995298 - No proper error handling for navigating to some wrong 'chrome:', 'resource:' or 'file:' URLs

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: General, defect)

Description

[Duan Yao]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:30.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/30.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20140411004002

Steps to reproduce:

Try navigating to a wrong chrome: URL with firefox, such as:
`chrome://aaa/content/ggg.html`  (aaa not registered)
`chrome://global/nsTransferable.js`  (missing '/content' after 'global')



Actual results:

Nothing. No error page or dialog is shown.


Expected results:

Firefox show an error page or something to indicate the error state.
Firefox does show an error page if only the part after '/content/' in the URL is wrong, such as:
`chrome://global/content/nsTransferable.j`  (missing last 's')

Comment 1

[Duan Yao]

I also tested with geckofx(https://bitbucket.org/geckofx), a .net wrapper of xulrunner, and found that: 

1. `nsIWebNavigation.LoadURI()` throws exceptions for wrong chrome: URLs. It does not throw for http/file URLs.

2. URLs such as `chrome://global/content/nsTransferable.j` can trigger an error page, while `chrome://aaa/content/ggg.html` and `chrome://global/nsTransferable.js` can't, just like firefox.

So it seems that firefox catches exceptions from `nsIWebNavigation.LoadURI()` and drops them silently.

I think`nsIWebNavigation.LoadURI()` should not throw for chrome: URLs, and should behave just like http/file URLs. Current behavior is confusing and not consist.

Comment 2

[Duan Yao]

`resource:` URLs have similar problem.

Comment 3

[Duan Yao]

Some file: URLs have similar problem, e.g.: `file:///a/b` (missing drive letter) on windows platform.