1884471 - "about:prof[ile]" autocompletes to the new/unfinished about:profilemanager UI, rather than the existing/functional about:profiles

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect, P1)

Description

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

STR:

1. Type about:prof into the URL bar (not a complete URL, we're just seeing what it autocompletes to.
2. (optional) Type i, l, e (for about:profile)
3. Accept whatever autocompletion the URL bar offers you.

ACTUAL RESULTS:
The URL bar offers about:profilemanager which at this point isn't functional. It's just a page that says:

Hello world - New Profiles

EXPECTED RESULTS:
We should autocomplete these prefixes to about:profiles.
Until about:profilemanager is functional and we want people to actually use it, we shouldn't be directing people to it. Either we should prevent it from showing up as an autocompletion, or we should ensure that about:profiles gets priority and autocompletes with higher priority, for common prefixes like the ones described in the STR (up to about:profile which is a prefix of both URLs)

Firefox Nightly 125.0a1 (2024-03-08) (64-bit) gives me ACTUAL RESULTS.
Firefox 123 gives EXPECTED RESULTS (about:prof autocompletes to about:profiles).

I'm pretty sure this is a regression from bug 1883143 since that's where this "Hello world - New Profiles` content was added (looking in particular at https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/d572999cdc8f41591ce2f4d0b13486cc9aad2123/browser/components/profiles/content/profiles.html#18 )

Comment 1

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

A few notes:
(1) Perhaps about:profilemanager is only "winning" due to sorting alphabetically before about:profiles? (M sorts before S) I'm not sure how autocomplete chooses between about URIs, but that seems plausible.

(2) I see we've got an about:config pref associated with the new profile manager work, browser.profiles.enabled, but that pref is false by default (and it's false in my profile), so that pref isn't helping us here. Regardless of whether that pref is true or false: about:profilemanager still appears as an autocomplete suggestion, and appears on about:about, and shows the same "Hello world" content (with no functional profile managing UI) when I visit it. If possible, maybe we want to hide this about: URL entirely behind that pref, so that it doesn't resolve (and doesn't get autocomplete-suggested) if the pref is false?

Comment 2

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

[Tracking Requested - why for this release]: adds a fairly substantial hoop that prevents users from reaching our existing/functional profile manager UI. (Users trying to type about:profiles are likely to be fooled into thinking it's been removed, since we never autocomplete-suggest it anymore, since every prefix appears to be favored to autocomplete to the not-yet-functional about:profilemanager instead.)

Niklas, could you take a look? Might even be worth backing out bug 1883143 if we don't have an easy solution here (or until we've got an idea for a solution, if one's not obvious). Thanks!

Comment 3

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Set release status flags based on info from the regressing bug 1883143

Comment 4

[Niklas Baumgardner [:niklas]]

Attachment: Bug 1884471 - Hide about:profilemanager from about:about. r=jhirsch,mossop

Comment 5

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/6cc650a732a3
Hide about:profilemanager from about:about. r=mossop

Comment 6

[Serban Stanca [:SerbanS]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/6cc650a732a3

Comment 7

[Ina Popescu, Desktop QA]

I've replicated this issue using Nightly 125.0a1 (2024-03-08) on Windows 10 x64 following the STR from Comment 0.
Verified as fixed in the latest Firefox 125.0b5 version on Windows 10 x64, macOS 13, and Ubuntu 22.04, as the issue no longer occurs.