Closed Bug 162891 Opened 22 years ago Closed 22 years ago

Can't open MailNews if you use 3rd party themes

Categories

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Product:
SeaMonkey
Component:
MailNews: Message Display
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
VERIFIED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: zevious, Assigned: sspitzer)

References

Details

(Keywords: regression) 

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.1b) Gecko/20020814
BuildID:    2002081508

Can't open MailNews in 12:14 Build. Worked fine in the morning Build.

Also, seems to have something. The browser works fine but closing leaves the
mozilla process open, requiring it to be killed in the Task Manager.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open Mozilla
2. Try to open MailNews


Actual Results:  MailNews doesn't open

Expected Results:  MailNews open

This is a regression..
Same behavior wrt MailNews, though exiting the browser on my system does 
remove the mozilla process.
I'm seeing the same on 2002081508 built for i686 Linux.

I too see mozilla leaving processes open, but only when I've attempted
to open the mail news window.

I'm not 100% certain, but I think the first time I ran this version of Mozilla I
could open the Mail/News window.

I'm rolling back to my old version (2002071404) till this is sorted.
Follow-up: if I start MailNews via 'mozilla -mail', it runs.  It cannot be 
started from the browser.  mailto: targets work.

Confirmed 2002081508 Win98SE

100% reproducible as reporter posted.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
After closing Mozilla, delete the file XUL.MFL

Mozilla / Mail-News will open. Not a fix, just a band-aid approach.

Also noted that after closing Mozilla when the bug is in effect, the file
"parent.lock" is created in the profile directory until you "end task" on
Mozilla. Is this normal? 

is this theme related?
I see the same problem, and as I reported in bug 163802, this happens with all
third party themes that I tested. It does not happen with Modern or Classic. I
don't know whether the themes are incompatible because of some new change, or if
there is a problem reading themes from the profile dir.
The following bugs might be the same thing:

bug 163802
bug 162870

All bugs indicate that the problem started with 0815 builds.
*** Bug 163082 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 163116 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Ok, if this is a theme related thing, then I'm using personalised version of the
Pinball theme.

This is supposed to be derived from the Mozilla 1.0 modern theme.
A diff between Mozilla 1.0 modern, Pinball theme, and the latest trunk modern
might be enlightening.
Keywords: regression
See the same problem on OS/2 build with pinball scheme.
Changing OS -> All.
OS: Windows XP → All
*** Bug 163181 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
possible dupe bug 163304
*** Bug 163304 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 163374 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
An easy workaround exists: change to an official theme.
For that reason (see http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/bug_status.html#severity ), I
think this warrants at most a Major severity, but I'm nudging it to Normal
because it has a workaround (I personally think it's a little worse than minor =).

bug 163374 is a mac incident, so plat -> all

And I can reproduce this with Pinball and CVS from 18/19 August 2002.
Severity: blocker → normal
Hardware: PC → All
There have been some theme changes so some 3rd party themes are now incompatible
with Mail. Apparently the changes should have been announced in the newsgroups
but I'm currently 400 messages behind so I don't know for sure. See bug 161226.

Unfortunately under Bugzilla rules incompatible themes aren't valid bugs :-(
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 22 years ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID
Well, that's disappointing.
I sort of assumed that a 1.XX release would present backward comaptible interfaces
for all third party developers, including skin developers.
I assumed that any incompatibilities would drop into the trunk when it stepped
up to 2.XX
As a potential Mozilla hacker, can someone suggest an appropriate forum for
discussion in this vein?
That doesn't make any sense Neil. If this was simply due to incompatible themes,
why would delting xul.mfl in the profile directory allow the themes to work again?
Reopening. If this is due to an XUL change, there is no post to n.p.m.ui and
n.p.m.xpfe as suggested in
[news://news.mozilla.org:119/3BB35EBC.7010007@mozilla.org].

