1202803 - Tab Queued tabs don't close when using BACK button

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

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

Normally, tabs/URLs opened from external apps are closed automatically when I press the BACK button to return to the app.

Tabs/URLs opened via Tab Queues do not. I have not checked to see if it's all Tab Queued tabs (open now & queued) or just those I let queue.

We enable this feature by using the isExternal flag when opening via Tabs.loadUrlXxx:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/base/GeckoApp.java#1876
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/base/GeckoApp.java#1532

I guess the question becomes: Should all tabs opened via Tab Queues be treated as external?

My current vote is "yes"

Comment 1

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

Because of this I end up with a lot of tabs opened in Fennec since I need to manually close them.

Comment 2

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #0)
> Normally, tabs/URLs opened from external apps are closed automatically when
> I press the BACK button to return to the app.
> 
> Tabs/URLs opened via Tab Queues do not. I have not checked to see if it's
> all Tab Queued tabs (open now & queued) or just those I let queue.
> 
> We enable this feature by using the isExternal flag when opening via
> Tabs.loadUrlXxx:
> http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/base/GeckoApp.
> java#1876
> http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/base/GeckoApp.
> java#1532
> 
> I guess the question becomes: Should all tabs opened via Tab Queues be
> treated as external?
> 
> My current vote is "yes"

Agree, these should be treated the same.

But, can I take a step back and ask for the context/history as to why we feel external links in general should be closed with the hardware "back" button when a user leaves? Given that the user found it from an external app, and they're leaving back to said app. I just wonder why we feel like this is equal to "I want to close this tab"

Comment 3

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

How will we handle the case of loading 2 or more tabs via queues and then reading less than all the tabs? Say I have 5 tabs in queue and then read 4 or fewer how is this tracked? We don't want to throw away unread tabs.

Comment 4

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

(In reply to Kevin Brosnan [:kbrosnan] from comment #3)
> How will we handle the case of loading 2 or more tabs via queues and then
> reading less than all the tabs? Say I have 5 tabs in queue and then read 4
> or fewer how is this tracked? We don't want to throw away unread tabs.

Only the current/selected tab would be closed.

Comment 5

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

(In reply to Anthony Lam (:antlam) from comment #2)

> But, can I take a step back and ask for the context/history as to why we
> feel external links in general should be closed with the hardware "back"
> button when a user leaves? Given that the user found it from an external
> app, and they're leaving back to said app. I just wonder why we feel like
> this is equal to "I want to close this tab"

This was done a long time ago [1]. I believe it was using the idea that going back to the previous app means you are done with the webcontent, so close the tab. Yes, the Android stock browser acted this way. I just tested and Chrome does too.

That bug comment has some other parent/spawned tab rules too.

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=699052#c4

Comment 6

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

Ah, thanks for the context! :)

Comment 7

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

NI'ing Sebastian to put this in the lit of Tab Queue work for the future.

Comment 8

[BMO Automation]

We have completed our launch of our new Firefox on Android. The development of the new versions use GitHub for issue tracking. If the bug report still reproduces in a current version of [Firefox on Android nightly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix) an issue can be reported at the [Fenix GitHub project](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/). If you want to discuss your report please use [Mozilla's chat](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix#Connect_to_Matrix) server https://chat.mozilla.org and join the [#fenix](https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#fenix:mozilla.org) channel.