99404 - invalid pref text entry is not reset upon switching panels

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: Preferences, defect)

Description

[Claudius Gayle]

this bug and related bug 99243 are sprung from bug 81415

I thought I filed this already but I can't find it. Apologies if I'm writing dupes
to reproduce:
1. Choose Edit-->Preferences.
2. Select the Navigator-->History panel.
3. In either textfield, enter and invalid value e.g. 'p'.
4. Switch panels, e.g. 'Languages'
5. Switch back to the History panel.

Actual results:
Your invalid entry is still sitting there.

Expected results:
error checking/validation should happen on the switch and your invalid entry
should be reset to the previous value. If remembering the previous value turns
out to be challenging, resetting to default values could be a stop-gap measure.

20010910 builds

Comment 1

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

i'm thinking this might be expected behavior --even though the entry *is*
invalid, switching btwn panels should keep the previous state and not change
anything.

thinking of marking invalid --since i'm not sure how value validation, if any,
would occur when switching panels. or, for that matter, after OK'ing the prefs
dialog altogether.

samir/brian/alecf, what do you think? or, perhaps this could be a nice enhancement?

Comment 2

[Samir Gehani]

Claudius,
Does the invalid entry get written out to prefs.js?  That is, if you restart the
browser does it have the invalid entry, default entry, or the original (assuming
non-default, valid, user-changed entry)?  

se,
It sounds like you are agreeing with Claudius's description of expected
behavior.  Claudius says: "... your invalid entry should be reset to the
previous value. If remembering the previous value turns out to be challenging,
resetting to default values could be a stop-gap measure."

Comment 3

[Claudius Gayle]

samir, the invalid entry is reset to '0' as part of blake's fix for bug 81415.(I
think that setting it to 0 is wrong too and wrote bug 99243)

sairuh, we already do this error checking -we have to right, you can't very well
have random characters for pref values. The check happens silently after you hit
'OK'

my only point with this bug is that maybe we should do the check as soon as you
switch away panels. very good error checking in a robust application wouldn't
even let you defocus the textfield if it had an invalid entry. _very_ very good
checking wouldn't let one type a char that wasn't a num...anyway I digress. I
actually consider this bug to be 'minor' and 99243 the be the one of real import.

I'm told that bug 66163 may go a long way to solving these issues.

Comment 4

[Brian Nesse (gone)]

Adding ben, who I understand was responsible for a large part of the preferences
dialog support and eddy who was, at least at one time, picking up some part of that.

Guys, what can be done about this short of getting bug 66163 taken care of?

Comment 5

[Samir Gehani]

*** Bug 61292 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[Peter Trudelle]

Blake, reassigning this to you, as SGehani sez you're working on validation on
blur, which would handle this.  

Comment 7

[Blake Ross]

Marking wontfix. I'm going to fix 66163 to handle all these sorts of cases.  Our
behavior here will match IE's.

Comment 8

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

v