1146620 - Clicking Gmail desktop notification opens new window while also focusing the inbox tab

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect)

Description

[Chris Cowan]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:36.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/36.0
Build ID: 20150320202338

Steps to reproduce:

1. Use Gmail.
2. In Gmail Settings, under "Desktop Notifications", make sure "New mail notifications on" is set.
3. Receive an email, see desktop notification appear for email.
4. Click the desktop notification.


Actual results:

Gmail opens the new email in a pop-up window, but then the main Firefox window becomes focused, showing Gmail in the inbox. The pop-up window is behind the main Firefox window.


Expected results:

The Gmail pop-up window should be focused and visible after the notification is clicked on.

Comment 1

[quentin.leburel]

Same issue confirmed here.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0
Build ID: 20150513174244

Comment 2

[littlelab]

Same issue confirmed here.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0

Comment 3

[MJMultari]

Same issue confirmed here.
Windows NT 6.1 Firefox/38.0

Comment 4

[ojotim]

Same issue.

20150630154324
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.10; rv:39.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/39.0

Comment 5

[Justin [:JW_SoftvisionQA]]

Hello all,

I can not reproduce this bug on Firefox 43.0.1:

Name 	Firefox
Version 	43.0.1
Build ID 	20151216175450
Update History 	
Update Channel 	release
User Agent 	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:43.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/43.0

Or Nightly 46.0a1:

Name 	Firefox
Version 	46.0a1
Build ID 	20151222030207
Update History 	
Update Channel 	nightly
User Agent 	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:46.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/46.0

Could you all update and try to reproduce? Please let me know your findings so we can proceed with this bug.

Thank you, 

Justin

Comment 6

[Chris Cowan]

I just tested on Ubuntu 15.10 with Firefox 43 and I still have this issue.

I've seen the issue on OS X before too. I'll leave a comment here next time I try it there. Haven't had the chance to try on Windows.

Comment 7

[YF (Yang)]

I was reproduce it on Fx44b2 Win10. It is a pop-up tab instead of window.

Comment 8

[Johan C]

(In reply to Justin - QA from comment #5)
> Could you all update and try to reproduce? Please let me know your findings
> so we can proceed with this bug.
I'm able to reproduce this, with a new profile, on the latest nightly build:
  * version: 46.0a1
  * build ID: 20160113030208

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:46.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/46.0

Comment 9

[YF (Yang)]

Seek more information.

Comment 10

[Justin [:JW_SoftvisionQA]]

I realized that I have read this bug report wrong. I can reproduce this as the actual result is my outcome.

Comment 11

[Edwin Wong [:edwong]]

I can repro - it's the fact that they're opening a new URL and there's a timing issue where they may not be able to set focus on it after it's opened. I wonder if chrome has the same problem. I don't believe this is specifically a Firefox bug, but gmail may need a feature or an event so they can set focus() at the appropriate time.  Note, not a regression with respect to the Push feature in fx44

Comment 12

[Justin [:JW_SoftvisionQA]]

Just verified that this issue is not applicable to Chrome.

Comment 13

[jkwotw]

Version 45. Not fixed, the same issue. Waiting for a fix - very annoying bug.

Comment 15

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

It seems like they're simply not calling event.preventDefault() in their click handler to prevent the default behaviour of focusing the tab. This is documented at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notification/onclick#Examples but they obviously don't test this feature in Firefox. It would probably be useful if users report this problem to the Gmail team themselves as it's not a Firefox bug: http://grab.by/Pnhc

Karl, can you reach out to Google about this? I believe it's a one-line fix to add event.preventDefault() in their Notification.onclick handler.

Comment 16

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

I tried to activate it and use Opera Blink Desktop. Without success as well.

Comment 17

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Before contacting I would like to know where exactly in the JS it is blocking. 
That would ease the process of getting it fixed. 

Mike ?

PS: I was not able to make notifications work at all on my side with the right settings.

Comment 18

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

Attachment: notification.gif

Here's a gif showing the bug. Might be tricky to find the offending code in the Gmail codebase, but I'll start looking.

(Karl, I had to enable the notification center in OSX to reproduce, maybe you also have that disabled.)

Comment 19

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

OK, (I imagine these function and variables names will change overnight)

https://mail.google.com/_/scs/mail-static/_/js/k=gmail.main.en.KAG1eRZHr9o.O/m=m_i,t/am=PiNeC5j_e38wrjME0EofqDDv_ee7JWVnzz3-f28CROpVwP_N_h_A_8HevIUC/rt=h/d=1/rs=AHGWq9B_6ghSOvq2OSx44A52A7qIyUfh9g

Pda = function() {
        var a = Rda,
            b = uda ? function(c) { // c here is the Notification event
                /* they can prevent the default focus behavior below ---v */
                c.preventDefault();
                return a.call(b.src, b.listener, c)
            } : function(c) {
                c = a.call(b.src, b.listener, c);
                if (!c) return c
            };
        return b
    }, ....


