1637790 - Email Link broken in 76.0.1

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect, P3)

Description

[Mike Camp]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:76.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/76.0

Steps to reproduce:

I updated my Dell Latitude E6510, Windows 7 Pro 32 bit running FireFox 75.0 to FireFox 76.0.1.

I have Windows Live Mail as my mail client and under Options/Applications I have "Windows Live Mail" (wlmail.exe) set for "mailto".

I've got 2 hard drives configured identically (image copies of one another), one still has FF 75.0 installed and the other has FF 76.0.1 so I was able to open FF on both systems and compare every "Option" setting and make them identical.

Actual results:

Under FF 76.0.1 clicking on "Email Link" starts Live Mail, but does NOT create a new email message and doesn't copy the desired link (it simply starts Live Mail).

When I want to send someone a link that I'm looking at, once FF has started Live Mail I need to manually create a new message then manually copy/paste the link from FF into the message before I can send it.

Expected results:

Under 75.0, clicking on "Email Link" starts Live Mail, goes into create new email, and generates a new email message that contains the link I want to send.

The behavior of Email Link in FF 76.0.1 is an annoying backward step that feels like a bug.

Comment 1

[Jeronimo Torti (Please send NI request to Brindusa Tot)]

Hi,
I was unable to reproduce this issue since I can't set my pc with 2 hard drives, or have two Firefox versions at the same time.

Does this issue occur with a fresh profile as well? You can find the steps 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

You can also try testing 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

Or you can also download Firefox Nightly from here: https://nightly.mozilla.org/ , to see if the issue still occurs there as well.

If after doing this you can still reproduce the bug, would you send a screenshot or a video of the bug?

Thanks in advance. I've already chosen a component for this bug in hope that someone with more expertise may look at it. We'll await their answer.

Regards,
Jerónimo.

Comment 2

[Mike Camp]

I've tried the suggestions above. I was able to recreate the problem both times.
1st I created a new profile and set it as the default (so while I normally have Private Browsing set, it was defaulted to OFF). Once the new profile was created i had to connect mailto to Windows Live Mail (C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Mail\wlmail.exe). Next I selected a URL and clicked on "Email Link" as before, Live Mail started up but I had to manually create an email and cut/paste the URL link into the message.

Next I tried starting FF in Safe Mode. Selecting a URL and "Email Link" Live Mail started up but again I had to manually create a new email and cut/paste the URL link into the new message.

I noticed that FF had an update available (77.0) and so I updated. Same result, Live Mail starts but doesn't immediately go to "create new email" or paste the link into message.

About the only difference that I can see between the 75.0.1 and 76.0.1 or 77.0 releases is that in the original image of my system, mailto under FF options shows the text "Windows Live Mail (default)". Under 76.01. and 77.0 after linking wlmail.exe to mailto the option shows the text "Windows Live Mail" . The word "(default)" in parens is missing?? Don't know whether this is important.

Sorry.

Comment 3

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

I think the missing "(default)" is probably part of this but Firefox should still work with a non-system default Mail application.

Can you try using the mozregression tool, which can be found at https://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/, to see exactly when this stopped working for you? mozregression will help you do a search of all of the builds of Firefox, downloading and executing them with a separate, clean profile so as not to affect your other profiles.

Comment 4

[Mike Camp]

I'm sorry that I haven't been able to try the nightly releases to isolate the Email Link issue that I reported.

This morning I decided to completely remove FireFox from my system and do a bottoms up new install. I used Revo Uninstaller to uninstall FF and clean up all of the associated files, directories, and Registry Keys. Then I reinstalled FF 77.0.1, set mailto to Windows Live Mail, and tried Email Link again. Same problem as before, Live Mail is started but a new email message is NOT created and therefor the link isn't copied anywhere.

I thought more about the fact that when the feature was working in FF 75.0.1, the mailto app showed as "Windows Live Mail (default)" . So I started poking around on my Win 7 Pro system and found that there was a way to define system wide default apps.

By selecting Windows Start/Default Programs/Set Your Default Programs I could see a list of my system applications. I selected Windows Live Mail and then "Set as default".

When I restarted FireFox and checked Options, I found that there were now 2 Windows Live Mail entries under mailto. One marked "Windows Live Mail" and one marked "Windows Live Mail (default)". I selected the one marked "default" and now when I click on Email Link, it starts Windows Live Mail, creates a new mail note, and cuts/pastes the FF link into the new note.

Before installing FF 76.0 and 77.0.1 I had NOT deliberately changed the Live Mail default system affiliation, but somehow it did change.

Basically, I think this bug is NOT a problem on your end, rather it was a system (or operator) error on my end.

Please mark this as closed. I am sorry that I spun you all up needlessly on this. Thanks,
Mike C.

Comment 5

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Thanks, we got a similar bug report in bug 1643876 though that bug was first filed with Firefox 74.1. I've asked in that bug if they see the same missing "(default)" as you do.

Comment 6

[Mike Camp]

Looks like the other bug was on a Windows 10 system. I've resisted moving to Win 10 with every fiber of my being (I'm not impressed and have written a bunch of small tools to run in the Win XP-> Win 8 Dos Command Line window that I haven't been able to run on friends Win 10 systems).

As a result, I'm not entirely sure whether Win 10 has a similar "Set Default Program" feature as Win 7 Pro. But it might be something to suggest to 1643876.

Since I don't recall changing anything before updating to FF 76.0.1 (when Email Link stopped working) it begs the question of why Windows Live Mail was no longer marked as (default) on my system after 76.0.1 install. Apparently either I changed my mail default or something in the 76.0.1 installer did.