198547 - As I click the mailto-link in the page above the mozilla starts to open browser windows. with network.protocol-handler.external.mailto true

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Composition, defect)

Description

[Janne Laitinen]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312

A mailto-link click makes the Mozilla open many browser windows and none of them
allows me to write the mail. After about ten or more browser windows are open
the Windows taskmanager is able to kill all the opening windows. There is no
limit in the amount of opening windows.

Overall, this operation hangs all my mozilla related programs (the browser and
the mail client) and I have to restart them.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to a web page that contains a mailto: link
2. Click the mailto: link
3. Browser windows start to open pretty fast
4. I have to use the Windows taskmanager to kill the processes
5. I can't be fast enough to kill all the windows but taskmanager says that some
of them doesn't responde and then all the windows are killed.

Actual Results:  
First the unwanted windows opened and the final result was that all mozilla
applications where shutdown.

Expected Results:  
Mozilla should have opened the mail client so that I could write mail to the
person in the mailto: link.

Comment 1

[Frederic Bezies]

sorry, but no problem for me, 30 minutes old CVS based trunk build - WinXP-Sp1.

How did you install this mozilla ? Overwriting a previous one ?

Did you use any 3rd party theme ?

Comment 2

[Frederic Bezies]

I almost forget to ask : Is your windows 2000 patched with Service Pack 3 ?

Go to your "My PC" icon, right click on it, choose properties, and tell us what
is written in the first tab.

Thanks.

Comment 3

[esther]

Using trunk build 20030321 on winxp and the url above, the mailto link on that
page opens (1) compose window properly filled in.  Can't reproduce as stated.
Please give more info after you confirm it happens on a current build. 

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Janne Laitinen: please check the following:
1) have you installed Mozilla Mail/News or not?
   (Under Window menu, is there a "Mail & Newsgroups" item?)
2) if so, is Mozilla set to your default mail handler?
   (Under Preference | Mail & Newsgroups, 2nd checkbox)
3) if you have SP3 of Windows 2000 installed, check:
   Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs, "Set Program Access and Defaults"
   [This requires Admin privileges to get to the option page] --
   is Mozilla one of the choices under "default e-mail program"?
4) In Windows Explorer:  Tools|Folder Options|File Types
   locate URL:Mailto entry (associated with "N/A" file extension)
   select Advanced; select 'open' action; select Edit:
   What is the command line listed there?

Comment 5

[Sam Hulick]

I'm able to reproduce this even in builds as late as 20030326.  There is no
URL:Mailto in my file types.. maybe that is the issue?  I'm not sure if it was
ever there or not.

Comment 6

[Sam Hulick]

*** Bug 199313 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

One further question to add to my list:

5) In mozilla's about:config, what is the setting of:
   network.protocol-handler.external.mailto


> There is no URL:Mailto in my file types..

The URL: handlers are defined by default in all the IE-integrated versions of
Windows.  Under Win2K, if the list of filetypes is sorted by extension, they
appear part way down the list, under "N/A"; if sorted by filetype, they
appear at the end, under "URL."
In Win98, they always appear at the end, under "URL."  Dunno about XP.

Confirming this bug, as it is reported in at least three other bugs.

Comment 8

[Tig]

If a user manualy (in Windows 2000/XP) changes the 'file type' settings for
protocal (for example, URL:News Protocol) in Explorer to user Mozilla.exe but
has not install the news reader componet, this problem also happens. 

Basically, a loop of windows will open. This is still present in Mozilla 1.2.1.
For more information about how to replicate this every time under Windows, see
the following bug report http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=181157

Comment 9

[Sam Hulick]

Now we're getting somewhere.

network.protocol-handler.external.mailto was true.  I set it to false, now it
works PERFECTLY.

Thing is, I never set it to true, even though it said it was a user pref.  And
it was set to true in my pref.js, which I never touch.  So Mozilla apparently
set it that way somehow, maybe via the Preferences.

Comment 10

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

See http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=174128#c5 for a set of
responses to the questions in this bug, from another reporter.

Sam, Tig, if you could provide specific answers to those questions, it will
help whoever sets out to fix this problem.

My responses to the questions (I am *not* seeing this bug) are:
Yes, yes, yes; 
  "C:\Program Files\Mozilla\mozilla.exe" -mail "%1"
and, I don't have any entry in about:config for the external-handling of
mailto:.  In fact, I have five external-protocol preferences, all set to
'false' but none of them are mailto:, news:.

In this configuration, clicking mailto: works as expected in Opera, Mozilla,
and IE.

Bug 196798 requests that the external-protocol preference be set true by
default.

Comment 11

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

I received a set of responses to the questions in comments 4 & 7 by email,
from someone who is seeing the symptom of this bug:

Yes; yes; yes;
NO entry in the registry for "URL(mailto)";
net.p-h.ext.mailto is set to TRUE.

