445721 - 'Authentication Required' dialog being non-modal is annoying

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 411085

(Firefox :: Security, defect)

Description

[Greg Hazel]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1) ; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.590; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1

Despite what https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=377496 would lead you to believe, the FireFox3 non-modal 'Authentication Required' dialog is more annoying than the modal version. Many dialogs load on top of each other, and typing the username and password in to one does not apply to all of them - even if you click "Remember" on the password save prompt info bar thing.
A few times, I even got this: http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/8189/blankms2.png instead of the regular dialog!

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Load a url like http://gobase.org/studying/articles/mioch/7/index.html

Actual Results:  
2. 'Authentication Required' dialog appears, flickers the titlebar
3. 'Authentication Required' dialog appears, flickers the titlebar
4. 'Authentication Required' dialog appears, flickers the titlebar
...
20. Try to drag a window, to see the others underneath it
21. Notice the mouse control is stolen, and you can no longer click on the Start Menu
22. Try to type a valid username and password
23. Notice that did not get rid of all the dialogs
24. Maybe see http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/8189/blankms2.png 


Expected Results:  
2. 'Authentication Required' dialog appears, waits patiently

For the common case of a mediawiki site protected by basic auth, all the links to thumbnails cause a dialog like this. Very annoying.

Comment 1

[Alex Riesen]

For me (also Firefox 3.0.1) a _modal_ (blocking whole application) dialog appears (for an inactive tab from the previous session), which makes it absolutely impossible to do anything with firefox, until the password is entered.
I don't actually want to do anything with that tab yet.

Can't the dialog be made a part of the tab (greying/desaturating the tabs contents)? Let the tab title indicate that it expects password, fine, but not interrupt user. It is especially annoying when the site requesting the authentication is slow and the dialog pops up after a minute or so, well into normal browsing session.

Comment 2

[mark.shiu]

For me, shouldn't the _modal_ dialog blocks the tab only?
I have my login and password on another tab (my email tab), or it is on my desktop.  But I can never get to it, because I cannot click to it.

Shouldn't the requirement for the dialog restricted only to the specific tab?

Comment 3

[woova165]

No modal dialogs. Ever. There is no excuse for this behaviour, and it's a strong argument for other browsers

Comment 4

[Rob]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;
rv:1.9.2.5pre) Gecko/20100414 Namoroka/3.6.5pre (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;
rv:1.9.2.5pre) Gecko/20100414 Namoroka/3.6.5pre (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

I just installed NTOP (for WinXP) which uses a Webpage to configure it. It asks for a password when you try to do admin functions. I can see the same thing would happen for "Snort" and many other programs (and perhaps some 'Router Configuration Pages' also).

How to get the password you ask, just Google it ;) ...

The "Authentication Required" Dialog blocks switching Tabs until you either enter the correct password or click the cancel button.


We can not desire to lock the functionality of Namoroka until you deal with the pop-up. A 'Rouge Site' could 'DOS' you with requests as Greg has complained in Steps 2-19 and if you shutdown you could not restart for fear of that Tab being re-opened. 

We desire to have only ONE active request per page and be permitted to switch Tabs (to Google for a solution) without being forced to deal with a pop-up.

Rob

Comment 5

[Rob]

Related: Bug 620582

Comment 6

[Adam Katz]

Bug 567804 will move authentication to a (modal) doorhanger, which will solve the issue raised by this bug, which is tracked by bug 411085.