[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by lotuseclat79

NM 6.6 is not necessarily broken - just incomplete in terms of development as a version.

With regard to PPP support, it certainly IS broken (the release is 0.6.6, not even at version 1.0 yet) and the next release should fix this aspect of Network Manager.

Ubuntu distributed the latest version of the software for NM. Obviously, the FF developers may have concluded it to be full featured (when in fact it was not).

Obviously, the Ubuntu maintainers concluded version 0.6.6 of Network Manager was considered to be "full featured" since they included it with the 8.04 release of Ubuntu. The Firefox developers weren't focusing on Network Manager as you think they might have. You can't forget that FF3 works without Network Manager being installed.

I suspect it has more to do with my Live CD environment which is not a full featured Ubuntu installation.

Maybe but what troubles me the most about this entire thread is you mentioned nothing about your unique configuration in your initial post OR the fact this behavior is experienced only under certain conditions at all.

Yes, I have seen the FF roadmap, but strangely, was never able to find a schedule to which they would commit until it was announced about a month or so before release.

They seem to have changed how they publish their schedules. This page contains an example of what I was used to seeing, where the scheduled dates for code freeze and so on were posted along with the actual dates those events took place. I remember older roadmaps clearly illustrating when dates were missed or goals met early, etc.

Ubuntu 8.04 release preceded the FF 3.0 release.

Well, yeah which means Firefox 2 should have been the default browser and not Firefox 3.

I've gotten over it - have you?

I wasn't impacted by the issue, so I couldn't care less about it. I was hung up over your misrepresentation of it.

BTW, if I experienced the problem during FF 3.0b5 (as you say), I probably had the workaround in place as soon as I found it and put it in place - looks like June 2, 2008 by the date on the file I have with the workaround.

I was mistaken. You didn't report the problem in FF 3b5 but others had reported the problem with FF 3b3 and 3b4.

You talk about an obscure minority of FF users as if you have access to data that says so - if so, what's your data? Sounds like an assumption to me, so I will call it that. Just so you know, I call 'em as I see them!

Yep, I'm talking about the number of Linux users using dial-up Internet connections, not the number of Firefox users. This issue doesn't impact Firefox users on Windows or Mac OS X so I wouldn't include them in this. As for numbers, I don't have any. However, if PPP connections on Linux were the majority, Network Manager would have made PPP connections the priority (hey that rhymes! ).

Are you thinking I'm mistaken in my assertion that the number of Linux users with dial-up Internet connections are in the minority? How many threads do we have on this forum about dial-up connections on Linux vs threads about Ethernet or wireless connections on Linux?

I think we're the same in that we both "call 'em as [we] see 'em".

Peace...

[lotuseclat79]

Hi tomdkat,

I never once misrepresented the issue in terms of my first-hand experience with it whereas your second-hand opinion seems to have been hung.

You seem to talk about numbers without having any - is my point!

From the get-go, when FF is launched by clicking on a local file (this is one case), then it is safe for FF to assume that it is not transacting any fetch over the Internet for which a connection is required. However, that is no reason to assume that FF should therefore be in a "Work Offline" mode either!

If FF has the smarts to know when it is being asked to fetch something on the Internet - which I think we can all agree without chasing a wild goose about "smarts" as it doesn't take much - it should also probably be able to detect whether it has a suitable connection to the Internet (by virtue of its configuration) - but wait, in the connection settings there is only info about proxies - not whether there is dialup, dsl, or fiber types.

Apparently, assumptions were offloaded to NM under its latest (at the time) configuration capabilities (which unfortunately did not cover dialup - possibly dsl modems as well).

Suffice it to say - software today is very complex when system interfaces are given to have attributes which are still under development, and one should not expect software to be correct in all cases.

-- Tom

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by lotuseclat79

I never once misrepresented the issue in terms of my first-hand experience with it whereas your second-hand opinion seems to have been hung.

