Closed Bug 48845 Opened 24 years ago Closed 23 years ago

Conn: [RFE] Offline browsing engine

Categories

(Core :: Networking: Cache, enhancement, P3)

enhancement

Tracking

()

RESOLVED FIXED
Future

People

(Reporter: miesgram, Assigned: gordon)

References

Details

(Keywords: relnote)

Attachments

(2 files)

You should integrate a real offline browsing engine into the new Mozilla 5.0 if you want to kick big billys IE5.5 ou of business. That's one thing I know many people miss in Netscape Communicator.
What kind off offline browsing engine do you imagine? If it is a kinf of thing like bug 18213 proposes, I suggest marking this a dupe of it. (adapting summary to match request. NEW FEATURE isn't really intuitive :)
Summary: NEW FEATURE → [RFE] Offline browsing engine
imho, offline browsing is kinad useless, and the report is not very informative. Probably dupe of 18213
Severity: major → enhancement
This isn't the same as 18213. bug 18213, basically says, "if you're already browsing offline, when you click on a link that you don't have cached, popup a dialog and do stuff". This bug, I believe is more of a, I want the ability to browse through my cache as seemlessly as browsing the internet. Example: If I have most of www.mozilla.org in my cache - and I'm offline - when I type in www.mozilla.org it should pull from my cache, and I should be able to click on links and read info that is in my cache without having to wade through the cache files. A front end for displaying the cache, and allowing access to it - Like History - but offline. the last time I used the history menu, it was because I was on my laptop in the airport, and I couldn't view any of the pages in my history - despite the fact they lived in my cache. I had to open up my cache folders and manually view every page, hoping I would find the right one. (often viewing fat.db to try to expediate the process).
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Resolving as dup per Asa. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 18213 ***
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 24 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
I think Joseph Elwell is the first one who really understands me. It is like he has said and that's why I think you should think about it again.
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
OK, reopening.
Status: VERIFIED → REOPENED
Resolution: DUPLICATE → ---
reassign. addign helpwanted and targeting to Future.
Assignee: asa → ben
Status: REOPENED → NEW
Component: Browser-General → XP Apps: GUI Features
QA Contact: doronr → sairuh
Target Milestone: --- → Future
why is this in xpapps GUI? --> networking : cache
Assignee: ben → neeti
Component: XP Apps: GUI Features → Networking: Cache
QA Contact: sairuh → tever
*** Bug 52935 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This seems to be a dup of bug 11632: [RFE] Save Page With Images, Stylesheets, Objects, Applets" See comment from Sean Richardson there, where the comparision with how IE handles the matter is sketched. In the 6 other duplicates there IE is also often compared to.
I would like a simple way to convert an absolute URL to a relative URL while browsing documents. It would be useful specially when browsing a set of documents saved in the same directory on my disk. I was thinking of a kind of contextual menu to do the change. Enhanced options would include "convert double-click URL to standard URL" or so
Cache bugs to Gordon
Assignee: neeti → gordon
Try the following with 0.9.1: 1. Go to http://www.mozilla.org/ 2. Follow the 'At a Glance' link 3. Go to http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ 4. Click on 'View Bugs Already Reported Today' and wait for the page to appear 5. Close all Mozilla windows 6. Disconnect from the Internet if possible 7. Restart Mozilla 8. Go into offline mode Here comes the good bit... 9. Type http://www.mozilla.org/ into the location bar and hit Enter 10. Be amazed as the page appears! 11. Click on 'At a Glance' 12. Be similarly amazed as the page appears! 13. Open the History tab in My Sidebar, expand Today > bugzilla.mozilla.org and open 'mozilla.org Bugzilla -- the Mozilla bug database' 14. If the novelty still hasn't worn off, be amazed again! 15. Follow the 'View Bugs Already Reported Today' link 16. Be amazed that even a cached CGI page appears! 17. Take an aspirin and lie down for a while to recover from all that amazement It seems that this bug has been at least partially fixed, probably by a new cache checkin. I haven't tested this extensively, but it seems to work for most pages.
Can we mark this bug fixed? The "engine" seems to work. Though there may still be bugs preventing full use of this feature, we could handle those in separate reports.
*** Bug 87719 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Reporter: Do you consider this fixed?
Yes. It is fixed.
In that case I'll mark it FIXED. In the next few days, I'll create a list of problems with the offline browsing engine in its current state and post it here. Then the problems can be filed as new bugs and a metabug created to track them.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 24 years ago23 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Alex: sounds great!
Keywords: relnote
Summary: [RFE] Offline browsing engine → Conn: [RFE] Offline browsing engine
