188142 - Provide preference to disable print dialog (and other dialogs?)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[dylang]

When I go to this page, a print dialog appears.  I don't know why a print dialog
appears.  It's completely unexpected!  I see an onLoad for a print javascript
method, but my Javascript preferences are set such that no check marks are
enabled in the "allow scripts to" portion of the scripts & plugins dialog.

This affects 2003010708 and 2002123106.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

none of the check marks in question affect window.print(), which should be
obvious from their descriptions. So this is just a page using dumb code.

I suppose we could add the ability to prevent calls to that too; is this bug a
request for such?

Comment 2

[dylang]

I don't think any web page should be allowed to pop up a dialog like that ever.
 I consider myself an experienced computer user, thanks to my many years of
experience (programming and administration) under different operating systems. 
And I found it to be very counter-intuitive.  The only time I want to see a
print dialog, is if I invoke it.  I personally don't care that the Javascript
definition is broken by being so permissive of abuses such as the window.print().

There should be a nice big, "no page does unrequested things without permission"
check box I can decheck.

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Yeah, too bad that's not feasible.

And many pages use window.print() to quite good effect (this is the first time I
have ever seen it abused).

Care to actually answer the question I asked?

Comment 4

[dylang]

Yes.

Comment 5

[dylang]

Attachment: Small testcase. Fires a window.print in the onload.

Here is a testcase since the original site has changed.  This still affects
Mozilla.

Comment 6

[Ray Kiddy]

So, is there still a request in here that could be answered?

Can we have javascript.options.strict==true turn off the ability to print from javascript? Would this be acceptable and a sensible way to deal with it?

Alternatively, if nobody thinks we need to cover this case, shouldn't the bug be closed? After all, one does get the dialog.

Comment 7

[Jim Scott]

I guess I am not getting the problem. The HTML code on this page calls the Windows Print dialogue on page load ... and the Windows Print dialogue starts up as requested. So ... what is the problem?

Comment 8

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

The problem is that we should consider blocking such calls like we would a window.open() call from onload.  That is, require user interaction to trigger printing.

Not sure how many sites that would break (e.g. ones that don't have a "print" button on their printable pages) from the point of view of people who don't know about File > Print or who can't find the right frame to print.

Comment 9

[Olli Pettay [:smaug][[e-mail]]]

It would break quite a few sites, I believe.
I've seen pretty often print dialog open automatically when loading
printing-friendly version of some page.

Comment 10

[:Ms2ger (he/him; ⌚ UTC+1/+2)]

I'll note that Gmail is one case that would break.

Comment 11

[Anne (:annevk)]

Offering a preference to disable website-driven dialogs seems reasonable, but this should be a UX decision.

Comment 12

[Jared Hirsch [:jhirsch] (he/him) (Needinfo please)]

I suspect I won't offend anyone if I WONTFIX this bug at this point.