270492 - new window wont launch without an existing active window

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 245206

(Firefox :: Menus, defect)

Description

[len]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

Selecting new window from the file menu with a window already minimized in the
doc has no effect if there isn’t already an existing active window. In other
words, if you minimize your main window then attempt to open a new window with
no other window on the screen, nothing will happen.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. open a single browser window
2. minimize this window in the doc
3. select "new window" from the file menu

Actual Results:  
nothing

Expected Results:  
opened a new browser window

Comment 1

[Wing Wong]

User-Agent:
Build Identifier:
    Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.5)
Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

Host OS: 
    Mac OSX 10.2.8


Upon starting up Firefox, you get the default new window. Whether this window is
active or not, whether it gets closed or not, I experience the following problem
when I try to open a new window via any means under [file] or with the Command-N
keystroke.

1) No window appears.
2) Cursor goes to busy state for a little while or until Firefox is killed.
3) Selecting [Window] from the top menu bar will show blank window entries, one
for each time an attempt was made to open a new window. The blank rows under the
[window] entry are selectable. In the absence of a real window, ie you have
closed the main open window, but have blanks remaining, selecting the
[window][zoom] option will show a blank white window with no formatting or content.

Upon creating a new profile and using it with Firefox, I do not experience the
problem.

Suggested Location of Problem:

Possible issue with a profile configuration file. Could be a result of a bad XPI
load or it could be the result of normal file corruption.(Like file corruption
is ever normal.)

Suggested Solution:

Backup bookmarks, formdata, passwords, preferences, etc. Rename the profile
directory to something else like from <serial>.default to <serial>_default when
Firefox is not running. Restart Firefox and create a new account.

I have tried this with my existing default profile and a new blank profile. This
results in the window issue being resolved.

Additional Notes:

Re-installing Firefox will not fix this problem since it is a configuration file
issue in the users' profile directory: 
~/Library/Application\ Support/Firefox/Profiles/<serial>.<username>

Another step might be to do comparisons of configuration files between a clean
and working profile and a broken one to see what XML/RDF/JS/JAR content is
causing the problem.

This problem began occuring for me when I installed a Google Adbar XPI and then
tried my hand at manually modifying the code, then performing
Firefox/Themes/Extensions updates. In all likelihood, during the update process,
the profile's configuration files were munged.

Comment 2

[Wing Wong]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Regarding Creating New Profile and Transferring Information over

What I did to retain my passwords/form entries/etc.

1) Create new profile.
2) Exit Firefox.
2) Look at your old prefs.js file for a line like:

user_pref("signon.SignonFileName", "########.s");

where the "#" are numbers.

Copy-n-Paste that line into your new profile's prefs.js file.

3) Copy the ######.s file to your new profile directory.
4) Start Firefox, go to your preferences and privacy section. Review your
passwords for accuracey.
5) Exit Firefox.
6) Copy over formhistory.dat from the old profile to the new profile.
7) Copy over the bookmarks.html and bookmarks.bak file to your new profile.
8) Start up Firefox, goto a place where you enter in form data and click on the
form field. If you get your options, you have your form data working. You may
also check your bookmarks at this point.
9) You'll still want/need to configure your preferences regarding pop-ups,
whitelists, etc. But those can also be copied either line-by-line from their
respective configuration files or by copying the entire file.

Note that after you have your formhistory and passwords setup, you might want to
backup the profile before adding new extensions or themes, in case one of them
is the source of the problem.

Comment 3

[josh]

When only download manager is open, cmd-n does not work

Comment 4

[Frankie]

I can't replicate this behavior with Mac Firefox 1.0

Minimize my window, hit cmd-N, a new window appears as expected.

Comment 5

[Wing Wong]

(In reply to comment #4)

In response to Frankie: 

- Using FireFox 1.0 on Mac
- With download tool window open
- With all other windows closed

The new window option does not work. Nor do the Option-N or CTRL-N. The browser
becomes "stuck" and is not responsive to any menu or keystroke commands. Note
that this is on an instance of the client where I had already cleaned out the
profile, so this is a bug in the Firefox 1.0 software for MacOSX. Something to
do with the differences in Window instances between browser windows and the
download window. 

Comment 6

[Frankie]

Ah, the Download Manager. That's a completely different situation than "no open
windows".

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 245206 ***