new profile, as described in the support you linked to. I then quit Firefox and started again. After restarting, I notice in about:profiles page it says this about the newly created profile:
"This is the profile in use and it cannot be deleted."

I then close all windows and select menu item Firefox>About Firefox

Click on What's New, still does nothing.

Comment 3

[Clara Guerrero ( Need Info Brindusa Tot Please)]

Hi Doug,

What about clicking "Launch profile in new browser" button once you create a profile, so that a new FF window opens? ( instead of quitting FF and re-starting)

Can you please download Firefox Nightly from here: https://nightly.mozilla.org/ and retest the problem and see if the issue still occurs there as well?

If after doing this you can still reproduce the bug, could you send me a screenshot?

Best, Clara.

Comment 4

[Doug Hill]

Hello again,

I originally tried to Launch Profile in new browser, but the new instance gave me an error that multiple copies of Firefox were running. Trying again launched the app but still has the same error for this bug.

I went ahead and downloaded the latest nightly build at the URL above.

Firefox Nightly 73.0a1 (2019-12-17) (64-bit)

I still see the bug in this Nightly release.

I will go ahead upload a movie of the bug behavior I see.

Comment 5

[Doug Hill]

Attachment: Bug - Trying to show What's New does nothing

Comment 6

[Clara Guerrero ( Need Info Brindusa Tot Please)]

Hi ,

I am still not able to reproduce the bug but I've chosen a component for this bug in hope that someone with more expertise may look at it. We'll await their answer. If you consider that there's another component that's more proper for this case you may change it.

You may also test if the issue is reproducible in safe mode, here is a link that can help you:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode

Regards, Clara.

Comment 7

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

This fails for any link with:

NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE: text.js:389
    open chrome://global/content/elements/text.js:389
    MozTextLink chrome://global/content/elements/text.js:283

Comment 8

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

The win.open() is using chrome://browser/content/hiddenWindowMac.xhtml and has the same exception as

Services.appShell.hiddenDOMWindow.open("about:license")

Comment 9

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Kris, bug 1553804 regressed this. Looks like the text.js binding needs teaching how to deal with not passing chrome openers to content. Feels like if it's in a chrome context it should just be calling Services.ww.openWindow or something.

Comment 11

[Alexandra Martin]

Hi,

This issue seems to be reproduced also on Ubuntu 18.04 using Firefox 72.0.1, 73.0b4 and 74.0a1 (2020-01-12).

Comment 12

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

This has picked up one dupe now and I could see this being confusing behavior. Andrew, can you maybe help find someone with cycles to look into this? Thanks!

Comment 13

[Andrew Overholt [:overholt]]

(In reply to Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM][PTO Jan 25 - Feb 2] from comment #12)

This has picked up one dupe now and I could see this being confusing behavior. Andrew, can you maybe help find someone with cycles to look into this? Thanks!

Forgot to note it here but I mentioned to Kris last week and just reminded him via email.

Comment 14

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

Attachment: Bug 1603485: Fix opening XUL links when no browser window is open. r=nika

Comment 15

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/7e6847cbf351
Fix opening XUL links when no browser window is open. r=nika

Comment 16

[Noemi Erli[:noemi_erli]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/7e6847cbf351

Comment 17

[Cornel Ionce [:noni] [Hubs QA]]

Reproduced the initial issue on macOS 10.15.3 using Firefox 72.0.1.

Confirming the fix on Firefox 74.0b5, build ID: 20200218224219 - a window is opened with the What's new info properly displayed using the STR from the description.