It may be just as helpful (maybe more) to just ask that they call preventDefault() on the Notification click event (like Comment #15 suggests).

Comment 20

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Thanks Mike for finding the exact culprit. Helpful.


I have contacted Google today.

Comment 21

[PhistucK]

This sounds like a interoperability issue. Firefox needs e.preventDefault() to make the originating window not get the focus while Chrome does not. Am I understanding correctly?
Which behavior is the correct one? What does the specification say? In case the Chrome behavior is wrong, can you file an issue at crbug.com?

Thank you!

Comment 22

[PhistucK]

*an

Comment 23

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

NumbStill

Google replied 4 days ago:

> Thanks for the analysis, Matthew, Mike and Karl. 
> We had been aware of this issue but didn't find 
> the time to properly investigate. I've added your 
> findings to our internal bug report (http://b/23871332).

Comment 24

[PhistucK]

Still - perhaps preventDefault() does not hurt Chrome, but the fact that the lack of preventDefault() hurts Firefox suggests an interoperability issue...

Comment 25

[Hallvord R. M. Steen [:hallvors]]

I agree that we don't fully understand the difference in Chrome's and Firefox's behaviour yet.

I've checked the spec and it doesn't seem to say anything about default behaviour for a notification click event.

Comment 26

[Hallvord R. M. Steen [:hallvors]]

The weird thing is that Firefox does not merely "focus" the tab associated with the notification - it opens a whole new separate window showing a single tab with the single E-mail we were notified about. I don't understand why.

Some code that seems possibly relevant:

https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/dom/notification/Notification.cpp#332
      // Browser UI may use DOMWebNotificationClicked to focus the tab
      // from which the event was dispatched.

I guess next stop is here:
https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/base/content/tabbrowser.xml#4271

case "DOMWebNotificationClicked": {

But I see nothing that looks like it would cause a separate window..

Comment 27

[Hallvord R. M. Steen [:hallvors]]

Is this Notification triggered from a Worker thread?? Perhaps we hit this code in NotificationClickWorkerRunnable::WorkerRunInternal
https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/dom/notification/Notification.cpp#1370 ??

Comment 28

[Hallvord R. M. Steen [:hallvors]]

When I first started looking at this I recall seeing Chrome focus the main GMail window and opening the mail inline, while Firefox opened a popup. So I have assumed that difference in behaviour was the problem or a main reason why we were having problems. Now I retested in Chrome and all of a sudden I get the same popup behaviour (but with focus in the popup). So above few comments were probably confused and confusing.. I think the Firefox behaviour makes sense. We might want to try tracking if window.open() and/or window.focus() is used in a Notification onclick but it seems hackish.

Comment 29

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

(In reply to NumbStill from comment #21)
> This sounds like a interoperability issue. Firefox needs e.preventDefault()
> to make the originating window not get the focus while Chrome does not. Am I
> understanding correctly?
> Which behavior is the correct one? What does the specification say? In case
> the Chrome behavior is wrong, can you file an issue at crbug.com?

Firefox has the correct behaviour as Chrome hasn't updated their code to match the spec yet: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=442141

(In reply to Hallvord R. M. Steen [:hallvors] from comment #25)
> I agree that we don't fully understand the difference in Chrome's and
> Firefox's behaviour yet.

I do. Chrome doesn't match the spec change that we made for a better default UX.

> I've checked the spec and it doesn't seem to say anything about default
> behaviour for a notification click event.

It does at https://notifications.spec.whatwg.org/#activating-a-notification
"2. If the event’s canceled flag is unset, the user agent should bring the notification’s related browsing context’s viewport into focus."

(In reply to Hallvord R. M. Steen [:hallvors] from comment #26)
> The weird thing is that Firefox does not merely "focus" the tab associated
> with the notification - it opens a whole new separate window showing a
> single tab with the single E-mail we were notified about. I don't understand
> why.
> 
> Some code that seems possibly relevant:
> 
> https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/dom/notification/Notification.
> cpp#332
>       // Browser UI may use DOMWebNotificationClicked to focus the tab
>       // from which the event was dispatched.
> 
> I guess next stop is here:
> https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/base/content/
> tabbrowser.xml#4271
> 
> case "DOMWebNotificationClicked": {

Yes, that code is implementing the line from the spec.

> But I see nothing that looks like it would cause a separate window..

Gmail is opening the window, not Firefox. The default behaviour as defined in the spec is to focus the tab/window that the Notification was created in and the bug is that Gmail gets both behaviours because they aren't calling preventDefault.

Comment 30

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

Yay! This seems to be fixed now (at least on my personal Gmail and MoCo account)! Can someone else verify and mark the bug as verified?

Thanks for reaching out to Google Karl!

Comment 31

[Justin [:JW_SoftvisionQA]]

I can confirm the fix on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:49.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/49.0. Extremely more user friendly!!!