625382 - Sync UI presents confusing error messages when Firefox is offline

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 600261

(Firefox :: Sync, defect)

Description

[Steffen Wilberg]

When Firefox can't reach the weave server because of network outage, the automatic, regular sync fails and presents the following message in a notification bar at the bottom:

"Sync encountered an error while connecting: Failed to connect to the server. Please try again. <Preferences...>"

This is confusing because I don't know how to "try again". There's no "try again" button, neither in the notification bar, nor in the preferences dialog.
Of course I could select "Sync Now" in the Firefox menu, if I remembered to do that.

By the way, it should be labelled "Options" instead of "Preferences" on Windows, in accordance with the menu items.



However, if I manually set Firefox to offline mode (via File menu -> Work Offline), the error message looks like this:
"Sync encountered an error while connecting: Unknown error. Sync will automatically retry this action. <Sync Now>".

This is much better, except that the error is not unknown. It should say that the browser is in offline mode, and the button should set it online (and say so).