509106 - setPageAnnotation should not fail silently in private browsing mode

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Private Browsing, defect)

Description

[John J. Barton]

The annotation service silently fails if InPrivateBrowsingMode() returns true:
>> http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/components/places/src/nsAnnotationService.cpp#492

This caused Firebug to break silently when users set private browsing mode or never remember history.

In addition to not being documented, the behavior is "too sneaky" in my opinion. It is not something one expects when using a database-like service.

In my opinion the implementation should throw an exception if called in private browsing mode, so developers dont' get a surprise. If the see the exception they then learn to test the private browsing service before the call.

Comment 1

[(no longer active)]

A question for Places folks: do callers of the annotation service inside our codebase expect it to throw, and correctly handle it, or do we need to make sure they are all exception safe?

Comment 2

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

We probably need to check them all.  I'm betting they don't expect it to throw.

Comment 3

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

setPageAnnotation is no longer, so it can't fail.