I would also like to note that Win98 users wanting answer the 4th question
need to take a slightly different path:  View|Folder Options|File Types;
locate "URL(mailto)"; Edit; select 'open' action; Edit.

Comment 12

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

More responses to these questions:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=174128#c5
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=174128#c6

Comment 13

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Ah-ha.  I have sort of duplicated this problem on my system.  I set the
preference    network.protocol-handler.external.mailto    to true in my system;
now, I see that when I open a mailto: link in another browser, there is some
kind of drain on the system.  I'm not seeing windows all over my desktop, but
I am seeing, in Task Manager, one large-memory-footprint Mozilla soaking up a
bunch of CPU, and a smaller-footprint Mozilla soaking up some CPU, then
disappearing, to be replaced by another.  I have to kill both processes.

If Mozilla was already open, that is the instance that appears to spawn all the
other ones.  If I have no Mozilla running, a new one starts (showing the
splash screen, but no other window).

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312

Comment 14

[Tig]

below are my registry settings. (I do NOT have the mozilla componet installed).
Copy it all, change the path to mozilla, save the file as something.reg, double
click and you should have looping windows when you type news://somesite.org in
the location bar.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\news]
@="URL:News Protocol"
"EditFlags"=dword:00000002
"URL Protocol"=""
"BrowserFlags"=dword:00000008

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\news\DefaultIcon]
@=hex(2):25,00,50,00,72,00,6f,00,67,00,72,00,61,00,6d,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,\
  00,73,00,25,00,5c,00,4f,00,75,00,74,00,6c,00,6f,00,6f,00,6b,00,20,00,45,00,\
  78,00,70,00,72,00,65,00,73,00,73,00,5c,00,6d,00,73,00,69,00,6d,00,6e,00,2e,\
  00,65,00,78,00,65,00,2c,00,2d,00,33,00,00,00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\news\shell]
@=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\news\shell\open]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\news\shell\open\command]
@="F:\\mozilla.org\\Mozilla\\mozilla.exe \"%1\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\news\shell\open\ddeexec]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\news\shell\open\ddeexec\Application]
@="mozilla"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\news\shell\open\ddeexec\Topic]
@="System"

Comment 15

[Tig]

Sorry, "I do NOT have the mozilla componet installed" should have been "I do NOT
have the mozilla news componet installed"

Comment 16

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Tig: I believe bug 181157, which you originally filed, is distinct from this
bug.  That's why I posted a question about that bug *over there*.

That is where you should have posted your registry info, and also where you
should answer the question I actually asked you, which is about preference
settings inside Mozilla.

Comment 17

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 206875 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 18

[Kaj Kandler]

As of 1.4 beta 0524 build, this issue is still there and the workaround of
seettin g network.protocol-handler.maitlo to false does not work on Win 98 SE
Hope you find this soon!

Comment 19

[Kaj Kandler]

Let me take that back. Mike tought me how to actually access "about:config" as a
URL in the URL field of the browser. I changed the propeties in the pref.js and
it didn't make a change. May be I used the wrong one.

So I can confirm the work around does work for me too!
Sorry for the confusion.

Comment 20

[Tom Gally]

I have experienced this same bug in Mozilla 1.4RC3 on Mac OS X. My
network.protocol-handler.external.mailto was set to "true," and clicking on an
e-mail address in an e-mail would open a series of browser windows one after
another; the only way to stop them was to force-quit Mozilla. This problem also
occurred once or twice in an earlier release candidate of Mozilla 1.4. Changing
the network.protocol-handler.external.mailto setting to "false" in
"about:config" fixed the problem.

Comment 21

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Hardware/OS => All based on comment 20 (if someone with Linux would care to 
chime in and verify that...)

Comment 22

[baffclan]

*** Bug 223787 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 23

[Michael Lefevre]

this looks to be the same as bug 194210...

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 194210 ***

Comment 24

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Reopening because I believe the dupe was in error; see bug 194210 comment 11 for 
why.

Comment 25

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

A comment in the newsgroups led me to check the behavior of this bug, as 
described in comment 13.  

With 1.7, the behavior exists -- assuming you are using
  mozilla.exe -browser %1    (or, in 1.4:    -mail )
as the command line.  (With the preference correctly set to False, this command 
line is the only way to get a compose window to open with the parameters from 
the URL and not open a full browser window as well [but see bug 204752].)

With 1.8 builds,  the -compose switch now supports URL parsing -- see bug 
236774.  With this command line, the program no longer generates the "infinite 
number of windows" being opened, when the n.p-h.ext.mailto preference is True 
and Mozilla is the default mailer.  Instead, what I see is that a single compose 
window opens, but with none of the fields (To, Subject, etc) filled in from 
whatever the URL specified.

