558354 - Tab matches only lets select the leftmost tab with the URL - find a way to open others (multiple tab match for the same address)

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Address Bar, enhancement)

Description

[[:Aleksej]]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100409 Minefield/3.7a5pre


Problem: multiple tabs can have the same URL, but show different position or purpose intended by the user. Tab Matches only allows switching to one (leftmost) open tab.


The user may be reading something on one tab, and need to refer to another part of the page. Since it is more likely that the latter is performed in a new tab, that tab would be on the right. Also, there may be multiple such secondary tabs.

The current Tab Matches feature only lets you switch to the leftmost tab with the matching URL, and it doesn't even tell you that there are other tabs. You may not want to use your primary tab for that page to read another part, but still want to spare opening new secondary tabs if some are already open.


* Is just displaying the number of matching tabs nothing but confusing?

* What about displaying the number of that leftmost tab counting from the left?

* What about displaying all the tabs, showing the scroll position or a similar distinguishing property of each somehow? That would probably look like clutter, although if it is possible to implement properly, it will solve exactly the problem I describe.

Comment 1

[u279076]

This behaviour is as designed, but I agree with your suggestion to be able to switch to multiple tabs with the same URL.

Changes to this behaviour will affect https://litmus.mozilla.org/show_test.cgi?id=11619

Comment 2

[Jim Jeffery not reading bug-mail 1/2/11]

How will 'switch-to-tab' work for say some users that insist on browser abuse and have 50, 100, 150 or more open tabs - with that many I don't see how you could ever get to tab '99'.

Comment 3

[eyal gruss]

if it is assumed that the rightmost tab is the most recent, perhaps switch to tab should offer switching to the rightmost tab

Comment 4

[Jim Jeffery not reading bug-mail 1/2/11]

(In reply to comment #3)
> if it is assumed that the rightmost tab is the most recent, perhaps switch to
> tab should offer switching to the rightmost tab

That won't always work if the user has the 'open-tab-relative' enabled, the tab is not always added to the right-most side of the tab-toolbar.

Comment 5

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

Just to add to this, with App Tabs; Switch-To-Tab will always switch to the first position App Tab i.e., App Tab #1, regardless if a user has two or more duplicate app-tabs, among the same url open in normal tabs. Not sure if this is intentional or not.

Comment 7

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

There's no suggested solution and as such this is not actionable.