I've seen reports here and on MozillaZine.org that the Address Book is launching without loading any of the data in the user's .mab file. I have also been seeing this behavior. I may be able to shed some light on this. It looks as though the Personal Address Book .mab data is not being reloaded under some conditions.
Versions: unsure when this began, is present in the 1.0.0 RC1 build from 2002-04-16 (winNT4 sea installer version). Pre-conditions: Open Addres Book application with default address .mab data (Personal Address Book) loaded. Close sidebar pane, including Address Books selector pane. Close Address Book window (leave Mozilla browser or mailnews running) Re-open Address Book application. Result: (100% reproducable) No address book .mab data is loaded. Address list and address detail panes are empty. Calling functions (via buttons or menus) for New Card, New List or Properties produces no result. Impact: If user is unaware that there is a sidebar that can be opened to allow Address Books to be selected and loaded, it will appear as if the data is missing and the application is unresponsive. These comments have been appended to Bug 136296. --rt
