88435 - need to add Reset button to remove remembered helper app pref

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, defect, P2)

Description

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

from bug 88066.

when the user turns off the "Always ask before opening this type of file" 
checkbox, there needs to be a way to turn it back on.

right now i can manually do this by removing the entry[ies] for 
"browser.helperApps.neverAsk.openFile" from the prefs.js file.

Comment 1

[Blake Ross]

I have the code for this. Someone needs to tell me where to put the button, and
how it should look.

Comment 2

[german]

Attachment: Proposed redesign with clear button (spec will be upd. shortly to match)

Comment 3

[german]

The redesign above restructures the panel a bit in terms of frames to make it 
clear what controls belong to each item selected in the list and what items 
belong to the panel/all helper apps in general.
The spec will be updated this week to match the current design

Comment 4

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

i think the explanatory text needs better phrasing:

'Clear previously stored preference for all file types where "Ask before opening
this type of file" was unchecked.'

alas, i cannot come up with anything clearer... 'Allow helper application dialog
to appear for all file types' still seems ambiguous/odd to me.

jatin, mpt, suggestions...?

Comment 5

[timeless]

imo that's a Reset not a clear.

Comment 6

[Ashley Bischoff (blog at handcoding.com)]

Maybe something along the lines of 'Clear helper application associations for
this file type, regardless of whether "Always ask before opening this type of
file" was checked"'.

I'm not even sure, myself, about the functionality here -- does this button
clear all associations, or just the associations for the selected file type? If
it's for all, the wording could be:

'Clears all helper application associations' (the "regardless..." bit could be
added as well)

Is that any better?

Comment 7

[Viswanath Ramachandran]

Blake - could you attach your patch here soon and get the reviews etc so that we
can look at taking this into the Netscape release branch. I think we shd take
this first on the trunk if possible so that we can shake out any problems. 

Comment 8

[german]

alex: as far as I understand it only clears the "Ask before opening
this type of file" in the prefs for those file types where this was unchecked,
to bring up the dialog again the next time the user downloads one of these
files. So your wording would not seem appropriate for that.

Comment 9

[Jatin Billimoria]

If the button is renamed to "Reset," this is my suggested wording:

  "Reset stored preferences to ask me before opening files."

Comment 10

[Scott MacGregor]

what if we remove the "me". I like that
"Reset stored preferences to ask before opening files."

Comment 11

[timeless]

Reset stored preferences_ _to ask before opening files.
do we need punctuation here?

in one of my sleepy readings it looks like i'm reseting {preferences to ask 
before opening files} which means i'm clearing that preference, which has no 
useful meaning.

in the meaning we want, i think, we reset preferences so that the browser will 
ask before opening files.

As I tried to think this out I decided to ask the followin: Why do we need to 
say stored?

Comment 12

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

hm, i'm inclined towards "Reset stored preferences to ask me before opening
files." again, assuming we have the button labelled as Reset instead of Clear.

another suggestion:

"Reset stored preferences so that [Mozilla/Netscape] asks before opening files."

not sure if we want to have to choose [or, denote, rather] btwn the mozilla or
the commercial product, however.

Comment 13

[Jatin Billimoria]

I noticed that my own suggestion seems a bit too minimalist. I'd rather err on
the safe side with a bit more explanation. How does this sound?:

Click "Reset" to clear your file-opening preferences and be asked before opening
   files.

Comment 14

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

jatin, i can understand the desire to have more of an explanation...but the
above suggestion rings a bit awkwardly in my ears...

how about:

"Click Reset to clear your file-opening preferences and to have
[Mozilla/Netscape] ask you before opening files."

still a bit wordy, i admit --in fact, if we were to phrase it mentioning the
product name, i'd prefer my 2001-07-05 22:33 suggestion.

other suggestions?

Comment 15

[timeless]

mentioning the product name isn't a big deal, &brand.shortname; iirc.

Comment 16

[Viswanath Ramachandran]

-> blakes evil Netscape twin blaker :-). 

Comment 17

[Blake Ross]

Attachment: patch

Comment 18

[Blake Ross]

mscott, the "Always ask before opening files of this type" checkbox in the Edit 
Type dialog doesn't actually do anything but persist its state, right?  Can I 
remove that for rtm to reduce confusion?

