691129 - page reload triggering events that lead to window.alert() cause "prompt aborted by user" error

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: General, defect)

Description

[Julian Hall]

Attachment: test.html

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:6.0.2) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/6.0.2
Build ID: 20110902133214

Steps to reproduce:

Use XMLHttpRequest to request data from a URL that takes a long time to respond; execute window.alert() in response to ready state changing to 4.  
While the resource is loading, trigger a page reload.

See attached test page; /events is a URL on my server that (at least during the behaviour experienced with this test) performs a 10 second wait and then returns "[]".  A similar resource will be required for the purposes of testing.

Load the page, then press Ctrl+R.



Actual results:

The syntax error alert box briefly displays, then the console logs the error message:

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "prompt aborted by user"  nsresult: "0x80040111 (NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE)"  location: "JS frame :: resource:///components/nsPrompter.js :: openTabPrompt :: line 462"  data: no]



Expected results:

The page should have reloaded without displaying the alert or the error message, as the request to reload preceded the events that caused the alert to display.

Comment 1

[Julian Hall]

Not sure whether this really belongs in core or firefox.  There may in fact be two separate issues here:

1. Unexpected events firing (the XMLHttpRequest status should not be chaning to 4 in response to a reload request)
2. The alert box being cancelled unexpectedly leading to an error message.

Possibly related, although apparently not an identical problem, is bug 655181.

Comment 2

[mrsoak6]

Not sure if this is the same problem you are describing, but I just had a similar issue. It seems if window.alert() is called and the dialog box is left open, then the page is reloaded and a window.alert() call is made in the process, it will fail with this error message.