[Bug 367531]

[Adam Dane]

(In reply to Gervase Markham [:gerv] from comment #54)
> If I switch Firefox to offline mode in current nightly and type in
> "http://localhost/", it tells me Firefox is offline and can't browse the
> web. Surely I should expect it to work?

The localhost name is just a name.  It follows the normal process to
resolve to an address.  So it only works if localhost is in the DNS
cache (ie, you recently connected to it while online), because name
resolution of non-cached names doesn't occur in offline mode.

The patch itself only enables connection to loopback interfaces.  It
doesn't modify the DNS resolver to try to resolve unknown names in
offline mode.

The browser doesn't have any say over the resolution process once it
asks for a record.  That is, we can't restrict a lookup to only the
hosts file (where localhost and other locally defined names are
configured).  An attempted lookup that doesn't resolve in the hosts file
would try to hit the network.

If that's deemed acceptable, then a subsequent patch could simply filter
resolution requests in offline mode.  That is, only pass them on if they
are loopback.  But it would mean that we would cause network traffic in
"offline" mode.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/367531

Title:
  firefox should be smarter about offline access

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