344697 - Upgrading or downgrading with an incompatible active theme leaves no theme set as active

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 565064

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, defect)

Description

[Patrick Lee]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1b1) Gecko/20060714 BonEcho/2.0b1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1b1) Gecko/20060714 BonEcho/2.0b1

When upgrading from the latest 1.5 release to the 2.0 beta (or a recent nightly), if the active theme is incompatible with 2.0, then Firefox falls back to the default theme.  However, in the Themes tab of the Add-ons Manager, the default theme is not set as active.  Clicking on it reveals that the Use Theme button is not grayed out.  Clicking the button brings up a message prompting the user to restart Firefox in order to use the theme (even though the theme is already being used).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install latest 1.5 release.
2. Install theme that has not been updated for 2.0 yet: Qute or Brushed for example.
3. Install 2.0 Beta or latest nightly build over the 1.5 release.
4. Just click through all prompts for the compatibility check.
5. When install is finished, go to Tools > Add-ons and click on Themes.
6. Click on the Firefox (default) theme.

Actual Results:  
The 'Use Theme' button is clickable and Firefox prompts the user to restart after button is clicked.

Expected Results:  
The 'Use Theme' button should be grayed out because the Firefox (default) theme is already active.

This bug may be related to bug #271223 although a lot has changed in theme management since Firefox 1.0 was released.  Also, this bug is obviously quite trivial, but can probably be fixed quite easily.

Comment 1

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Quite sure this affects all versions

Comment 2

[Patrick Lee]

No activity on this bug for nearly two weeks.  I'm not particularly familiar with the Firefox code base, but this should be a fairly straightforward fix once somebody starts digging around.  It's quite likely that a future Firefox Bug Day will focus on the Addon Manager or the upgrade process and lots of testers will notice this if it's still an issue.  Also, even more people will come across this bug when FF 2.0 final is released and they upgrade from 1.5 with incompatible themes.  Why not just fix it for one of the RC's and be done with it?

Just an idea.  Feel free to minus it if I'm way off base here.

Also, is this bug present on all platforms?  Could someone check that out.  Thanks.

Comment 3

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Note: if this were to be fixed it should be done in the ui code itself when the ui is opened. This bug has been around since the EM was first created and no one has filed or brought this up before so I don't consider it important enough for 2.0. Also, the current behavior makes it so that if the incompatible theme is updated so it is compatible it will automatically become the active theme which may be preferable.

Comment 4

[Patrick Lee]

That's interesting.  It never occurred to me that this bug could actually be a "feature".  I can't really speak for the average Firefox user (who can?), but it seems like people sophisticated enough to be installing non-default themes would notice when the Addon Manager found a compatibility update for "The Theme Formerly Known as Their Active Theme".  At that point, they could decide for themselves whether they wanted to make it active again or not.  Or maybe Firefox could ask them what they want to do.

For example, my theme of choice is Brushed.  It has yet to be updated for 2.0, so the UI fell back to the Default theme when I upgraded from 1.5.  With the "visual refresh" underway, I'm curious to see what happens to the Default theme from night to night.  If Brushed got updated and I was suddenly switched back, I'd find it a little annoying.  This is, of course, just my opinion and I may be alone in feeling this way.

Comment 5

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Not a regression from 1.5, not a bug that needs to block the 2.0 release.