281816 - Firefox always attaches www. to "page could not be displayed"

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Sean Fao]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

Firefox will always attach "www." to the beginning of the "page could not be
displayed" alert, regardless of whether or not the actual domain name had a
"www." in front of it.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Enter random nonsense domain name (a non-existant domain name) WITHOUT "www."
2. Attempt connection
3. Read alert

Actual Results:  
The text "www." was always attached to the domain name, even when the request
domain didn't have a "www." in it.

Expected Results:  
Display the real domain name.  Do not attach text that isn't there.

about:buildconfig

Build platform
target
i686-pc-cygwin

Build tools
Compiler 	Version 	Compiler flags
$(CYGWIN_WRAPPER) cl 	12.00.8804 	-TC -nologo -W3 -nologo -Gy -Fd$(PDBFILE)
$(CYGWIN_WRAPPER) cl 	12.00.8804 	-TP -nologo -W3 -nologo -Gy -Fd$(PDBFILE)

Configure arguments
--disable-ldap --disable-mailnews
--enable-extensions=cookie,xml-rpc,xmlextras,pref,transformiix,universalchardet,webservices,inspector,gnomevfs,negotiateauth
--enable-crypto --disable-composer --enable-single-profile
--disable-profilesharing --enable-optimize --disable-debug --disable-tests
--enable-static --disable-shared --enable-official-branding

Comment 1

[Sean Fao]

Oops, meant to comment on the other and provide more information.  Didn't mean
to insert a new bug.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 280993 ***

Comment 2

[jbuck50]

when you type in url like yahoo.com it does sometimes cant be found but it makes
you type www.yahoo.com , this happens on alot webpages urls

Comment 3

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

Reporter: Was it intentional that you reopened this bug here?

Comment 4

[Sean Fao]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Reporter: Was it intentional that you reopened this bug here?

Yes and no...I oringally thought the bug I was replying to was related and I
meant to add additonal comments.  I then realized that I opened a new case and
thought I had made a mistake.  I then marked it as a duplicate of the original.
 Later, I realized that it was NOT a duplicate (at least I don't think it is)
and reopened it.

Comment 5

[Thomas Bertels]

Reproduced
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050606
Firefox/1.0+

The problem is even more visible under Deer Park Alpha 1: the adress is now
correctly showed when the xul pages are used so the address in the urlbar is
http://www.asdfasdf235412343245.com/ instead of http://asdfasdf235412343245.com

Comment 6

[Sean Fao]

When Firefox is unable to find URL "foo.com", FF will automatically attach
"www." to the beginning of the URL in hopes of locating the domain name.  I
believe the code is modifying the <b>original</b> address string rather than
creating a new string object to store the Firefox modified string.  I quick fix
might be to read the domain from the address bar when generating the alert. 
Alternatively, (assuming I'm correct) it would probably work to create a new
string object to store the modified string and then read back the original value
for the alert.

Please note that I haven't had time to confirm any of this yet.

Comment 7

[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 8

[Sean Fao]

Still happens.  If I have time, I'll download the latest source and write a
patch.  It's not a serious bug, by a long shot.

Comment 9

[Ursan Marius Bogdan]

Windows XP SP2, Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:13.0) Gecko/20120316 Firefox/13.0a2, this event still occurs. 

Is this really a bug or just Firefox auto-completion for domains ?

Comment 10

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

This is based on how Firefox tries to resolve URLs. Firefox first tries to reach the non-www prefixed URL, then prepends the www subdomain and tries that. When the second attempt fails, it shows the page-failed error.

This bug is unlikely to get fixed and is not worth the time/risk of changing the behavior here.