819358 - Linux Printing dialog is not filled with available printers in Thunderbird 17

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, defect)

Description

[abugreporter]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/23.0.1271.95 Safari/537.11

Steps to reproduce:

I installed version of Thunderbird 17 which runs from a directory without really installing it. I clicked on one mail, which has the effect of showing a preview of the message in a pane below. Then I pressed a button on the right which show a menu, in which I finally pressed Print. 


Actual results:

The print dialog opened, but it didn't list any printers.


Expected results:

It should have displayed all the available printers making it subsequently possible to print a message.

Icedove 10 does work with printing using the same account on the same machine in the same user session. 

Also, your bug tracking system is broken beyond repair. Searching took a whopping 20 seconds before it said that something went wrong and when I submitted the previous version of this bug report, it just didn't respond and I lost my bug report. 

Normally the idea with a new release is that the old features also remain running. How can you make *printing*, a feature that exists for over more than 10 years in this software not work? Is there a special course on it like "How to break fundamental features in 10 easy steps?". If you were my little nephew, I wouldn't make fun of you, but you are a multi-million dollar organization. Please act like one and hire some people that can actually make software or just pull this pathetic attempt at software from the Internet. I am open to suggestions for other mail software from people who have already ditched the corpse known as Thunderbird on the side of the road. 

I have the impression that Mozilla does no QA and just makes a release. What's so hard about writing an automated test system which checks that it can at the very least print to a virtual PDF printer? Whoever is the release manager at Mozilla must be sleeping, actively trying to destroy Mozilla or just too stupid to be in the presence of others.

Comment 2

[abugreporter]

Using 32 bits Thunderbird on a 64 bits platform does not work. Installing a recent 64 bits version works for me. If I was the owner of Thunderbird, I would display a message on startup to users that they should not run a 32 bits version on a 64 bits platform when a 64 bits version is also available. 

I don't care how you handle this issue further, but all I can say is that the current way of handling it is certainly not the best way in which it can be handled.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Given your interest in printing, I am sure the QA people (many of whom are cc on thsi bug) would be interested in having your involvement in release testing - as most testing is done by volunteers because a) mozilla is open source, b) encourages and needs user involvement, and c) there are frankly not many users interested in printing.

Chris Coulson, what are your thoughts on the print issue and "display a message on startup to users that they should not run a 32 bits version on a 64 bits platform when a 64 bits version is also available."?

Comment 4

[abugreporter]

I already indicated that I didn't care how this issue would be handled further, why can't you just respect that in the first place? 

All you need to do is specify that every widget in the application should appear within a delay of at most 5 seconds. You then write a test that this is always the case for all of the builds you release and on all platforms people might ever run this. There is no need for any human testing. Since I know this is possible, I am not going to do it and I don't think anyone else should do either, since it just shows leadership problems within the Mozilla project. 

The thought of Chris Coulson are completely irrelevant in this matter; it's clearly a good idea to make it impossible for users to make mistakes. You don't have to ask anyone that.

Comment 5

[Vincent (caméléon)]

As I am in CC, I just want to add that I don't reproduce the bug with the official Thunderbird 17 release on Ubuntu 12.04.