530908 - Granting user_pref("capability.principal.codebase.p5.granted", "UniversalXPConnect"); is inconsistent

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[Jonnan]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091109 Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Firefox/3.5.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091109 Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Firefox/3.5.5

I come across this because I like and use Tiddlywiki (http://www.tiddlywiki.com/) a flatfile wiki database that allows for editing.

The problem is that when you save changes locally to a Tiddlywiki file Firefox consistently asks for permissions which are granted under the Universal XP Connect privilege, and the only sane way to use it is to 'remember this decision' and 'allow' - and for this session you will not be bothered for this again.

Then, one day, you click 'Remember this decision' and 'deny'.
And Firefox does indeed remember that decision - forever by default. There's no built in way to access the decision, it's not accessible via about:config, and you spend 30 minutes googling to find out how to edit the prefs.js file to undo that 1 second error - and at least I know enough to eventually find it after 30 minutes.

This needs to be accessible, or at least consistent in that either grant or deny is saved across or *not* saved across session. Granting for a session, but denying forever just sets people up for this mistake.

Thank you - Jonnan

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Download and edit a tiddlywiki file
2. Save changes
2a select "Remember my Decision" and "Grant" When FF requests access permissions for Javascript.
2b select "Remember my Decision" and "Deny" When FF requests access permissions for Javascript.
3a. Exit and re-enter FF. FF will request permissions upon attempting to save changes to your tiddlywiki file
3b. Exit and re-enter FF. FF will never request permissions again for local files unless you manually edit prefs.js, changing user_pref("capability.principal.codebase.p5.denied", "UniversalXPConnect");
to
user_pref("capability.principal.codebase.p5.granted", "UniversalXPConnect");
whereupon it reverts to the default behavior.
Actual Results:  
Incosistent result between granting and denying privileges

Expected Results:  
Either granting and denying privileges for local files should *both* be permanent, or both be per session.
If permanent, there should be a feature allowing access to toggle permission inside the gui (Or at least about:config) rather than requiring prefs.js to be edited.

Comment 1

[Andrew McCreight [:mccr8]]

capability.principal.codebase doesn't seem to exist any more.