1029786 - tab-modal auth prompts need to self-dismiss when another handles the authentication

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: General, defect)

Description

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

To correctly implement tab-modal auth prompts, we need to allow having concurrent prompts in multiple tabs (bug 1029779). This introduces a new problem, though. If multiple tabs are requesting authentication for the same realm, the user should only need to respond to 1 of them. The user should not need to click "ok" in each existing prompt (or reload the tab, which would also work).

So, we need to have a way for prompts to observe successful authentications happening in other tabs, and if a prompt is no longer needed it should self-dismiss.

E.G.:

1) In separate tabs, load https://intranet.mozilla.org/Kittens and
   https://intranet.mozilla.org/Puppies
2) Each tab should be displaying an HTTP auth prompt
3) Provide credentials in either tab
4) Both prompts should go away and load the authenticated pages

Note that if the user cancels the prompt, I think other prompts should remain. Similarly, if the user provides incorrect credentials, prompts in other tabs should remain. The latter is kind of an interesting case, because we don't know success/fail until new HTTP request succeeds. (And I suppose it's possible to have a single-use password.) It might be simple and acceptable to have all prompts attempt to use the provided credentials -- if the creds are bad, the prompts will simply be shown again. This is basically what happens today when you try to authenticate with a bad login.