There have been at least 50 bug reports in Bugzilla about a gray bar appearing below the status bar due to broken extensions. (I counted INVA bugs where http://kb.mozillazine.org/Gray_bar_below_status_bar was mentioned, bug 314768 and its dups, and bug 308742 and its dups). The gray bar is an unnecessary persistent annoyance. It should be replaced by a clear error message (in a dialog) or quiet failure (just show a message in the JavaScript Console). The message should state which overlay is broken/missing and which extension is responsible.

This patch disables printing out the error message for non-well-formed overlays. The "xul-overlay-parsererror" notification can be used by some future extension manager change to disable the corresponding extension.

Comment on attachment 220937 [details] [diff] [review] Don't output error message for overlays that don't parse properly Please make OnDocumentParserError return the reporterror bool rather than an nsresult. And send a notification to the js-console as well. with that, r=sicking

Comment on attachment 220993 [details] [diff] [review] Address comments sr=jst

So shouldn't we report the error to the console even if OnDocumentParserError() returns true?

(In reply to comment #5) > So shouldn't we report the error to the console even if OnDocumentParserError() > returns true? > We could do that yes. That would cause all XUL parse errors, overlay or otherwise to be reported.

That's what we should do, imo, unless there's a really good reason not to.

Comment on attachment 220993 [details] [diff] [review] Address comments Requesting approval‑branch‑1.8.1. This comes up often in the support forums and the problem occurs more often with major releases (with new versions of extensions coming out).

Comment on attachment 220993 [details] [diff] [review] Address comments This can't land on the branch as-is because it changes nsIXULDocument.

Wait. Doesn't this double-report the well-formedness errors, since nsExpatDriver reports errors itself too?

Filed bug 342063 on the double-reporting issue.

*** Bug 318588 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

bz: This is a screenshot of the error console on 1.8 branch, with two error messages. As I understand this bug from comment 0, you want me to prevent the second error message from appearing. That's what my patch does. Did I misinterpret this bug? Do I need to change the code on 1.8 branch somewhere else?

ignore comment 13, I meant to attach to bug 342063 (sorry!)

*** Bug 356792 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 356841 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 357508 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 362691 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Rather than fix individual bugs like bug 364460, we would rather take a patch for this bug on the 1.8 branch. Neil: Could you look into updating the patch for the 1.8 branch?

Are you planning and is it possible to add an error dialog to inform the average user that one of his extensions is not working properly?

Possible, yes. The question is better suited for a newsgroup or a separate bug.