Nelson B Bolyard wrote re hexadecimal error codes in Firefox/PSM:
Can MoFo or MoCo PLEASE contribute some man-hours to fixing this?
This requires no crypto expertise. It's a trivial GUI issue.
NSS supplies all the error strings. There's no excuse left for FF
displaying error codes in unsigned hex or decimal (signed or unsigned).
Bug 107491 is 7+ years old. Every time a FF user gets one of those
hex error codes, they either throw up their hands, or they ask in some
Mozilla newsgroup what it means. I don't know why the PSM team has
regarded this bug as unimportant for 7 years. Perhaps it is because
they don't answer those questions. Something needs to be done.
In terms of getting funding for this, I'd need (from you, Kai, or
someone else) some reasonably good estimates on the time required to
address the overall problem, together with the sort of person we'd need
to contract with (e.g., level of experience needed). I'm also confused
by the dependencies that bug 107491 has; is there a significant amount
of other work required to get the bug fixed once and for all?
Also, we're trying to identify some potential projects now for students
who want to get involved in Mozilla development, and I'm thinking that
this might make a good student project. From glancing at some of the
comments on bug 107491, I suspect it's less trivial than it appears in
terms of the UI and error message wording issues. (I mean, if it were
*just* an issue of printing NSS-supplied error strings instead of error
codes, I presume it would be done by now.) But given that there's no
need to muck about with NSS proper the effort required seems consistent
with what a student could take on. I'll pass this on to Dave Humphrey of
Seneca and ask him to add this to the candidate student project list
he's creating.
Frank
--
Frank Hecker
hec...@mozillafoundation.org
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