User page tabs with no sidebar have a JS error in the developer console

[trichoplax]

Describe the bug
Those tabs on the user profile page that do not include the right hand side bar show the following JavaScript error message in the browser developer console:

Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: prefs.global is undefined

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Go to your own user profile page (click on your avatar at the top right of any page).
2. Click on any tab that does not have a sidebar on the right hand side.
3. See error message in the developer console.

Expected behavior
The behaviour to a user appears to be working, but presumably is not applying the user's preferences as they cannot be accessed. It is expected that the user's preferences would be applied to all tabs.

[Oaphi]

Looks like we have an incompatible older setting saved in local storage - I haven't been able to reproduce in any way after clearing it while trying to determine the root cause

[trichoplax]

Not sure if this was an incompatible setting. I generally try to remember to check the steps to reproduce in private browsing to narrow down such causes. I can't say for certain that I did in this case - maybe I should start mentioning that explicitly.

Whatever the reason, I no longer see this error in any user page tab. The only way I can see a similar error in the console is to visit a user page when not signed in, which is clearly not the method used when this was raised.

The new error message is:

Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: can't access property "keyboard_tools", n.global is undefined

This appears on any user page tab when not signed in. It does not seem to appear on other pages.

Hopefully the only thing this breaks is what would not be available without signing in anyway, so fixing it would just be to provide technical correctness and avoid cluttering the console.

Do you think this is sufficiently related to leave this issue open? If not, I can close this one and raise a new low priority one.

[trichoplax]

I haven't been able to reproduce in any way after clearing it while trying to determine the root cause

If you were able to reproduce it in the past, it may be that the code has changed since - a few tabs had their side panel removed at some point so the code has definitely been touched. If you were able to reproduce it recently before clearing, does that mean we need to introduce something for backwards compatibility?

[Oaphi]

If you were able to reproduce it recently before clearing, does that mean we need to introduce something for backwards compatibility?

Yeah, we should probably just fix up the _getPreference and preference pair of methods that's causing the error - even if it's not reproducible, it looks like we are not defensive enough in them. I'll see to it shortly