To reiterate my bug 163374, comment 2, this problem appeared  between
2002-08-14-08-trunk and 2002-08-15-08-trunk
Status: RESOLVED → REOPENED
Resolution: INVALID → ---
I have filed bug 163489 requesting that Mozilla have some mechanism for checking
if a third party theme is compatible with the current build, or warning the user
that a skin will not work properly with the current build.
This is not strictly a theme error.  Yet another workaround is to disable XUL
Cache in Prefs->Debug->Networking.  After that, and after you delete XUL.mfasl,
the problem no longer persists.  I confirmed this workaround with the pinball
theme on Linux/Athlon debug trunk CVS build at Mon Aug 19 08:43:39 EDT 2002.
I can verify this bug under skypilot theme on win32 build 2002081908.  Mozilla
does not close when you close the last window ("Exit mozilla" menu item is
disabled/greyed-out on systray).  You cannot change themes either, as mozilla
stays open, even though changing the theme causes the quicklaunch icon to go
away.  You have to kill the process (I used killit) and then the theme can
change.  This is bad.  
Forgot to mention that I could not get mail/news to open.  I'm voting for this
bug, as it would appear to the average end-user that it is not the themes fault,
but rather mozilla, since no error messages about the theme were displayed. 
It's also annoying that I can't use skypilot for the time being.
Also, it seems to open ONCE for me. I'm using WinXp and Orbit..
Exactly. After fresh install it comes ONCE and never shows again.

A patch checked in from bug 161226 caused this regression.
Back out the checkins mentioned at
http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvsquery.cgi?treeid=default&module=SeaMonkeyAll&branch=HEAD&branchtype=match&dir=&file=&filetype=match&who=&whotype=match&sortby=Date&hours=2&date=explicit&mindate=08%2F14%2F2002+15%3A10&maxdate=08%2F14%2F2002+15%3A20&cvsroot=%2Fcvsroot
and mail/news once again loads with third-party themes when fastload is enabled.

I repeat from earlier, this bug only occurs when XUL fastload is enabled.
what would a new input in bugzilla do.
input: what theme are you using?

it could be conconcenated to what is your browser build if data base would be a 
problem.
people are seeing this on trunk builds with third party themes, right?

this type of thing is going to happen when ever a new .css file is added.

I'm not sure the normal policy, but theme authors will need update their themes
for the trunk (mozilla 1.2) and add a few .css files.

I'm at fault for forgetting to give them a heads up.  Is there a mailing list or
newsgroup I should have notified?


Why are blank CSS files required? Isn't there some way to specify that certain
files are optional?
Seth, please see the URL in my comment 22 for the suggested procedure.
I'm going to follow the procedure in
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162891#c22, and then close this bug.

sorry again to everyone who's trunk build broke because of my change.
Status: REOPENED → ASSIGNED
here's my (late) announcement.

news://news.mozilla.org:119/3D62EEFB.4050505@netscape.com

Next time, I'll give a weeks notice before making such a change.

Does anyone know the email address of the 3rd party skin developers?  I'll leave
this open until I contact them, or until a week since the notice has passed.
http://themes.mozdev.org/
There is a bunch of third-party themes.  Email addresses are on the page next to
the theme.  I'm sure there's an easier way though.  A newsgroup?  ?
*** Bug 163765 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The cause is, as described above, bug 161226.
However the REAL cause is the problem that Mozilla
(and especially fastload) has with missing .css files
in themes. This makes theme development horrible, and
make it almost impossible to extend mozilla without
breaking things.
I've created a bugreport: 163837
I sent mail to themes@mozdev.org, in addition to the newsgroups.
Summary: Can't open MailNews in 12:14 Build → Can't open MailNews if you use 3rd party themes
Littlemozilla 1.1 and 1.0 fixed
Wood 1.1 fixed
Bricks 1.1 fixed
Sailfish reports: Sky Pilot 1.8rc1 fixed, go to: http://projectit.com/skypilot
P.s. mozdev.org is not updated very often, better it is to go to deskmod.org
where theme-owners can upload new versions themselves

greetings, Alfred Kayser
*** Bug 163819 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Orbit * fixed as of 20th August
Chris: Yes, confirmed using Orbit 3m
*** Bug 164406 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 164340 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 164437 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 162868 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
looking at the .xpfe newsgroup, several themes have been fixed.

