339484 - Infinite loop if you select firefox as the feed viewer application.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox Graveyard :: RSS Discovery and Preview, defect, P3)

Description

[crf]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8.0.2) Gecko/20060404 SeaMonkey/1.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8.1a3) Gecko/20060526 BonEcho/2.0a3

Go to, for example http://planet.mozilla.org/rss10.xml .

Firefox will ask if you wish to subscribe, and you have the option of choosing a reader.

Choose the firefox application as a reader.

Select the check box: Open Feeds with my chosen reader automatically, skipping the preview page.

Choose subscribe now. 

Firefox goes into an apparent infinite loop, opening page after page seemingly without end, and also steals focus on my OS. The pages seem to be blank, mozilla not having time to draw them (?), while it opens new tabs. Probably they were to show the feed view.

Furthermore, the next time you deign in the future to visit any url to an atom or rss feed, firefox will again immediately begin spawning tabs or windows. This makes it difficult to correct the mistake you've made in your settings.

I think this bug is serious, since it is hard for the average user, once he's chosen the mistaken route I've specified, to correct his firefox settings. He has to have some knowledge of the preferences UI to which he needn't originally have been exposed.
-------

This is probably going to happen to quite a few users while investigating firefox's new feed capabilities. It seems natural that some users would select firefox as an application to view feeds.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Go to a url for a feed.
2.In the feed view, choose firefox as the reader.
3.Choose to open feed skipping the preview page.
4.Choose subscribe now.
Actual Results:  
Many, perhaps infinite, continuously spawned tabs or windows. Firefox may need to be forced to shut down. Firefox steals focus of other applications if put to the background.


Expected Results:  
Not to spawn all those windows continously. I don't understand what it's doing.

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1a2) Gecko/20060524 BonEcho/2.0a2

I went to http://planet.mozilla.org/rss10.xml;
Clicked "Choose a Feed Reader";
Selected "Use Live Bookmarks";
Checked the box "Open Feeds with my chosen reader automatically, skipping the preview page";
Clicked "Subscribe Now";
In the Add Live Bookmark dialog I selected the Bookmarks Toolbar;
And I see a new link in the Toolbar.
What click exactly opened pages? For I stay on the same page (http://planet.mozilla.org/rss10.xml).

Comment 2

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Hm I do see weird behaviour. Next when I want to go to the address http://planet.mozilla.org/rss10.xml it stays on the same page (in this case: about:buildconfig) and i get an unasked Add Live Bookmark dialog with the name "about:buildconfig". When I agree to bookmark it, the feed has the name "about:buildconfig" but the address of http://planet.mozilla.org/rss10.xml.

I see no multiple pages however.

Comment 3

[crf]

regarding comment 1: Sorry, the steps were to click "use an application", and choose firefox, and not to select "use live bookmarks". I should have made that as clear in the steps to reproduce as I did in the summary.

Comment 4

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

(In reply to comment #3)
>
It did not even cross my mind that someone would set Firefox as an external feed reader. Still it is possible and in that case it had indeed the effect that it opens multiple tabs. Not sure if this is a bug. I confirm it in case that this is a bug because I see the same.

Comment 5

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Whee, another bug 218257 (bug 215554 (bug 167320)).

While I see that nobody has added a patch to any of those with cross-platform code to determine that "this file path will resolve to opening another 'us'" I cynically suspect that just refusing the literal "firefox.exe" would cover everyone who might do it and not feel guilty afterward.

Comment 6

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

Cool.

Comment 7

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

fixed-on-trunk, fixed-1.8-branch