57402 - Frames History Overflow

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Core :: DOM: Navigation, defect, P3)

Description

[bht237]

Attached collection of html files demonstrates a Mozilla history overflow bug.
A frame within a frameset has its own history.
The document.history.back() function within the scope of this frame
should load pages into the frame until the first page in the history
of this frame is reached.
Any further calls of window.history.back() should be ignored at this stage.


Mozilla loads the parent frame with the parent frame's
previous location or worse, other frame's previous content after overflow of the
child's frame history, which has a
chaotic disintegrating effect on frames based applications.

Please use attached simple test case to verify.

Comment 1

[bht237]

Attachment: Simple test case (zip file)

Comment 2

[Johnny Stenback (:jst)]

Pollmann, not sure if this is your bug or radhas, but I'll give it to you to
start with...

Comment 3

[Eric Pollmann]

Sounds like a duplicate bug?  Handing over to Radha.

Comment 4

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Confirmed with 110304 mozilla trunk builds on NT.

Comment 5

[bht237]

Changed severity to critical.
In combination with http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57403
it becomes obvious that even little help popups such as the help window
in Navigator 4 with its little navigation frame at the bottom cannot be implemented.

Comment 6

[Radha on family leave (not reading bugmail)]

This depicts the problem with frame specific history accessible primarily thro'
JS. For mozila/Netscape 6 We decided to let go of this functionality when the
new Session History was designed. The new concept here is, in the modular world,
a iframe or content area(such as the help window)  does not automatically get a
history object, when it is created. If you need history, you have to create it.
You can create a session History object from JS and attach it to the docshell of
your iframe. As new urls get loaded in the iframe, the SH object that was
created and attached keeps tract of it and back() and forward() on it will work.

I understand the mozilla help window does that. Cc'ing Ian Oeschger who has done
this already for the help window. Ian, can you point to the code where this is
done. Thanks,

Comment 7

[Radha on family leave (not reading bugmail)]

 Here's an example on how to create and use Session History in independant popup
windows that are not part of any browser window. The following JS works in
conjuction with
a XUL that has a iframe with id="content" and is of type="content-primary"  in
the Netscape 6 help window. Session History can be created and attached only to
content type iframes and not to chrome or any other iframes.

SH = Components.classes['@mozilla.org/browser/shistory;1'].createInstance();
 SH = SH.QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsISHistory);
 docShellElement = document.getElementById("content");
 docShell = docShellElement.docShell;
 webNav = docShell.QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIWebNavigation);
 webNav.sessionHistory = SH;

This is the new way of creating and using history in JS. As far as I know, there
is no plan to support the old style where history got automatically created with
a frame.

Comment 8

[bht237]

Thanks Radha for this info.
So a new window created with window.open() does not get history automatically,
even not in a future release?
This is really good because users were causing application errors by pressing
[Ctrl+left] etc.
I noticed that [Ctrl+R] does not work in a new window, either. Is this by
design? It would be great because this has caused major headaches in complex frames.
The above 2 features, combined with Session History add so much value to the
browser as a professional application platform!

Comment 9

[Radha on family leave (not reading bugmail)]

Answer to the first question:

Yes. I believe this is the way it will be in the future.

Answer to the second question:
I think Ctrl+R doesn't work because keyboard navigations are not hooked up to a 
simple frame. I don't really know the answer to the question on whether it will 
be hooked up in the future. This is something you probably want to ask 
in n.p.m.embedding or to porkjockeys mailing list.

Comment 10

[Prashant Desale]

WONTFIX