777441 - Firefox doesn't stay in Offline mode after startup.

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[illusion3]

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:

I enabled offline mode (ticked "Work Offline"), then I closed Firefox. After that, I opened it again.


Actual results:

I open Firefox, and it won't stay offline.

It automatically disables the offline mode (the tick automatically removed from "Work Offline" option). It doesn't remember that I had selected to work offline.


Expected results:

It should have stayed in offline mode.

-This bug is in all Firefox versions above 6. This bug is not in Firefox 6 or older versions.

-In Firefox 3.6 version, I could set "network.manage-offline-status" to "false" to solve the problem.

This preference is default since Firefox 4. Unfortunately it doesn't solve the problem since Firefox 7.

Comment 1

[Alice0775 White]

See Bug 663253

Comment 2

[illusion3]

(In reply to Alice0775 White from comment #1)
> See Bug 663253

I tested it in Firefox 14! This bug is not fixed!

Comment 3

[ruxbs]

I have problems with this bug too, when the browser is told to be offline it should stay that way!

This has privacy and security concerns.

I put the browser offline so that unexpected attacks from extensions will hopefully fail, such as "release notes" on extension updates (which really are a page of adverts, and tracking/trending operations on users), or the unexpected addition of other features.

One extension I tried turned out to be an advert for a "pro" version of the same thing. I judge that kind of behaviour as malware, it was a classic bait-and-switch. Addons.mozilla don't give a **** (the Google influence? B-a-S is the norm for the advertising industry) and so offline working resiliently IMHO is important.

Also when the browser itself is initially configured, or is updated, various attacks need to be stopped and offline is useful for that. For example FF defaults to Google as the homepage (and lots of other things), FF defaults to accepting any cookies, and Google tries to set a year-long cookie (which likely resets to a year in the future each time it is used). Offline mode can mitigate against this.

If I open an HTML file attached to an email then FF will just load resources off the web. Offline mode can protect against that (I have noticed that more and more companies are sending HTML-only emails, meaning that if the user turns off HTML in their email client then the browser will betray the user's privacy instead. If the browser could start offline then this attack could be stopped.


Currently I work around the offline feature being faulty by starting FF with --ProfileManager and ticking the box.

If Offline is a feature that causes such confusion that it has been broken on purpose how about removing the feature completely and providing it as an optional extension? Kinda like how FF should be (but does not and has become the antithesis of its roots. I wish someone would fork it and strip out all the ****).

Comment 4

[Michelle Funches - QA]

Updating to Resolved-Won't Fix
The default behavior will be to start Firefox in Online mode. 
Changing the option in about:config will be overridden.
@Reporter, feel free to submit an Enhancement Request