604872 - Editing a link in a draft does not work. Clicking it sends you to the previous value.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 544787

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[tmtodaro]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.10) Gecko/20100914 Firefox/3.6.10
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.9) Gecko/20100915 Thunderbird/3.1.4

Editing a link in a draft doesn't work properly. Once I save it, if I click the link when viewing the draft in the Preview Pane, I'm directed to the page represented by the old link.



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a new mail message.
2. Type in http://www.amazon.com in the body
3. Save as a draft.
4. Show the preview pane for the draft. Click on the link. It will go to Amazon. So far, so good.
5. Now edit the draft. Change www.amazon.com to www.cnn.com. Save the draft.
6. Show the preview pane for the draft. The link says CNN. Click it. It will send you to Amazon.
Actual Results:  
I was sent to Amazon.

Expected Results:  
I should have been sent to CNN site.

Comment 1

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Did this use to work the way you describe it ?

Comment 2

[tmtodaro]

I can't say. It's rare that I edit a link in a draft. And, if I hadn't decided to test the link to make sure that it is correct, I would never have discovered this bug; I would have assumed that if the link is formatted and spelled correctly, then it's good.

Comment 3

[Joe Sabash [:JoeS1]]

I am not able to reproduce this bug using:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2.12pre) Gecko/20101002 Lanikai/3.1.5pre ID:20101002002015
Or with current trunk.
But a couple of quick questions.
Plaintext or html mode.
Do you have autosave as draft turned on (if so what interval)
Do you keep the preview pane active (in view) all the time.
Is the correct link shown in the status bar when you hover over the link.

Comment 4

[tmtodaro]

Format was set to auto-detect.
Auto-save is set to five minutes.
I always have preview pane on.
The wrong link appears in the status bar when I hover over the link.

What is interesting is, if I shut down Thunderbird and restart it, the link is still wrong! It doesn't refresh itself.

If I edit the draft and double-click the link, the Link Properties dialog pops up. The link text is what appears in the draft. The link location is the wrong link, i.e. the original link that I initially entered. That never changes, no matter how many times I edit the link text.

P.S. Update was applied yesterday. Now running Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.11) Gecko/20101013 Thunderbird/3.1.5

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Reporter, do you still see this problem when using version 10 or newer?

if you are unable to reproduce, please close by setting status to resolved, and resolution to WORKSFORME or another appropriate setting.

If you are able to reproduce, please add new details, and a testcase if one does not already exist in the bug report.

Comment 6

[tmtodaro]

The exact same behavior occurs under 10.0.2. No new details -- the original testcase I posted still applies.

Comment 7

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Comment 1 describes unfortunate combination of 2 correctly working features:
- autoconversion of plain-text URL (link locations typed into composition) into real html links <a href="URL">URL</a>, for which URL is taken as link text
- later editing of *link text* in composition's text editor, which does not force the underlying *link location* to change, because we allow hyperlinks like:

<a href="URL">Click here</a> or even
<a href="URL">http://www.mozilla.com/.../test.html</a> (where link *text* is deliberately shortened with dots).

So technically, there's no bug here, just bad UX: Obviously, there is room for improvement to prevent errors. However, it's not straightforward how to get this right without breaking feature of different link text for advanced users.

This UX problem is already reported as Bug 544787.