713995 - Firefox>Preferences>Privacy>Cookie settings forgotten

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[Derek Williams]

Attachment: Screen Shot 2011-12-28 at 18.46.09.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:10.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0
Build ID: 20111221135037

Steps to reproduce:

I chose:
Firefox>Preferences>Privacy>History>Firefox will [USE CUSTOM SETTINGS FOR HISTORY]

I then checked the following:
> Remember browsing history
> Remember download history
> Remember search and form history
> Accept cookies from sites:
>> Accept third-party cookies
>>> Keep until [THEY EXPIRE]

Closed Preferences window

Reopened Preferences window

Quit Firefox


Actual results:

Cookie settings changed from those set to the following: (see screenshot coming after this)

After closing and then reopening Preferences>Privacy, the option [REMEMBER BROWSING HISTORY] had unchecked itself

After Quitting and then relaunching Firefox the same settings had changed to:
Preferences>Privacy>History>Firefox will [REMEMBER HISTORY]


Expected results:

The settings made in Preferences should have stayed the way I set them, both after closing and then reopening the Preferences window, and after Quitting and then relaunching Firefox

Comment 1

[Derek Williams]

Attachment: 'Remember browsing history unchecks itself after opening and closing Preferences window

'Remember browsing history unchecks itself after opening and closing Preferences window

Comment 2

[Derek Williams]

Attachment: Preferences>Privacy>Cookies reset themselves forgetting Custom Settings

Preferences>Privacy>Cookies reset themselves forgetting Custom Settings

Comment 3

[Derek Williams]

One apparent consequence is that this stops Firefox working properly with certain newspaper logged in comment sites such as New York Daily News and Los Angeles Times Facebook interface, according to feedback from their technical support.

Email history available as and when needed.

Comment 4

[Tim (fmdeveloper)]

Have you completed the troubleshooting steps at https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Preferences%20are%20not%20saved

Comment 5

[Derek Williams]

Attachment: no user.js file

I tried just now, but it said "if there is no user.js file, this won't help you".  There is no 'user.js' file - screenshot attached.

Comment 6

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

Derek -- there are other troubleshooting tips on the "Preferences are not saved" support page you might try. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-to-fix-preferences-wont-save

Does this error still happen with an updated version of Firefox? I could not reproduce it.

Comment 7

[Derek Williams]

Liz the bug is still there.

I choose Firefox>Preferences>Privacy - and I note that "Firefox will remember [HISTORY]" is selected.
I change this to "Firefox will remember [USE CUSTOM SETTINGS FOR HISTORY]" and make settings as desired.
I close the Preferences window and then immediately reopen it.
I note that "Firefox will remember [HISTORY]" is re-selected instead of [USE CUSTOM SETTINGS FOR HISTORY]"

100% reproducible in current version 19.

Comment 8

[Josh Matthews [:jdm]]

Note that if the custom settings selected are functionally the same as any of the non-custom settings, the preferences window intentionally reverts the selected choice to either Remember History or Never Remember History. According to the choices listed in comment 0, that is what is happening here - those choices are functionally indistinguishable from the effects of  Remember History, so this seems to be working as intended.

Comment 9

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

jdm: That makes sense.

Derek: Are sure you are losing Exceptions or particular cookie information for the two news sites you mentioned?   Is the issue here actually that you expect to be logged in automatically to the LA Times but that is not working?

Comment 10

[Derek Williams]

Attachment: 1/3 checked menu for History

If this is intentional behaviour, then I disagree with it.  When the Preferences>Privacy page is opened, if the first option [REMEMBER HISTORY] is checked and the window closed and then reopened, the option remains checked.  If [NEVER REMEMBER HISTORY] is checked, and then Preferences closed and the reoponed, it too remains checked.

However if the third option [USE CUSTOM SETTINGS FOR HISTORY] is checked, it remans checked only for as long as the Preferences window is open.  If the Preferences window is closed and then reoponed, the checked third option is unchecked, and the first option is checked.  This is inconsistent with the behaviour while the window is open, and can only lead to the assumption that the Custom Settings have been cancelled, even though they reappear as previously set if the third option for Custom Settings is again selected.

Images attached of these behaviours.

Comment 11

[Derek Williams]

Attachment: 2/3 Checked menu for History

Comment 12

[Derek Williams]

Attachment: 3/3 Checked menu for History

Comment 13

[Meli]

Agree with jdm.
there are two specific cases which one means Remember history and the other one means never remember history. If you choose these two predefined settings in custom settings, they will switch to those items.
So I think that it works properly at the moment.

Comment 14

[Derek Williams]

Maybe it's working internally, in that the settings are being remembered, but why does the display not show that custom selection on relaunch or re-opening the window?  One should not feel that one has to select the preference on every fresh launch of the browser or re-opening the Preferences window, which is the unmistakable impression created by the fact that the display always reverts to showing a setting other than that chosen by the user.