166923 - Link URL not shown in statusbar if "dom.disable_window_status_change"

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 40838

(Core :: JavaScript Engine, defect)

Description

[Henry James]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826 MultiZilla/v1.1.21
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826 MultiZilla/v1.1.21

If a page uses JavaScript to change the status bar text (for example, <a
href="foo.html" onmouseover="window.status='foo';">), and if
"dom.disable_window_status_change" is set to "true" (Preferences > Advanced >
Scripts & Plugins > Allow script to: > [ ] Change status bar text), the status
bar does not show the link URL on mouse hover.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Get a new Mozilla profile;
2. Set "dom.disable_window_status_change" to "true" in prefs.js (either edit
hardcore or use pref settings dialog);
3. Go to a page with JavaScript overriding status bar text when mouse points to
a link (the URL adove, for example);
4. Move the mouse over such a link (in our example, any link in the menu on the
left side).

Actual Results:  
Status bar text does not change in any way.

Expected Results:  
Status bar text show the URL of the link.

Strangely. The link URL *is* shown correctly if
"capability.policy.default.Window.status" is set to "noAccess" in prefs.js. I
cannot image this is by intention. If it is, I consider it wrong.

Comment 1

[Jonas Jørgensen]

That page uses |return true;| in its onmouseover attribute.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 40838 ***

Comment 2

[Phil Schwartau]

Verified Duplicate.

All the anchors I looked at on the left side of http://mp3-tech.org/
end with |return true;|

Henry, thank you for this report. You have been cc'ed on bug 40838
so you can follow progress on this.

Note this is not a JavaScript Engine issue. JavaScript Engine deals
with the abstract JavaScript programming language. Specifically,
the low-level objects such as String(), Number(), and Date().
The JS Engine is not itself aware of browser or DOM objects like
window, document, anchors, etc.