That's very true and obviously you must qualify your position on representation to limit the scope to what you experienced first hand. This three page is about far MORE than your first hand experience, wouldn't you agree? The misrepresentation is in your presentation of the initial issue and in your assertion that this is a Firefox issue, when it really is not. That goes far beyond your first hand experience. As for my "second hand" opinion, it's been supported by fact and other people's first hand experiences.

You seem to talk about numbers without having any - is my point!

You have yet to provide ANY evidence supporting assertions you've made, which I have questioned above. Your reference to my not having actual numbers seems like you're thinking I'm "hiding" the fact I don't have any. I've stated I didn't have any in previous comments so I'm not sure why you're harping on this UNLESS it's because you acknowledge my underlying point is correct. Without having any numbers, if the majority of Ubuntu Linux users connecting to the Internet used dial-up connections, as you do, this issue probably would not have existed. Why not? Because the Ubuntu maintainers would not have shipped a distro release that would have "broken" most of its user base. Do you need me to provide numbers to make this more clear for you?

Here is a comment from Dan Williams in the Firefox bug report referenced in the FF 3.0.1 release information:

Some distros probably turned on NM 0.6 by default before it was ready for the
majority of that distros userbase. We didn't turn NM on by default in Fedora
until Fedora 9 mainly because we felt that only NM 0.7 covered enough use-cases
to be turned on by default (PPP for example).

From the get-go, when FF is launched by clicking on a local file (this is one case), then it is safe for FF to assume that it is not transacting any fetch over the Internet for which a connection is required. However, that is no reason to assume that FF should therefore be in a "Work Offline" mode either!

First, your assumption is wrong. When FF is launched by clicking a local file, it can't assume an Internet connection will not be required. Why not? Because, that local file could reference items on an external website to load. I run into that frequently when assisting people on this forum with website issues. They post the HTML for their page, I save it locally, I open the local file from my hard drive and the page loads images (and other stuff) directly from their website. Second, FF isn't "assuming" to go into offline mode because you opened a local file. FF went into offline mode because the underlying environment told it there was no network connection present. If this issue truly was a FF issue, people without dial-up or PPP-oriented Internet connections would be affected since the scenario you describe is possible regardless of network connection type, PPP or other.

If FF has the smarts to know when it is being asked to fetch something on the Internet - which I think we can all agree without chasing a wild goose about "smarts" as it doesn't take much - it should also probably be able to detect whether it has a suitable connection to the Internet (by virtue of its configuration) - but wait, in the connection settings there is only info about proxies - not whether there is dialup, dsl, or fiber types.

FF doesn't need any "smarts" to know when it's being asked to fetch remote files. The HTML file will tell it what files to fetch and from where. As for the connection settings, Opera has the same kinds of settings as Firefox. On Windows, IE uses an external control panel that other apps use as well (like Safari on Windows, for example). Your implication here is FF is "missing" something. My point is the browser should not and does not care about the actual kind of underlying network connection. Why would it care?

Apparently, assumptions were offloaded to NM under its latest (at the time) configuration capabilities (which unfortunately did not cover dialup - possibly dsl modems as well).

I don't think an assumption was made. I think a question was asked (is there an active network connection?) and the underlying system (Network Manager, in this case) responded "No". If I unplug my network cable, I get the same behavior as you.

Suffice it to say - software today is very complex when system interfaces are given to have attributes which are still under development, and one should not expect software to be correct in all cases.

I wholeheartedly agree. I think in some cases, software today is overly complex and I'm not sure when this increase in complexity started taking place.

Peace...

[lotuseclat79]

Hi tomdkat,

Apparently, when a user dictates to Work Offline (using NM), it does the following:
Effectively, if you are using network manager properly and are online, starting
firefox and choosing 'work offline' will still land you online and loading the
pages over the network, even though you actively tried to tell firefox not to
do this.

Quite the opposite of the behavior I experienced.

