304290 - Treeview of 'Choose Folder' Option in Create Profile/Profile Manager should not point at 'my documents' by default

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Description

[Tobias Caspers]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0+

When creating a new profile (which even normal users do e.g. when their Firefox
crashed) and selecting the 'choose folder' option, the folder treeview points to
'My Documents' and not to the proposed folder in the dialog before,
%appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\randomstring.profilename. 
This is bad because
1. normally a treeview should point to the default option, which is e.g. the
case in the Firefox installer, 'choose folder' leads there to a folder treeview
where %programfiles%\Mozilla Firefox is selected which is the proposed default
folder.
2. pointing to 'My Documents' in the treeview could make some users select this
folder as their profilefolder, perhaps because people might think that 'My
Documents' is the designated folder for that or if they just pressed the button
and then don't care...
3. Actually selecting 'My Documents' could lead to very serious consequences,
see bug 270705 (which won't be fixed...). 
In fact, until now i read about three people who lost their 'My Documents'
folder that way:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=278230#c3
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=1624166#1624166
http://www.firefox-browser.de/forum/viewtopic.php?p=131506#131506
probably there are more...

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Start Profile Manager
2.Create Profile -> Next -> Choose Folder
3. In the treeview 'My Documents' is selected instead of te proposed one.
don't make 4: create your profile there: You'll have serious troubles removing
it from there afterwards without losing all other data in 'My Documents'

Actual Results:  
Profilefolder = My Documents
see bug 270705 for further results... (dataloss)

Expected Results:  
the folder pointed in the folder treeview should be the one proposed in the
dialog before, which is
%appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\randomstring.profilename. 

related bugs:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=270705 (delete profile deletes
whole folder, even with non Fx data)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=302087 (a better warning message
should displayed before deleting data)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=278230 (a subfolder should be
created when creating a new profile)

Comment 1

[Tobias Caspers]

> In fact, until now i read about three people who lost their 'My Documents'
> folder that way:
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=278230#c3
> http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=1624166#1624166
> http://www.firefox-browser.de/forum/viewtopic.php?p=131506#131506
> probably there are more...
> 
four:
http://www.firefox-browser.de/forum/viewtopic.php?p=213150#213150

Comment 2

[Simon Bünzli]

Attachment: select the Profiles folder as default location

This fixes the most urgent part.

Additionally, what about extending the chooseFolder property at http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/profile/resources/locale/en-US/profileManager.properties#13 from "Choose Profile Folder" to "Choose Profile Folder (should be empty)"?

Please ask the appropriate people for further review.

Comment 3

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

profile manager is deprecated except for testers, not a release blocker

Comment 4

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Attachment: just use the global

noticed this when I was about to check in

Comment 5

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Checked in on the trunk.
mozilla/toolkit/profile/content/createProfileWizard.js; new revision: 1.8;

Comment 6

[Simon Bünzli]

Comment on attachment 208507 [details] [diff] [review]
select the Profiles folder as default location

Thanks for correcting my oversight.

What about getting the one-line fix of Gavin's patch in for Firefox 2 - or even the next security update of Firefox 1.5? After all, this bug is considered "dataloss" and very cheaply fixable.

Although not a blocker, I request approval1.8.1 and approval1.8.0.2 for Gavin's version of this patch (attachment #208521 [details] [diff] [review]).

Comment 7

[max1million]

(In reply to comment #6)
Create New Folder button might also help, in that it would give the idea that you should as well as the ability to do so, without having to have thought about it before you started. No Create New Folder button and many assume FF will do so automaticly.

Delete Files button should be renamed to Delete Folder since that's what it does, and placed next (closer) to folder name, or visa versa.

Comment 8

[Tobias Caspers]

For the protocol: Cases five and six added to list:
(In reply to comment #1)
> > In fact, until now i read about three people who lost their 'My Documents'
> > folder that way:
> > https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=278230#c3
> > http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=1624166#1624166
> > http://www.firefox-browser.de/forum/viewtopic.php?p=131506#131506
> > probably there are more...
> > 
> four:
> http://www.firefox-browser.de/forum/viewtopic.php?p=213150#213150
five: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=331298
six: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=368401

(In reply to comment #6)
> What about getting the one-line fix of Gavin's patch in for Firefox 2 - or even
> the next security update of Firefox 1.5? After all, this bug is considered
> "dataloss" and very cheaply fixable.
> 
> Although not a blocker, I request approval1.8.1 and approval1.8.0.2 for Gavin's
> version of this patch (attachment #208521 [details] [diff] [review] [edit]).
> 
I agree, why not landing sooner? As I now bugzilla is not about discussion, I opened a thread, please answer there: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=368453

Comment 9

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Landed on the 1.8 branch for Firefox 2.
mozilla/toolkit/profile/content/createProfileWizard.js; new revision: 1.7.8.1;