664606 - Site based data management UI only displays entries for websites with history entries

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[David Chan [:dchan]]

User Agent
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:7.0a1) Gecko/20110615 Firefox/7.0a1

There are certain situations when the current site-preferences UI at about:permissions doesn't list all data. This includes 3rd party-cookies and in extreme cases, all data related to a site.


Steps to reproduce
1. Clear browsing history
2. Visit http://www.mozilla.org/
3. Increase font size (ctrl/cmd-+)
4. about:permissions should now show "www.mozilla.org"
5. Clear recent history, browsing & download history only
6. Reload about:permissions, "www.mozilla.org" should no longer be there
7. Visit http://www.mozilla.org/ , note the font size is still enlarged

Result
www.mozilla.org is not listed in site-based preferences UI. Also note that there are cookies with no associated site in the screenshot

Expected
www.mozilla.org should be listed due to having it's preferences modified


I don't believe this corner case will come up much during actual use. Unlisted 3rd party cookies are more likely. Third-party cookies should be displayed if about:permissions is going to be the only page for managing all site-related data.

Comment 1

[David Chan [:dchan]]

Attachment: screenshot

Comment 2

[:Margaret Leibovic]

We only display the site if the permission that has been modified is part of the about:permissions UI, not if it is part of browser history:

http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/preferences/aboutPermissions.js#534

Also, we do not add a site if cookies are stored for it, only if the cookie permission has been modified.

It sounds like about:permissions is behaving as designed, but this bug could address the fact that maybe that design is flawed, since it violated your expectations.

Comment 3

[David Chan [:dchan]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> We only display the site if the permission that has been modified is part of
> the about:permissions UI, not if it is part of browser history:
> 
> http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/preferences/
> aboutPermissions.js#534
> 
> Also, we do not add a site if cookies are stored for it, only if the cookie
> permission has been modified.
> 
> It sounds like about:permissions is behaving as designed, but this bug could
> address the fact that maybe that design is flawed, since it violated your
> expectations.

Ah okay, yes I was misunderstanding the design of the page. The "Manage *" buttons made me believe that the page would encompass all relevant site information. If I am now understanding this feature correctly, the goal is to expose the subset of site-preferences which have multiple options to select from.

Comment 4

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

about:permissions is long gone