965693 - Remove annoying "Printing XUL documents is not supported" error dialog

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Printing: Setup, defect)

Description

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Attachment: remove-xul-printer-error.patch

STR:
1. Open about:newtab
2. Press the CMD+P keyboard short to attempt to print the page

RESULT:
A disruptive "Printer Error: Printing XUL documents is not supported" error dialog.

I inadvertently press CMD+P on the about:newtab page a couple times a week, probably when trying to press SHIFT+CMD+[ to switch tabs too quickly. This error dialog must then be dismissed, which is annoying, especially considering that the error message is not useful.

btw, this fix makes newtab bug 965642 go away.

Q: If you accept this patch, should I add a comment to ErrorList.h saying that the FAILURE(8) error code has been "retired" and should not be reused?

Comment 1

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

(In reply to Chris Peterson (:cpeterson) from comment #0)
> Q: If you accept this patch, should I add a comment to ErrorList.h saying
> that the FAILURE(8) error code has been "retired" and should not be reused?

No idea!

Comment 2

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/1dc5a6ee7a8a

Comment 3

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/1dc5a6ee7a8a

Comment 4

[[:Aleksej]]

What did this change actually do?  Was print intended to fail silently or say an unknown error happened?

Comment 5

[[:Aleksej]]

2014-02-03-03-02-03-mozilla-central-firefox-29.0a1.en-US.linux-x86_64 without e10s:
Open a new tab.
File - Print preview: a popup with "There was an unexpected problem while printing."
File - Print: does nothing.

I think that's not less annoying than the informative dialog is.


2015-03-18-05-57-50-mozilla-central-firefox-39.0a1.en-US.linux-x86_64
Without e10s: same.
Both with and without e10s, same as the other build, but "Print preview" also shows a popup with "Title: New Tab\n Progress: Preparing…", that never closes until I close it.

Comment 6

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

I don't know. I think Mike has been working on e10s printing.

Comment 7

[[:Aleksej]]

Pre-checkin build 2014-01-28-03-17-16-mozilla-central-firefox-29.0a1.en-US.linux-x86_64:
Print Preview: "There was an unexpected problem while printing."
Print: "Printing XUL documents is not supported."

Comment 8

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

What we actually should do is fix bug 1119563.

Comment 9

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

It's really too bad we got rid of this error dialog.  We should have rewritten it instead.

Bug 1119653 is another reasonable solution, which will make the dialog obsolete.  But in the meantime we need *something* to explain to people why "printing doesn't work for pages without web content".

This issue came up at bug 1181630.