711515 - Opening links from external apps doesn't work if session restore is active

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect, P1)

Description

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

If Fennec isn't running and I click on a link from (for example) Twitter, Fennec starts up to about:home, and never loads the URL. If, however, it's already running, the link opens in a new tab as expected.

Comment 1

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

This works for me. The about:home screen does appear, but then we load the external page.

bug 711184 should fix the flash of about:home

Can you check this with a new nightly?

Comment 2

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

Yeah, seems like this works now. Weird.

Comment 3

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

OK, it seems as though this doesn't work if Fennec is killed by Android (I guess the session is being restored), but it *does* work if you explicitly quit Fennec from the menu.

Comment 4

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Phil and I have been experiencing this as well, and it's pretty annoying.

Comment 7

[David Burns :automatedtester]

This is an FYI

I can't open any links from twitter app. First time opens about:home the next time says the URL is invalid. I detailed it in bug 712001. Not sure if it is related to OOM.

Comment 8

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

David, I have the same problem and see the same failure. I can verify that the workaround from comment 3 (explicitly quit Fennec) works. Beside the non-loading I also see a lot of flickering across the whole screen.

Comment 9

[Philipp von Weitershausen [:philikon]]

(In reply to Margaret Leibovic [:margaret] from comment #4)
> Phil and I have been experiencing this as well, and it's pretty annoying.

Indeed. And I hate to pile on this with a "me too", but given that this bug is two weeks old now and hasn't seen any progress, let me say this: It is actually the biggest offender among the several bugs that don't make me want to use Fennec Nightlies. Largely because of it I have now started using the built-in browser or older versions of Fennec for some things, just because Fennec doesn't do the *one* thing it's supposed to do: browse.

Comment 10

[Naoki Hirata :nhirata (please use needinfo instead of cc)]

(In reply to David Burns :automatedtester from comment #7)
> This is an FYI
> 
> I can't open any links from twitter app. First time opens about:home the
> next time says the URL is invalid. I detailed it in bug 712001. Not sure if
> it is related to OOM.

I believe that bug 712761 is more closely related to what you are experiencing.  The command line that I am running to open a link is similar to what other apps are using to open fennec.

Comment 11

[Tim Abraldes [:TimAbraldes] [:tabraldes]]

I'm seeing this issue as well:
  1) Open Fennec (doesn't matter if I navigate anywhere)
  2) Switch to another app and try to launch a link
  3) Fennec will flicker and resize a bunch, then will show whatever page was up at the beginning of step 2

If I close Fennec (using the "Quit" menu item) between steps 1 and 2 then the link launches just fine

Comment 12

[Pedro Alves]

In addition to the previous, sometimes I also get a 'url is invalid' and nothing gets loaded

Comment 13

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

Comment 11 and comment 12 are exactly bug bug 712761

Comment 14

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Those are not only comment 11 and comment 12, but even the initial comment. Sadly this bug hasn't been picked up and work happens on another one. So lets get it duped to bug 712761.

Comment 15

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

Working under the assumption that this is happening because of a conflict with session restore.

Comment 16

[Randell Jesup [:jesup] (needinfo me)]

I've been seeing this for weeks as well, this makes fennec native basically useless.  Droid Charge (i510.06)  (now running Android 2.3.6)

Fails with nightly and aurora.  I hadn't realized the Quit workaround worked well, this has basically driven away from using fennec on a daily basis as I had been.  I was working around by touching the URL bar, making an innocuous change and loading.

Comment 18

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

Attachment: patch

This patch steals some code from XUL Fennec:
* Add more code to browser.js to handle opening an external URL _and_ handling session restore.
  * We open the external URL and then do the restore
  * The external URL should be active and in front, not the restored tabs
* SessionStore.js needs to respect the aBringToFront param

I tested this on my nexus one. After loading a few tabs and then waiting so the session is saved, I killed Fennec. I then used twitter to open an external URL into Fennec. The URL was opened and made active, while the old tabs were created as phantom tabs.

Comment 20

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/acd18cd340b0

Comment 21

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/acd18cd340b0

Comment 22

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

Comment on attachment 585565 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

[Approval Request Comment]
Needed for proper application behavior. Baked on m-c for several days.

Comment 23

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

Comment on attachment 585565 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

[Triage Comment]
Mobile only - approved for Aurora.

Comment 24

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-aurora/rev/d4551d31292d

Comment 25

[Catalin Suciu [:csuciu]]

Verified fixed on Nightly 12.0a1 (2012-01-18) and on Aurora 11.0a2.
Device: Samsung Galaxy S2 (Android 2.3.4)