207551 - Sometimes when a connection isn't established, no notification is given to the user.

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Core :: Networking: HTTP, defect)

Description

[Bernie Zimmermann]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030507
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030507

Due to network slow-downs at work, sometimes I attempt to retrieve web pages
over a very slow connection or the network connection goes down completely in
the middle of me trying to retrieve a web page.

Several times I have seen Mozilla attempt to retrieve the page and eventually
give up.  This might seem normal, but no notification is given to the user. 
Other times I get a "connection refused" message or something of that sort, but
in the case of this bug, no alert box appears and the status bar reports "Done."
even though the page hasn't loaded.

The most recent example was at www.google.com.  I clicked on a link that said
something along the lines of "buy a beach towel in the Google store," and it
slowly tried to connect.  Eventually the security lock showed up as locked in
the bottom right of the UI (like it had moved to a secure site), but I was still
at the main Google search page.  It took roughly a minute or so, but eventually
"Done." was displayed in the status bar even though I was still at Google's main
page.  At that point the browser had basically "given up."  No alert was given
to notify me that the connection failed, however.

Unfortunately this bug is kind of random and requires (I believe) a slow to
nonexistent connection to reproduce, but it is odd nonetheless.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Attempt to load a new web page while on a slow or broken connection.
2. Wait and watch as the browser eventually gives up, showing "Done." in the
status bar.
3. Notice that the web page has not loaded, and no notification has been given
as to why.

Actual Results:  
The web page does not load, but browser gives up without displaying a message as
to why.

Expected Results:  
Web page fails to load and gives error message as to why the problem occurred
(connection failure, etc).

Comment 1

[benc]

Sounds like you are having problems w/ HTTP and/or HTTPS specifically.

I test the connection timeout and connection refused errors for HTTP regularly,
and they work.

You might be having problems with a partial transfer of data.

What URL are you clicking on?

Comment 2

[Bernie Zimmermann]

I agree that the connection timeout and connection refused errors work, as I 
see them quite regularly when at home and even when at work.  However, I still 
have seen random cases where the browser gives up without any such 
notification.  It doesn't happen with a specific URL.  I mentioned the Google 
one in my write-up, but it happened with several others.

I agree that the problem most likely has to do with partial transfer of data, 
as the browser visibly acts like it is in the process of fetching the site (see 
my comment about the security lock in my initial report), but when it finally 
gives up and displays "Done" in the status bar, I am still at the previous site 
and I have received no notification of any kind as to why the browser has given 
up without displaying the page I requested.

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 4

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.