User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9pre) Gecko/2008050404 Minefield/3.0pre Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9pre) Gecko/2008050404 Minefield/3.0pre Goto about:blank, click the favicon. You get the new security box saying: "This web site does not support identity information. Your connection to this web site is not encrypted." Clicking "More Information" gives you a sparse page info window with a blank web site field. This doesn't need to be here and looks a bit odd. I don't see any reason we can't just disable page info and the identity pane for about:blank. This misstatement also happens with other local files (ex chrome://global/skin/global.css) but dealing with that to look not out of place may be more complicated. Just getting rid of this when you're at "nowhere" seems to makes sense. Reproducible: Always

Disabling it is one approach, though one of the important differences between the padlock and the identity button is that the identity button is always available, where the padlock was only available on SSL. Another approach is just to have different text for about: and chrome: urls. "This is a Firefox system page" or something equally unambiguous. I don't think this will make Firefox 3, but it is a good idea for .next.

Yes, I was thinking that too, but then it gets progressively more involved. You'd need new messages for file:// and resource:// and all other non HTTP(S) schemes as well. Doable, but not for FF3 as you noted, so I didn't bother to suggest it. about:blank is probably the top non-web page users will end up at, and it's the only one that simply disabling it makes any sense. While technically about:blank is a page, it's not really something a user would consider, as there is nothing in the address bar. If it's eventually decided that it won't be disabled in this instance, then just rename this report to something like "make identity/favicon button tell users when they're at a local file or system page" and just file it away as an enhancement for future. ;)

Expanding scope slightly to cover all about: URIs. None need this button as-is.

Simplest would be to just hidden the favicon-less padlock for about: pages.

(In reply to comment #4) > Simplest would be to just hidden the favicon-less padlock for about: pages. Would look strange since every page has a padlock, and it would change for about: pages? And I think it would be even simpler to keep the padlock, but make nothing happen when it's clicked.

Simple version: ALL PADLOCK ICONS MUST DIE! Padlock icons to way too many people imply safety. They really just were used to indicate a stable encryption link. You can be fully encrypted to either your bank, or criminals pretending to be your bank who wish to steal all your money. Not sure why padlocks were brought up again here, though. It was decided quite a while ago to phase them out. I think the only one eventually being allowed to stay is in the popup pane when clicking the identity button for an encrypted page.

Bah, disregard my previous comment. I thought we were talking about the favicons. Mixed those up with padlocks.

Disregarded. ;) This bug is about the identity button, e.g. the favicon + mozilla.org blue box for this page. If the favicon removal from the location bar lands, the word "favicon" in the title will be obsolete and the title will just need changing.

Forward duping to bug 590206 where they're handling this problem.