272007 - browser.download.defaultFolder should not be set at profile creation time

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[Erlendur S Thorsteinsson]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; Q312461)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

At profile creation time then browser.download.defaultFolder is set to a 
specific value (C:\\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\\<user>\\DESKTOP) and this value is 
written to the prefs file.

The problem is that the location of the desktop folder can change between 
logins, in particular in corporate environments where user have a server-side 
roaming profile and where the location of the desktop folder is different on 
different computers and/or changes between logins.  

Also this prevents sysadmins from creating user templates with preconfigured 
Firefox settings, since the Firefox settings contain a value specific to the 
user template that can not be automatically changed when a new user is created 
based on the template.

This value should not be written to the prefs file when the profile is created, 
instead the browser should resolve at runtime the location 
CSIDL_DESKTOPDIRECTORY (unless the user later on specifies manually a different 
location, then that should be written to the prefs file and used instead).

See bug 74085 for a similar problem, in particular comment #84 and comment #86 
(the same logic applies to both the default cache location and default download 
location if the user does not manually specify different values; it should the 
computed at runtime).


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Create a new user.
2.  Log in as that user and run Firefox.
3.  Open the prefs file and look for browser.download.defaultFolder

Actual Results:  
browser.download.defaultFolder was set to a specific value.

Expected Results:  
browser.download.defaultFolder should not be included in a new prefs file, 
instead the browser should determine the default location at runtime, until the 
user manually specifies a different location.

See bug 74085 for a similar problem, in particular comment #84 and comment 
#86.  The discussion there applies to some extent to this bug.

Comment 1

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

using pref locking, admins can easily force this pref to whatever they want it
to be, even after the fact, as they can with any pref.

Comment 2

[Erlendur S Thorsteinsson]

But with preference locking the users can't change the value.  And the behaviour
is wrong; there is no need to write a value to the prefs file that can be
determined at runtime, in particular when the value can change.  The discussion
in bug 74085 elaborates on this issue.

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

[Erlendur S Thorsteinsson]

This is still a problem in the latest stable version and is still a problem in 
a corporate environment.

Comment 5

[Benjamin Smedberg]

This is something we ought to fix for 2.0

Comment 6

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

browser.download.defaultFolder is now obsolete. browser.download.dir is used throughout. 

Comment 7

[Erlendur S Thorsteinsson]

You didn't fix the bug.  You just changed the name of the attribute.  The bug still applies to the new attribute.

Comment 8

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

browser.download.dir is set in the case where your running on Vista for the first time, but I don't believe it's set by default in any other case. Are you seeing something different?