Comment 26

[baffclan]

cannot reproduce with SeaMonkey/2005061406-trunk/WinXP
WFM?

Comment 27

[Worcester12345]

Janne Laitinen <[e-mail]> is the original reporter of the bug. Does
it work for you? 

Anybody know what fixed it? 

Comment 28

[Hideo Oshima]

Can anyone reproduce?
If not, I will mark this as WORKSFORME.

Comment 29

[Tig]

This new window loop opening bug is still present for me in 1.7.11 on WindowsXP.

Here is how to replicate it every time (but you will need to re-install Mozilla)

1) Install Mozilla WITHOUT mail.
2) Copy and past the following into a file with a .html extension
--- start copy here ---
<html>
<body>
<a href="mailto:[e-mail]">Boo</a>
</body>
</html>
--- stop copy here ---
3) Open up Windows Explorer (NOT IE) and select (from the menu bar) Tools ->
Folder Options -> File Types. Scroll down the list until you find 'URL:MailTo
Protocol', then select it and hit 'Advanace' -> Edit -> Browse. Now find your
copy of Mozilla.exe
4) Press all the OK buttons and open the test HTML file you created at step 2 above.
5) Select the link and you have a nice loop effect in action.

I'm sure I've said all this before somewhere, but I guess its minor issue.

Comment 30

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

If you're using Seamonkey as the default mail program, there's no need to 
reinstall to test this; just open   about:config    and set this preference:
  network.protocol-handler.external.mailto
to 'true'.  (This is the setting when installing without mail.)  The bug 
manifests when that preference is true and Mozilla is set up as the system 
handler of 'mailto'.

Comment 31

[Croco Dil]

see the same problem now with
Build identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0b8pre) Gecko/20101111 Firefox/4.0b8pre SeaMonkey/2.1b2pre

Comment 32

[Croco Dil]

add on:
due to changed preferences the above posted workaround doesn't work

Comment 33

[rsx11m]

Update based on testing in bug 995706: Setting network.protocol-handler.external.mailto true and opening a mailto: link from a browser page offers a dialog to chose the application, unless explicitly disabled with network.protocol-handler.warn-external.mailto set to false. Selecting SeaMonkey as the application goes into the said loop of opening a new tab or window (depending on your Link Behavior settings), then showing the dialog again.

Thus, the warning dialog limits the impact of this issue a bit given that there is no automatic loop, unless you tick the "Remember" box. This bug however should be of relevance when the preferences are exposed in the UI per bug 173465, which may make it easy to choose SeaMonkey as the "external" protocol handler and subsequently getting stuck.

In general, if SeaMonkey is invoked from the command line or MAPI with a mailto: URL, it shouldn't defer it to an external handler but handle it with its internal mail/news component regardless of what's defined in the preferences or mimeTypes.rdf.

Comment 34

[rsx11m]

(removed link as it is dead now.)

Comment 35

[rsx11m]

Addendum: This only seems to happen when SeaMonkey isn't registered as the default e-mail client (on Windows 7 at least). I was testing with a 2.27a2 aurora build which is not the default e-mail client; re-testing with 2.25 which is the default e-mail client opened SeaMonkey's mail composition window as desired. Thus, it's a bit fuzzy what's going on here.

Comment 36

[sparcbr]

As of Firefox 74.0.1 (Ubuntu 18), this bug still exists.

The following settings, which all appear to be the default, cause this bug for me:

In about:config:
network.protocol-handler.external.mailto is set to: true

In Preferences - General - Applications:
mailto is set to: Use Firefox Web Browser (default)

Tabs start to open one by one at fast speed. Luckily I'm able to kill firefox.

I don't understand the purpose of option "Use Firefox Web Browser". I think "Always ask" should be the default.

Comment 37

[Jack]

I experienced this problem today.

[Firefox 83, Windows 7 running on a PC.]

For the first time, when I clicked on the envelope icon, instead of Outlook 2007 opening I was given a list of mail client options, none of which were suitable. So I added in Outlook.exe... and the infinite look carnage started. Firefox opened 146 (one hunder and forty six) tabs before I did a hard shut down of the machine. The tab opening was happening at break neck speed and I couldn't close Firefox using task manager.

Then, when I started Outlook the next time I found that the .pst was corrupted and that took ages to sort.

Tried setting network.protocol-handler.external.mailto to: false. That only results in the envelope icon being non-responsive.

I've now changed the mailto: file association in Explorer from Firefox (no idea how it came to be set as that) to MS Outlook, but reluctant to have another bash at using mailto: for fear of the last experiencing happening again. When the tabs just kept opening I could see that the CPU was starting to fry and sorting out the .pst was not a great experience.

Is that a Firefox 83 bug, I wonder?