278542 - More and more popup links will not load in Mozilla

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Joe Mehaffey]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041217
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041217

I am finding more and more compatibility problems between (newer) websites and
Mozilla.  Another example found is: 
http://www.ryansrg.com/whats_cooking/menus.php
Note that when you click on RYAN'S MENU or FIREMOUNTAIN's MENU, the menu (which
is a popup type of thing) does not load EVEN IF you have cookies enabled and
popups enabled for the website.  

This is an issue of importance for a lot of users.  Few people think it is cool
to have to frequently go over to Internet Explorer to read information on a website.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.see above.
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
You click on the links (which should bring in a popup) and nothing appears to
happen.

Expected Results:  
the popup should load if popups are enabled for that website.

Comment 1

[Gérard Talbot]

> when you click on RYAN'S MENU or FIREMOUNTAIN's MENU, the menu (which
> is a popup type of thing) does not load EVEN IF you have cookies enabled and
> popups enabled for the website.

<a href="#" onclick="return popupMenu('daily_menu')">Ryan's&reg;</a> and <a
href="#" onclick="return popupMenu('food_list')">Fire Mountain&reg;</a>

First of all, the links have no real url; they are just empty fragment
identifiers. That means that clicking those "links" will do nothing if
javascript support is disabled or non-existent. So, here, you have to blame the
authors of such code and those who copy/reuse mindlessly such code in their
webpages without understanding/knowing what they're really doing.

Also, all other ways to load targeted resource (Ctrl+click, middle-click,
Ctrl+Enter) will fail because of the way the links are coded: those 2 links are
not real links, they are badly coded javascript links. 

Also, if you right-click/Properties those 2 links, all Mozilla-based browsers
will report that the link properties window will report that the link "Will open
in: Same window": so the browser is confused and is mislead.

Second, 
from script src='http://www.ryansrg.com/_js/site.js?v=0410130557'
function popupMenu( subject )
	{
	var x = window.screenLeft + Math.round((document.body.offsetWidth - 770)/2) + 8;

Mozilla-based browsers do not support screenLeft property.

	var y = window.screenTop + Math.round((document.body.offsetHeight - 470)/2) +
153;//280
	return popup('menu', ROOT + 'whats_cooking/' + subject + '_popup.php', 640,
180, {left:x, top:y, scrollbars:'no', resizable:'yes'});
	}

Third, clicking such links leads to a 3rd file to load just to execute the
javascript it contains for the onclick event of the link. It's unbelievable.
From
script src='http://www.ryansrg.com/_js/core/popup_v102.js?v=0410130557'
we finally have
function popup( name, url, width, height, args )
	{
[snipped weak code]
	
		if( window.windows == null ) window.windows = {};
//		if( window.windows[name] != null && !window.windows[name].closed )
window.windows[name].close();
	
	var op_str = 'width=' + width + ',height=' + height;
		for( p in options )
		op_str += ',' + p + '=' + options[p];
	window.windows[name] = window.open(url, name, op_str);
	window.windows[name].focus();
	
	return false;
	}

Joe, I went to that Ryan restaurant site, tried both links with Mozilla 1.8b
build 2005011505 and with Firefox 1.0 final release build 20041107 and both
links loaded the targeted reference. XP Pro SP2 here.
Of course, the position coordinate of thew indow was (0, 0) but that's because
of the mountain of code and errors of the functions involved.

------------

My bet is that you have your 
Edit/Preferences.../Advanced/Scripts & Plugins/Allow scripts to:/Raise or lower
windows checkbox UNchecked. If that is the case, then I suggest you have a look at
What does the "Raise or lower windows" setting do exactly?
http://www.gtalbot.org/Netscape7/Popup/PopupAndNetscape7.html#RaiseLowerSetting
Whatever the problem is, I assure you that the coding practices for writing
those Ryan's and Fire Mountain links (and related javascript code) are very bad.

Comment 2

[Joe Mehaffey]

Thanks for the many valuable comments.  I have found that the NEW 1.8a5 does
indeed allow the Ryan's menus and some other "fail to load previously" pages to
now load properly.  (I already had my preferences set to be able to raise/lower
windows as suggested.)

May I suggest:
The competetion in the browser world is Internet Explorer.  Perhaps their
browser does allow "screwed up" javascript and webpages to load whereas Mozilla
fails to do so.  I beg to suggest that this is NOT a sales point for Mozilla. 
If a new user tries out Mozilla and finds that it fails to load webpages that he
is used to being able to load on IE,  guess what he is going to conclude.  It is
NOT going to be that Mozilla is the better browser.  This potential new user is
going to simply conclude that Mozilla is defective.  I humbly suggest that
someone should give this a little thought.

Comment 3

[Joe Mehaffey]

Now..  If 1.8a5 would allow me to login to yahoo.com for mail and stock quotes
we would REALLY have something!  This stopped working for many of us about 1.7.1
or so and... Yes..  we have cookies and popups enabled and our preferences allow
javascript to run.  See for example: 
http://login.yahoo.com/?.src=quote&.intl=us&.mesg=You%20have%20requested%20a%20portfolio%20that%20requires%20a%20Yahoo!%20ID%20and%20a%20password.%20Please%20sign%20in.&.done=http://finance.yahoo.com

Yes.. IE6 has no problem with allowing me to login!  I wonder if someone can
figure out WHY?

Thanks

Comment 4

[Gérard Talbot]

> I have found that the NEW 1.8a5 does
> indeed allow the Ryan's menus and some other "fail to load previously" pages to
> now load properly.

Resolving as WORKSFORME