Per bug 8511, single signon is unusable if you have a password set due to 'Empty dialog screen when dialog occurs on netlib thread'. That bug is marked M9 due to Necko landing. Would it be possible to disable single signon for M8? Single signon *is* usable if you choose a blank password, but we can not assume that people will do this. An option would be to automatically choose a blank password for the user. What do you think, Steve? The less work, the better, I would say.

As I've already indicated in bug report 8511, this problem goes deeper than single signon. Same problem occurs when user visits a site that requires authentication. All this was working in M7 but somebody changed something since then (probably in the treading model) that has broken many dialogs that were occuring successfully. All this is supposed to be fixed with the necko landing. So perhaps an M8 release without necko would be a mistake because it will be inferior to what was released in M7. But if we are commited to releasing M8 without necko, I could always force the password to always be blank and by this hackery (and loss of functionality) avoid the single-signon problem. But how are we addressing the site-authentication problem?

A workaround for people who already have a password set is to go to Wallet Contents to unlock the database (as per your comments in bug 9041). I will think about the site-authentication problem, but I can't imagine a workaround. Fortunately, we can do something about single-signon.

It turns out that the site-authentication problem is not as serious as the single-signon problem because in the former case you can dismiss the errant dialog box (by clicking on the X in the corner) whereas in the latter case you cannot. So I have a fix that will allow the errant single-signon dialog box to be dismissed in the same manner. Will check that fix in as soon as I get approval (the tree is currently closed).

Fixed checked in. Now the only problem is that the dialog box is blank but that is the topic of bug 8511. So this bug can now be marked as "resolved fixed"

Steve, I hate to say it but your fix does not work on the Mac. There is no X that shows up, thus there is no way to dismiss the window as there is on windows. In other words, I am seeing what pinkerton saw. The Mac does not have the problem with authenticated sites such as http://www.w3.org/P3P/Group/Syntax/Drafts/WD-P3P-19980814/syntax.html which is probably why this issue did not come up before. In addition, the initial dialogues that come up the first time you run single-signon (enable, save this site?, and password) do not dismiss at all on Linux. So it is messed up even more than Mac, which works until the second time you go to a site. Because of this, I must re-open the bug and suggest disabling single-signon for M8. Enforcing a blank password would rectify the Mac problem but not the Unix problem, which I will file a separate bug for, though I am sure it is a dup of one of the other dialogue bugs probably.

For what it's worth, the Linux problem at initial discovery seems to be specific to the bugzilla site. However, Linux experiences the same problems as Mac in that the dialogues can not be dismissed during signon recall (even though there is an X there, it is unresponsive).

OK, I give up!!!! I have a hack that will turn off single signon's prefilling if the database of saved logins has not already been unlocked. So if you have previously unlocked the database (by doing edit/wallet/wallet-contents for example), the single-signon prefill will work fine. Otherwise no prefill will occur. In any event, no dialog will appear and hence this problem will be avoided. Once necko lands the dialogs should display properly. So my hack is ifdefed to trigger only if there is no necko. Will check this in and close out this report once I get the approval.

Approval received. Fix is now checked in.

Okay, I will not be able to verify this on Mac/Linux until tonight's builds come out.

this is looking good on linux, behavior is correct. Single Signon only kicks in if you have already unlocked database. This can be done by changing password, submitting a form, or doing a safeform fill. Unfortunately, threre is a problem opening Wallet Contents due to (I assume) the same blank password dialogue problem. Will check mac when builds available

marking this bug verified