245026 - Reload of frameset page refreshes to home page instead of current page

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Camino Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Mark Walker]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040528 Camino/0.8+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040528 Camino/0.8+

When browsing the site http://www.dioceseofstasaph.org.uk/ and on a page other
than the home page, the cache page is shown not the current one.  When refresh
is used (button or menu option), it refreshes the home page and the subsidiary
page remains unrefreshed.  The current page was only viewable by clearing the cache.

This is a Camino problem, it does not affect Mozilla (current RC), Firebord 8.0,
Safari (current), or Internet Explorer.  It was first discovered using a nightly
build, still a problem with the latest beta, and also with today's nightly.

The problem may be that this website always reports View Source as the home page
source, no matter what page you are on, but no other browser that I have tested
is fooled by this.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Go to any subsidiary page
2.Press Refresh
3.You are now back at the home page

Actual Results:  
Back at the refreshed home page, but the subsidiary page is not updated.

Expected Results:  
Refresh requested page.

Default theme, standard configured eMac 1 Ghz Superdrive on LAN connection to
internet (home adsl ethernet router).

Comment 1

[Greg K.]

Well, this does demonstrate a bug, but not one with page reloading. Mark,
because that site uses frames, the primary FRAMESET document being displayed
always remains <http://www.dioceseofstasaph.org.uk/>. So, when you reload, you
will always reload that.

The difference between Camino and Mozilla is that Camino replaces the URL in the
Location Bar with that of the FRAME you load by clicking, say, "From the
Bishop." Though there could be reasonable uses for this behavior, it does seem
confusing and so Camino should probably behave like Mozilla here.

Comment 2

[Greg K.]

Whoops, wrong me. Mozilla does retain the FRAME configuration on reload,
reverting to the default set only on force-reload. So, maybe there are two
problems here, the one I described in comment 1, and the one about not retaining
FRAME configuration on soft reload.

Comment 3

[Mark Walker]

Greg's comments miss the point.  Being sent to the Frameset document is a minor
inconvenience.  To not update a page (in this example a diary page) is a bug and
one that could have serious consequences for commercial sites.  I suggest you
reallocate this to general and change the title to page not refreshing. This bug
is neither about what is shown in the location bar nor users being confused. 
The problem is that users are NOT confused, but misled.  They will look at e.g.,
a special offers page and think that no new offers are up because Camino will
not show the current page until the cache is flushed.  Until this bug is fixed I
am afraid that Camino cannot be trusted for anything other than beta testing.

Comment 4

[Stuart Morgan]

Mark, comment 2 is an acknowledgement of your original bug report; the reason
the subsidiary page is not refreshed is *because* the reload is reverting the
frameset. Also, please bear in mind that dramatics are not helpful to a bug report.

Restoring to General and changing summary to reflect the reported issue.

Comment 5

[Stuart Morgan]

I should also add that I'm not convinced that there are necessarily dire
consequences for most dynamic pages. A page that changes frequently should be
indicating to the broswer not to use a cached copy of the page--any site that
relies on the user pressing the refresh button to get up-to-date information has
bigger problems.

Comment 6

[Mark Walker]

Stuart 4: "Also, please bear in mind that dramatics are not helpful to a bug
report." 
There are no dramatics: this is bugzilla not a forum.  The comments about
Camino's current usability relates to the severity of the main bug that Greg had
ignored in re-classifying the problem to Location Bar.  For web designers
wanting to communicate to users this is a severe bug, but it was filed as normal
because bugzilla definitions of severity relate more to problems to the
programme, not the designer/user.

Stuart 5: "I'm not convinced that there are necessarily dire
consequences for most dynamic pages. A page that changes frequently should be
indicating to the broswer not to use a cached copy of the page--any site that
relies on the user pressing the refresh button to get up-to-date information has
bigger problems."

Please read the initial report before posting.  This is not a web design
problem, but a Camino bug.  It has been tested in Mozilla, Firebird, Safari, and
Internet Explorer, without the Camino-only problem arising.  The website does
not require a refresh, every other browser I tested shows the current page
automatically, (and I've just checked Opera 7.5 and Netscape 7.1, again no
Camino-like problems).

Just did a Google search on "frames diary" and did a test on the first site I
found.  It was http://www.geocities.com/hrhdavid/English/frames/wdipindex.html.
 Same problem with refreshing going to the main page, but I need to find a
frames site that updates daily and test over a couple of days to discover if the
major problem also occurs.  No problems in Mozilla, Firebird, Safari, Internet
Explorer, Opera or Netscape.

As to "dire consequences" see comment 4 on dramatics in a bug report.

Comment 7

[Stuart Morgan]

Mark: I did read the initial report, and your steps to reproduce, expected
results, and actual results all discuss only an issue with using the refresh
button.  Are you saying that there is an additional bug (or possibly an
additional side effect of the same underlying problem) that's completely
unrelated to the refresh button, wherein Camino incorrectly uses a cached
version of a frameset page despite the cached version being out of date?

Comment 8

[Mark Walker]

"Are you saying that there is an additional bug (or possibly an
additional side effect of the same underlying problem) that's completely
unrelated to the refresh button"
Yes to quote the opening sentence of the report: "When browsing the site http://
www.dioceseofstasaph.org.uk/ and on a page other than the home page, the cache page is shown not 
the current one."  This is the major problem that I am trying to replicate by finding a frames site that 
updates on a daily basis.  Unfortunately, the original site does not update regularly, so I cannot retest 
there.  I only knew that there was a problem with the original site because the webmaster informed me 
that my requested update had been made, but I could not see it in Camino (then my default browser).

It is more accurate to say that not showing the current page is the main issue and the refresh button 
fails to correct the problem.  I did not list this cache issue in my steps to recreate on the assumption 
that you would not have a cached version of this particular webpage and so you could not replicate this 
part of the issue.

Comment 9

[Stuart Morgan]

Since the majority of the initial report talks about the refresh button problem,
which is a separate issue, I would suggest opening a second bug report
specifically concerning the caching problem.

Comment 10

[Mike Pinkerton (not reading bugmail)]

odd that we reload the wrong page when reload is pressed. we'll have to figure
out what the difference is.

Comment 11

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

[Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050510] (nightly) (W98SE)
[Microsoft Internet Explorer, version 6.0.2800.1106 (128b, SP1 + Q889669)] (W98SE)

Reload issue: (on Windows)
Both browsers "reload" the home page after following a link from the menu...

Comment 12

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

We behave in exactly the same way as Firefox.