I'm still in the process of compiling a list of problems with the current implementation. I'm also examining IE's behaviour for comparison (its offline browsing is very impressive). I hope to complete all this by about Thursday. I came across bug 88575 which suggests that offline browsing may only work from the disk cache, not the memory cache. Which is a bit of a shame. BTW - what does "Conn:" in the summary mean?
Look at this URL http://www.saslib.ru/ref/ekon/arc6/VDV-0322.txt I browse it and leave browser for an hour. Then I came back and press ALT+S It starts do downloads!!!! (but I see this file on screen and even can't save it!) I press "Offline" and got: Error: "There was an error reading from source location" // Even if there expiration header is set - I really want it to be in cache at leas as long as it is on my screen :)
OK, here's a list of problems I have found with the offline browsing engine. Bear in mind that I haven't done much extensive testing. All these tests were conducted using Mozilla 0.9.2 on Windows 98SE. The version of IE used in the comparative tests was 5.00.2614.3500 (also Windows 98SE). 1. Redirects don't seem to work Go to http://uk.yahoo.com/ and click on "Sport". Note that the link points to http://uk.yahoo.com/r/ei, but you are redirected to http://uk.dir.yahoo.com/Recreation/Sport/. If you go offline and go back to Yahoo!, clicking on the link doesn't work. This works fine in IE. 2. Google space strangeness I decided to see how the offline browsing engine handles pages accessed through forms. I went to http://www.google.co.uk/ (I didn't use Yahoo! because its search form seems to use redirects) and searched for "noodles". I let the results page load and went back to Google UK's home page. This time I searched for "soy sauce". After the results page loaded I went back to Google UK and changed to offline mode. I repeated the search for "noodles" and the results page appeared fine. I then tried to search for "soy sauce" but this didn't work. I went back online, tried searching for "chopstick suppliers", went offline and tried to repeat this search. Again, it didn't work. I guess it must be something to do with the spaces. This will probably require further investigation with different sites. IE seems to handled cached Google searches with spaces fine. 3. Offline browsing does not work with memory cache I was compelled to try this after seeing bug 88575. Go to Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Cache. Clear your disk cache and set its size to 0. Go to http://www.mozilla.org/. Go somewhere else and then go offline. Type in http://www.mozilla.org/ into the location bar and hit Enter (or press Go). Nothing happens. Which leads me onto the final problem... 4. No indication that a page isn't available offline. If you try and access a non-cached page, nothing happens. This occurs whether an address is typed into the location bar or a link is followed. IE displays a dialogue (I'll attach a screenshot). Another thing IE does is use an alternative cursor when you hover above a link to a non-cached resource. Rather than the usual hand, you get a hand and circle with line through it (screenshot coming). This is a very nice touch. They're all the problems I found. Like I said, there was no extensive testing done, so if anyone else has noticed any problems, post them here. Here's the good news. These are things that I tested and expected not to work but did: 1. Saving pages when in offline mode Incidentally, I tried going to the page that malvin@cad.ntu-kpi.kiev.ua said he couldn't save. I didn't wait an hour (I'm a busy man!), but after going offline the page seemed to save fine. If it's set to expire, it must be set by the server because it's a text file and they can't be set to expire with meta tags in the same way HTML files can. 2. Viewing source of cached pages Works fine. 3. Files accessed with helper applications can be browsed when offline. Go to http://www.damowmow.com/. Go to the Pictures section and click the video link (second one down). Choose to open it with the default application as set by the system (Windows Media Player in my case). The file will download (it's 1.6MB) and open in the media player. Watch it, it's funny. Go offline and repeat the exercise. The video will load as if you were online (but with no waiting while it downloads). 4. Still retrieves files if set to compare cached copies with network copies every time Go to Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Cache and choose "Every time I view the page". Go to some pages and go offline. Try going to the pages again. Everythimg works. One thing I didn't check is if Mozilla will still access files from the cache that are past their expiry dates. Bugs need to be filed on the four problems identified (though number 2 needs more investigation first). Am I correct in believing that all these bugs should be filed with Product: "Browser" and Component: "Networking: Cache"? Number 4 is really a UI issue, but I imagine it would involve some cache code as the cursor change would require identifying if a resource is cached on mouseover rather than when trying to access the page. Questons? Comments? Other problems?
Attached image IE - Oh no you don't! (deleted) —