Since the FF developers accepted it as a bug, and did not punt the issue to the OS, it remains a FF bug which is yet to be fixed.

-- Tom

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by lotuseclat79

Apparently, when a user dictates to Work Offline (using NM), it does the following:
Effectively, if you are using network manager properly and are online, starting
firefox and choosing 'work offline' will still land you online and loading the
pages over the network, even though you actively tried to tell firefox not to
do this.

Really? That's interesting since that's precisely the behavior I'm not seeing. I'm still using Network Manager 0.6.6 since I use a wired Ethernet connection to my router to access the Internet and thus am not affected by the Network Manager 0.6.6 issue.

Here is what I did:

1. Started Firefox 3 like I normally do
2. Viewed your post above
3. Switched to "work offline" manually using the option in the "File" menu
4. Clicked "Reply" to reply to the thread
5. Could not reply since I was in offline mode

Attached are screenshots of the results of the above steps.

Now, the actual bug I believe you're talking about is when you start Firefox with the Profile Manager, such that it asks you which profile to load, and you choose a profile with "work offline" selected. When Firefox starts like this, it effectively ignores that option to start in offline mode and starts in normal, online mode. That behavior most certainly IS a bug since the user's request to start the selected profile in offline mode was ignored. That, however, is a completely different issue than what we're describing AND has NOTHING to do with Network Manager. In fact, that should actually be a separate bug report but it got added in the comments of the FF bug report on this issue.

Peace...

[lotuseclat79]

Originally Posted by tomdkat

Really? That's interesting since that's precisely the behavior I'm not seeing. I'm still using Network Manager 0.6.6 since I use a wired Ethernet connection to my router to access the Internet and thus am not affected by the Network Manager 0.6.6 issue.

Here is what I did:

1. Started Firefox 3 like I normally do
2. Viewed your post above
3. Switched to "work offline" manually using the option in the "File" menu
4. Clicked "Reply" to reply to the thread
5. Could not reply since I was in offline mode

Attached are screenshots of the results of the above steps.

Now, the actual bug I believe you're talking about is when you start Firefox with the Profile Manager, such that it asks you which profile to load, and you choose a profile with "work offline" selected. When Firefox starts like this, it effectively ignores that option to start in offline mode and starts in normal, online mode. That behavior most certainly IS a bug since the user's request to start the selected profile in offline mode was ignored. That, however, is a completely different issue than what we're describing AND has NOTHING to do with Network Manager. In fact, that should actually be a separate bug report but it got added in the comments of the FF bug report on this issue.

Peace...

Hi tomdkat,

I picked up the data for my previous post by looking at the latest comments in the bug report.

-- Tom

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by lotuseclat79

Hi tomdkat,

I picked up the data for my previous post by looking at the latest comments in the bug report.

-- Tom

Yep, I know and that's why I mentioned the profile manager in my response to you above. I saw the same comment as you, comment #96:

Someone marked my other bug, 441491
(https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=441491) as a duplicate of this
bug, and now that they're filed together it needs to be included in this
discussion.

When using the profile manager, you can pick 'Work offline' or leave it
unchecked, which is a user input decision. Despite that choice firefox will
still consult network manager and change your decision even if you didn't want
it to.

Effectively, if you are using network manager properly and are online, starting
firefox and choosing 'work offline' will still land you online and loading the
pages over the network, even though you actively tried to tell firefox not to
do this.

When choosing "work offline" in the profile manager window that appears (if FF is configured to start with the profile manager), the behavior described above is correct. I've confirmed it personally AND with my Ethernet wired network connection (I'm NOT using PPP). I do agree this is a browser bug because FF is ignoring the "work offline" profile manager choice. This was most likely an oversight and something that definitely should be fixed. If you use their last paragraph as the sole description of the behavior, the described behavior is inaccurate. I believe the person who posted that comment in the bug report was describing Firefox's behavior when using the profile manager to choose which profile to use and which mode to start in.

Peace...