244398 - Items don't stay selected when sorting trees

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[M. Creidieki Crouch]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040427 Firefox/0.8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040427 Firefox/0.8

There are several Mozilla windows, including the Bookmarks Manager and the
Cookie Manager, which show lists of information (the list of bookmarks, or the
list of stored cookies). There are tabs at the top of the list for each
attribute.  Left-clicking on the tabs will sort the list by this attribute.

However, when the list is sorted in this way, selections on the list will not
persist. Instead, whatever items are in the same position in the newly sorted
list will be selected.

This is problematic if the user wants to create a selection based on several
characteristics (for example, all cookies from ads.* domains, and also all
cookies with names AD*). I think it also violates the expectation that
selections are connected with items, not with the geometric position.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Click Bookmarks->Manage Bookmarks, to open the Bookmark Manager.
2. There should now be a list of several bookmarks and folders, probably sorted
by "Name". Select one or more items on the list by left-clicking with the mouse.
3. Click the "Location" tab to sort the bookmarks by Location, instead of name.

Actual Results:  
A different set of items will now be selected, depending on where they are on
the list. For example, if items 7-12 were previously selected, items 7-12 will
still be selected, even if they are different items.

Expected Results:  
I think the same items should stay selected.

Comment 1

[M. Creidieki Crouch]

I'm sorry; I meant to mention explicitly in the "Steps to Reproduce" -- the same
bug can be seen in Tools->Options->Privacy->Cookies->Stored Cookies, in the
Cookie Manager. Thus, I didn't file this under "Bookmarks".

Comment 2

[Jesse Ruderman]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040521
Firefox/0.8.0+

I see this in the bookmark manager going between "Unsorted" and "Sort by name".

This sounds like bug 50220, but that bug hasn't been touched for years and I
think the tree widget has been forked between Seamonkey and Firefox.

Comment 3

[Nikitas Liogkas]

The Cookie Manager problem is due to a bug in cookieviewer/treeUtils.js.
Basically someone forgot to rename the "id" field of a cookie to "number". I'm
attaching a patch. My guess is that something similar is true for the Bookmark
Manager.

Comment 4

[Nikitas Liogkas]

Attachment: Patch that resolves the bug, where the current selection is lost upon sorting in the Cookie Manager.

Comment 5

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Comment on attachment 177743 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch that resolves the bug, where the current selection is lost upon sorting in the Cookie Manager.

This has bitrotten and has already been fixed for the password manager.

Are there any cases of this bug still remaining?

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Nikitas writes "It's there in Firefox 2, but I don't have an installation of Gran Paradiso to try it on."