I went with jatin's wording for now.  This wording still isn't clear enough for 
me; for example, we all know what "ask before opening a file" means, but the 
user doesn't.

Comment 19

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

sr=[e-mail]

Comment 20

[Blake Ross]

vishy, is this going to be PDT+?

Comment 21

[Viswanath Ramachandran]

Get a review, land on the trunk, mark it vtrunk and lets get it tested on the
trunk (if we can get it in today and tested tomorrow morning that would be
great). Then lets try and get an approval for it tomorrow to go on the branch.
thanks! Vishy

Comment 22

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

r=[e-mail]

Comment 23

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

verified fixed using the following commercial trunk bits:

winnt - 2001.07.11.07
linux - 2001.07.11.08

currently waiting for today's mac trunk build. will update when that's available.

Comment 24

[Scott MacGregor]

actually there's a problem with the patch with moz-icons =). The code isn't
properly adding the extension to the dummy file name. So I'm getting the wrong
moz-icon showing up for mime types. 

for instance if I click on text/html, we are using a dummy file of "dummy.ht"
instead of "dummy.htm or dummy.html". As a result I get an icon for .ht files
(hyper terminal??). 

I think the problem is in how we extract the file extension in pref-applications.js

Comment 25

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

 ext = handlerOverride.extensions.substr(0, posOfFirstSpace - 1);          


That "- 1" should not be there (consider the case posOfFirstSpace == 0).

Comment 26

[Scott MacGregor]

Blake, can you fix this problem before we try to land this on the branch?

Comment 27

[Blake Ross]

Yeah, but unbelievably, the trunk has been closed since it was noticed...

Comment 28

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

finally vrfy fixed on the trunk with mac commercial bits, 2001.07.11.13.

Comment 29

[Blake Ross]

The icon fix landed on the trunk.  So is this going on the branch?

Comment 30

[Viswanath Ramachandran]

not taking on branch. this bug is fixed. 

Comment 31

[Blake Ross]

Vishy, are you sure we shouldn't try to pursue this on the branch?  I'm not sure
if there's a good workaround for this, especially for system mime types...

Comment 32

[Viswanath Ramachandran]

I would not consider this a stopper. I think we shd pursue this thing on the 
trunk (for example to be able to reset only some of them not all of them)

Comment 33

[Blake Ross]

I'm just afraid that users aren't going to know how to save a file instead of
opening it with the helper app, if they need to.

I figured they could just remove the helper app and it would prompt them next
time, but:

(1) we have a bug that you have to delete it twice (delete once, restart, delete
again, restart) before it actually seems to get deleted. no one is going to
figure this out.

(2) even in that case, it's not really removed!  Even though my zip association
no longer appears on the list, winzip keeps opening when I click a zip.

mscott, what do you think?

Comment 34

[Scott MacGregor]

If this bug were taken to PDT early last week we definetly should have taken it.
Unfortunately bringing it to their attention now is too late. The netscape
branch is now in stop ship, pull it off the wire mode. Fixes like this are no
longer being taken =(. It's unfortunate that this was not pushed last week.
Looks like the patch has been around since 7/8! But it wasn't brought to PDT's
attention so now it's going to have to wait until the next train. =( 

Comment 35

[Blake Ross]

No, I mean, what do you think about bug #2 :-) This is the first I've
encountered it.

Comment 36

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Bug #2 may not be a bug.  If we have no association for it ourselves, we go out
to the registry to create the MIME info.  The registry has a flag associated
with the file type for whether a prompt needs to happen before its opened
(settable via the file types dialog in Windows).

Sounds like in your case the flag for .zip is set to no prompt in the
registry.... If I recall correctly, MS Word sets a bunch of the flags to no
prompt on install...

Comment 37

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

jatin, could the manual workaround [see the orig 2001-06-29 13:52 comment] be
added to the relnotes, pls? thx!

Comment 38

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

vrfy fixed; retested to be sure:

linux, 2001.08.15.14-comm
winNT, 2001.08.15.06-comm
mac OS 9.1 [emul on X], 2001.08.15.08-comm