403920 - Command-line options -width, -height not recognized

Status: REOPENED

(SeaMonkey :: Startup & Profiles, defect)

Description

[Helge Skjeveland]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9

Starting FF with command-line flags -width 800 and/or -height 600 fails.  Nor does -safe-mode.  Error console reports "Warning, unrecognized command-line flag..."

Shortcut command-line syntax used:
"E:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -width 800 -height 600
(or -safe-mode, or -ProfileManager)

The syntax correct is according to the documentation at
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Command+line+arguments, although the -safe-mode CL option isn’t mentioned there.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Invoke firefox.exe with the command-line flags -width 800 -height 600
2.Error console will report that it doesn’t recognize the flags, or -safe-mode, or -ProfileManager (-url {http://url...} works fine}
Actual Results:  
Warning, unrecognized command-line flag -width
Warning, unrecognized command-line flag -height
Warning, unrecognized command-line flag -safe-mode
Warning, unrecognized command-line flag -ProfileManager

Expected Results:  
Firefox’s window should be sized to 800 × 600 after having initialized, or start up safe mode or Profile Manager, as specified.

If Firefox's command-line options have changed, their method of invocation been altered, or superseded, on-line documentation should be changed to reflect this.

Comment 1

[Holgilein]

Just ran into the same problem.

The height/width command line options are NOT working on both OpenSuSE 10.2 and Win2K/SP4.

Firefox version: 2.0.0.12.

C'mon, not all guys in the world are using the GUI exclusively to communicate with their box... - these command line options are really important.

I would really appreaciate to see this nasty bug to be fixed soon. Cheers.

Comment 2

[John David Galt]

Just before Firefox 3.0, some irresponsible person made a half-baked change to command-line processing that resulted in all command line arguments being disabled when running on Windows.  I complained about it at the time in bug 355889 comment 12, and was told to shut up or else (see later comments in that bug).

It may be time to abandon Mozilla if the project is owned by that kind of bullies.

Comment 3

[Helge Skjeveland]

This problem seems to be fixed in 13.0.1 on Windows 7 SP1.

Comment 4

[Terrell Kelley]

It may have worked on 13.0.1, but it's not working for me on Windows 8 with 19.0.2. One must still use a workaround. That's not acceptable for any other bug, so there's no reason for that to be acceptable here. It's low priority, sure, but the bug is still present and should be open.

Someone on the previous bug on this issue that Microsoft recommended this behavior. I continue to point out that this is not accurate, as none of Microsoft's own software behaves this way.

Note that this is a Windows-only bug, so working on Linux or Mac OS X is irrelevant.

Comment 5

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

Philip, you're on Windows aren't you? Can you reproduce this bug on a current build of SeaMonkey 2.19a1 or Firefox 22.0a1? The above comments seem to express disagreement about whether the bug is still happening.

Comment 6

[Philip Chee]

Firefox WFM with a recent nightly from http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/seamonkey/nightly/
Build identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:21.0) Gecko/20130215 Firefox/21.0

But a self build of SeaMonkey ignores the -width -height flags.

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0 SeaMonkey/2.19a1
Build identifier: 20130310211054

Comment 7

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

In reply to comment #6: I assume s/\/seamonkey\//\/firefox\//

The Firefox version tested (21.0) is now at the Aurora stage but I guess it hasn't got worse in 22.0 Nightly.

-safe-mode and -ProfileManager work in SeaMonkey. If they don't work in a *current* version of Firefox, please open a new bug for the Firefox product, and mention it in a comment to this bug. This is not perfect, but the rule is "one issue, one bug".

Comment 8

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

Recognition of the -width and -height switches *might* have got lost at the Great Toolkit Transition between SeaMonkey 1.x and SeaMonkey 2.

Ian: Callek is quite busy enough trying to keep the tree green so I suppose this is your pidgin, one way (finding someone to fix it) or another (setting WONTFIX).