thouse links, which are in cache. So you need not move mouse to see this (but pointer with 0 also good idea) my url: HTTP/1.0 200 OK Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 22:26:57 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.19 (Unix) PHP/4.0.2 rus/PL30.4 Last-Modified: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 06:13:27 GMT ETag: "23826-3216d-3ad54787-koi8-r" Content-Length: 205165 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=koi8-r Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:01 GMT X-Cache: HIT from www-cache.citiustele.com Connection: close Note 1) Server with string "rus" in it. 2) Expires tag. It is worst (IMHO) thing they do to russian pages :( It dials with charsets (koi8-r || windows-1251 - both for Russian, but koi8-r - for unix and wind* - for MS win, also it's own for MAC). It looks at your "Agent" and gives you page translated to codepage acording to your OS. And it sets "Expire" so WWW-Proxy will not cache it, so IE will not get koi8 page from squid. :( They call this - easy solution. More than 50% of Russian and Ukrainian servers uses this technology :(((( But what we have - IE - works OK (it just ignores Expire) - so they say It's error of NN/M You can't View_Source/Print/Back/Edit page/Save page without reloading page. For Mozilla it's better - after an hour it ask you to reload page, but just after loading - all ok (in Netscape4 - no). I do not know - could I ask for this Hack - to track for "Server: .* rus/.*" and specially for it ignore Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:01 GMT (if Expires is less then current time). For me - It is error. But in standart - you must through this page out befor you show it ;)
Status: RESOLVED → REOPENED
Resolution: FIXED → ---
Instead of reopening bugs, could you please file new bugs?! reincarnating bugs is a good way to guarantee bugs that end up as zombies, forever unable to reach a satisfactory resolution.
Sorry about the delay. I'm marking this bug RESOLVED FIXED again. malvin@cad.ntu-kpi.kiev.ua please file your problem as a new bug. I've been experimenting with the problem where Google search results are not cached if there's a space in the search query. I tried to reproduce this at some other major search sites (AltaVista, Lycos etc.) but ran into problems caused by the fact that the offline browsing engine can't handle redirects (I think). I tried reproducing the problem at Teoma (a new search engine located at http://www.teoma.com/ - try it, it's good!). I searched for "noodles" and "chopstick suppliers" then went offline and repeated the searches. They both worked leading me to believe it's probably a Google-specific problem. I discovered the existence of bug 61689, a metabug for offline-specific bugs. I'm guessing that all the new offline browsing engine bugs can be marked dependent on that, rather than filing a new tracking bug. To review: 1. Redirects don't seem to work This needs to be filed as a new bug and marked as blocking bug 61689. I think this needs to be filed in Browser/Networking: Cache. Can someone confirm this? 2. Google space strangeness This appears to only affect Google and can be left alone for now. 3. Offline browsing does not work with memory cache Bug 88575 can be expanded to include this problem (at the moment it just deals with using back and forward buttons). The part of the bug dealing with the fact that there is no notification that a resource is not available offline can be moved to bug 45421 (see below). 4. No indication that a page isn't available offline. This was actually filed over a year ago as bug 45421. MPT has suggested that an error page (not a dialogue) appears in cases like this and I agree (see also bug 28586). No mention has been made of changing the cursor when hovering above a link to a resource that is unavailable offline. Therefore, my plans are: * File a new bug about problem 1. * Resummarise bug 88575 (for problem 3). * Bring up the cursor-change issue for in bug 45421 (for problem 4). * Mark the problem 1 bug and bug 88575 as blocking bug 61689 (and bug 61689 as depending on them). Does this all sound reasonable to everyone? If you've got anything else to add, please do so now.
Blocks: 61689
Status: REOPENED → RESOLVED
Closed: 23 years ago23 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Can someone write release notes for this bug?
Ben, what do you want in the release notes? This is part of a request for a future enhancement...
Not a future enhancement. A currently implemented enhancement (that's why this bug is RESOLVED FIXED). It just needs a few tweaks (could someone please tell me if the action plan for getting said tweaks filed in bugs sounds reasonable?).
Yes, I meant originally it was submitted as a future enhancement request. This part of the enhancement is complete (thus the bug is closed), but there are still open bugs outstanding (tweaks) which prevent the complete manifestation of the feature from a user's perspective. re:action plan, yes, please file bugs on any aspects that you find are still lacking.
Okay, I've done as described above. The redirect problem has been filed as bug 94004.
gordon: The idea was to get a paragraph that described the general implemented and unimplemented behaviors. It seemed from the bug reports and the problems that some behaviors should be described.
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