399631 - Enhancement request: Imbed all dialog boxes inside the web page

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 123913

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement)

Description

[Steve Zobell]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7

Firefox should have a user setting to force all dialog boxes to be imbedded inside the web page they come from, instead of the current popup type dialogs.

The mechanism for displaying imbedded dialogs is already implemented as CSS/DIV based popup windows, as in this example:
http://theopensourcery.com/jspopwin1.htm
This dialog can be moved and dismissed, and is imbedded in, and limited to the tab, and deleted when the tab is deleted.

I recommend this approach be used for several types of dialog boxes, including:
Alert boxes,
Dialog boxes,
Password boxes,
Boxes that ask what to do with a file,
Boxes that ask where to save a file.

This approach eliminates the need to automatically switch to the tab that is issuing the dialog, which is a necessity for pupup dialogs (since the user may not know which tab issued the dialog) but annoying to the user. Another annoying feature of dialogs is that they shut down all use of the browser until the user deals with the dialog. This is bad since the user may want to copy some text from another tab to fill in something, like the name to save a file to. The user may also prefer to work in another tab and deal with the dialog later. This also can be an exploit to shut down firefox, since a page can issue dialogs as fast as the user dismisses them, and then the user cannot delete the tab or even properly shut down the browser. I recommend that imbedded dialogs should not prevent the user from closing the tab (including any dialogs in the tab) or accessing other tabs. Also, you don't get to see those dialogs that are triggered when you leave a page (sorry, there is no "screen" for your important message!).

The imbedded dialog can look the same as the pop-up version, with a dismiss button in the corner and the ability to grab them and move them around (but only within the page the come from).

I would also eventually like to have this imbedding capability applied to all popup windows, thus preventing pages from ever opening new windows. Closing a tab would then get rid of all the popups from the page. An imbedded popup could have a button next to the dismiss button (like the full screen button) that pops it out as a new window if the user wants. But applying this concept to all popups has many additional complexities, such as the problem of implementing the firefox controls and toolbars inside the imbedded popups.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
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