290077 - mailto entered in location bar is handled incorrectly

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[David Rolfe]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317 Firefox/1.0.2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317 Firefox/1.0.2

To clarify: 
Open new window or tab (ctrl-n). Enter location bar (ctrl-l). Type this: 

mailto:[e-mail]

(press enter)

A yes/no dialog will appear: 
-----
Confirm
[i] You are about to log into the site "gmail.com" with the username "mailto,"
but the web site does not require authentication. This may be an attempt to
trick you. 

Is "gmail.com" the site you want to visit?
[Yes] [No]
-----

This behavior is wrong of course. What I would expect is this protocol to be
handled by launching whatever is assigned for mailto:. 

Another fun variation of this behavior is entering something that Firefox
doesn't parse as a login/password like:

mailto:another-user-at-the-localhost

This won't present a dialog at all, it will instead translate this into
"keyword:mailto:another-user-at-the-localhost" and handle it as a keyword:. 

I don't know if this will make a difference: I have the gmail notifier set as my
mailto: handler. MSIE will handle the same process by launching Firefox (via
gmail notifier) and then loading the following url in a new Firefox tab:

http://gmail.google.com/gmail?view=cm&fs=1&tearoff=1&to=[e-mail]&fs=1



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Press control-N
2. Press control-L
3. type, "mailto:[e-mail]". Press enter.

Actual Results:  
Dialog described above appears. 

Expected Results:  
mailto: handler should be launched with the remainder of the URI parsed or
passed to that handler. In the case of gmail notifier, a new tab should open
with the url
http://gmail.google.com/gmail?view=cm&fs=1&tearoff=1&to=[e-mail]&fs=1
loaded.

I marked this 'major' because the behavior is completely wrong for something
that is the core purpose of a browser, i.e., to properly handle URIs, regardless
of whether they are typed in the location bar, or activated from a web page.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

wfm with FF1.0.2 on win2k3
mailto:[e-mail] opens the default mailer (Mozilla).
Reporter:
Is the gmail notifier a Firefox extension or is that an external tool ?

Comment 2

[David Rolfe]

Gmail Notifier is an external application. It is not a plug-in or extension. 

Comment 3

[David Rolfe]

With Mozilla 1.7.3 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.3)
Gecko/20040910 I do not have this problem. [Again] With MSIE 6, I don't have
this problem. Only with Firefox. I set Mozilla to be the default mail app on the
system -- to make sure Gmail Notifier has nothing to do with it -- and Firefox
still behaves exactly as described. 

Is there an urlbar preference that could affect this?

Comment 4

[David Rolfe]

Additionally, my MRU for the urlbar shows each of my mailto tests with http://
prepended. This might explain the dialog box, [my] Firefox isn't treating the
mailto: entered in the urlbar as a mailto, but as an http:.

Is there a way to turn off the prepending or defaulting of the http: protocol in
the urlbar?

Comment 5

[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
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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:
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Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 6

[David Rolfe]

This but can be closed. In Firefox 1.0.7 I can no longer reproduce this bug. The other WFMs make it seem 
like something unique about my installation was the cause.