348347 - Unable to add a new task category in Thunderbird/Lightning

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Calendar :: Tasks, defect)

Description

[Robert Rothenberg]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-GB; rv:1.8.0.5) Gecko/20060731 Ubuntu/dapper-security Firefox/1.5.0.5
Build Identifier: Lighting 20060806 in Thunderbird 20060708 Ubuntu

When adding a new task, one is unable to add a new category. A thin input dialog that can take ofcus but seems to be 0 characters wide and so cannot accept input appears over the description text area.  Hitting Enter does not remove it.  Hitting Escape will make the box disappear, along with the new task form (I've checked: it does not merely lose focus and go in the background), but Lightning does not respond (except that one can move the cursor focus up or down on the existing tasks).

The only way to exit is to kill Thunderbird.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a new Task
2. In the Category field, choose to add a new Category


Actual Results:  
A narrow (0-character width? by 1 character height) input box appears. It accepts focus but does not appear to allow input. Escape makes the box disappear, as well as the New Task input form. But Lightning and Thunderbird ceases to respond.

Expected Results:  
A dialog which allows one to add a new category.

Running Ubuntu 6.06 in Linux 2.6.x, Xfce 4.4 Beta 1.

Comment 1

[Joey Minta]

My guess is there are some errors in the javascript console?

Comment 2

[Robert Rothenberg]

(In reply to comment #1)
> My guess is there are some errors in the javascript console?

Nothing in the JS console related to the calendar.

Comment 3

[Robert Rothenberg]

A bit more experimentation shows the original report is inaccurate.

When hitting Escape (sometimes multiple times), it appears that the add new task dialog disappears, but the original small useless dialog goes into the background. Alt-Tab (in Xfce anyways) allows one to select it. It's also resizable, but is an empty white pane with no visible widgets on it beyond the normal window controls (close/minimize/maximize/etc.). 

So rather than hitting escape and having the entire add new task form disappear (while the child blank window remains active), one can resize the window to where there is a close-window (top-right, depending on the window manager) button. Close it, then the task can be used as normal.

Comment 4

[Joey Minta]

OK, the fact that the category list even shows up in Lightning is an error.  When we switched to pref-helpers, we no longer are assured that getting the categories pref will throw.  We need to refactor that part of the code so that we hide the categories list if we don't get anything back.

Comment 5

[Robert Rothenberg]

(In reply to comment #4)
> OK, the fact that the category list even shows up in Lightning is an error. 
> When we switched to pref-helpers, we no longer are assured that getting the
> categories pref will throw.  We need to refactor that part of the code so that
> we hide the categories list if we don't get anything back.

I'm confused. I get a non-empty category list when adding or editing tasks.

Comment 6

[Joey Minta]

(In reply to comment #5)
> I'm confused. I get a non-empty category list when adding or editing tasks.
> 
What categories does it include?  Can you attach a screenshot?

Comment 7

[Robert Rothenberg]

(In reply to comment #6)

> What categories does it include?  Can you attach a screenshot?

The "standard" categories that iCal-supporting applications usually show. I've had these categories since I started using the original Mozilla calendar (Sunburd), then briefly the Lightning plugin, then KOrganizer, then back to Lightning.

Although there seems to be nothing in the calendar file that specifies the entire list. When I grep for CATEGORIES in the file, it shows only the ones I've used (mostly custom ones which don't show up in the list).

I am unable to get a screenshot. When I move focus away from it, the drop-down list hides. Or it doesn't pass the unrecognized keyboard shortcut (it's a specialised one for my machine) back to the window manager.

The categories are:

  None
  Anniversary
  Birthday
  Business
  Calls
  Client
  Competition
  Customer
  Favorites
  Followup
  Gifts
  Holidays
  Ideas
  Issues
  Miscellaneous
  Personal
  Projects
  Public Holiday
  Status
  Suppliers
  Travel
  Vacation
  ----
  New Category

The calendar file is running on a new install of Linux, without KOrganizer etc.

Comment 8

[Joey Minta]

Attachment: ship editCategory.xul

I don't know how categories ended up being turned on for this user (perhaps through a previous installation of the Calendar extension.)  Even though we don't explicitly support Categories for Lightning yet, we should at least avoid this ugly failure mode.

Patch ships the dialog that the app is trying to open here.  (The thin dialog referenced in the bug description is XUL's attempt to open a dialog for a chrome:// url that doesn't exist.)

Comment 9

[Matthew (lilmatt) Willis]

Comment on attachment 233244 [details] [diff] [review]
ship editCategory.xul

We're already shipping the requisite dtds with Ln. Good.

r=lilmatt

Comment 10

[Robert Rothenberg]

(In reply to comment #8)

> ... (The thin dialog
> referenced in the bug description is XUL's attempt to open a dialog for a
> chrome:// url that doesn't exist.)

So isn't that also a XUL bug? If the chrome URL is bad, it should give some kind of error.

Comment 11

[Joey Minta]

Comment on attachment 233244 [details] [diff] [review]
ship editCategory.xul

r=dmose

Comment 12

[Joey Minta]

Patch checked in.

(In reply to comment #10)
> So isn't that also a XUL bug? If the chrome URL is bad, it should give some
> kind of error.
> 
You're kinda on your own when hacking in XUL. :-/