is it safe to mark this fixed?
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 22 years ago → 22 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
I wouldn't have marked this FIXED until:
1) the content in http://mozilla.org/themes/download/ is changed to reflect
Mozilla 1.1 themes and/or
2) they've updated those themes in DeskMod and MozDev, or write a warning that
themes for 1.0 won't work for Mozilla 1.1.
*** Bug 166279 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Since new bugs are still reported and dup, it's better to reopen the bug again
(cf my last comment).
Status: RESOLVED → REOPENED
Resolution: FIXED → ---
*** Bug 165452 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 165384 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 165713 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This will be marked fixed when we update the theme version string. At that point
old themes will no longer work with newer mozilla builds and Mozilla will fall
back to the default (classic) theme. Andreww is handling this. 
Theme designers should not have to modify their 1.0 themes - but will need to
have new versions with "1.2" as the skin version. I'm going to be checking in a
change to the skin version next week.  I've posted a notice to the newsgroups
about this to give skin designers a chance to make changes 

The bug to follow is:

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=164174
Depends on: 164174
It was suggested I change to one of the original themes because none of the new
builds worked for me. Email wouldn't start or would lock-up.  

I upgraded my preferred theme, Pinball, to version 1.0.4, and on the latest
beta, 2002090604, I got a complete install and as a bonus my email now works.

Keeping themes upgraded is a necessity.


harvey r. savage
hsavage@pobox.com
Yes that's true, but  what you have now when Pinstripe upgraded is that they
probably had to make changes to their existing theme to work with today's
builds, but there may be ( or still might be before 1.2 is out) - changes that
make newer skins incompatible with 1.0 - and we should not force skin developers
to have to make a choice between working on 1.2 or 1.0.  Upgrading the
skinversion will allow folks who want simply maintain their 1.0 skins to not
have to worry about getting emails from folks wondering why it breaks on their
browser. And folks creating 1.2 skins dont have to worry (necessarily) about
making things backward compatible.

It's my fervent hope that we keep these "skin breaking" changes to an absolute
minimum during point releases.
I'm going to close this, as it's been long enough.

I've got some new .css files (for
http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/filters/#Log) that will cause problems,
but I'll send mail properly this time.
Status: REOPENED → RESOLVED
Closed: 22 years ago → 22 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
I ran into this today, but haven't updated the theme to the newest version and
will do now.  
*** Bug 172146 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 165395 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 171927 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 174111 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 174061 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 174339 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 172204 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 174230 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 167507 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 163796 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Hi,

I'm running into this same bug using the latest nightly and the milestone 1.2b
with Sky Pilot for 1.2b. The mail window won't come up and the mozilla process
will not terminate on Win2k Pro without manual stoppage.

There is no XUL.MFL file I can find to delete. This also curiously affects my
Mozilla 1.2a that I had previously installed in another directory now.

Thank god for Netscape 4.79 mail client
Status: RESOLVED → REOPENED
Resolution: FIXED → ---
Getting a private build from the Sky Pilot group solved the problem.

FYI with this problem, the bookmarks tab wouldn't open and some links would also
fail to open on click.
marking wontfix.  I can't keep all 3rd party themes up to date with classic and
modern.  

there will be times where changes will break other themes, the best I can do is
give the theme people a heads up.
Status: REOPENED → RESOLVED
Closed: 22 years ago → 22 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
Seth, et. al. if you find bugfixes or changes that make themes/skins no longer
backwards compatible, feel free to email me the bug and Ill make sure that an
update gets posted to the newsgroups and boards.
Why is the theme interface so delicate?  Can broken themes be addressed going
forward by locking down the interface they use?
marking verified
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
*** Bug 162870 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Product: Browser → Seamonkey
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