1270244 - WebExtensions: chrome.tabs.create fails to create a new tab with a file URL

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1266960

(WebExtensions :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[dw-dev]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0
Build ID: 20160407164938

Steps to reproduce:

I am migrating my "Print Edit" add-on to the WebExtensions API.

I have the following code that should create a new tab and load a file URL:

    chrome.tabs.create({ url: tabs[0].url },
    function(tab)
    {
        .....
    });

Note, tabs[0].url could contain any file URL, but in my tests had the value:

    "file:///D:/Development/Mozilla%20Firefox/My%20Extensions/Print%20Edit/Line%20Breaks/break2.htm"
                
This code fails with the error message:  "Unchecked lastEror value: Error: URL not allowed: ....."

However, this failure is not consistent with the documentation and at least one other API:

    - the "Are we WebExtensions yet?" web page makes no mention that file URLs are not supported.
    - the tabs.create documentation web page makes no mention that file URLs are not supported.
    - chrome.extension.isAllowedFileSchemeAccess always returns true (as noted in Bug 1253646).

The same code works correctly in Chrome providing the "Allow access to file URLs" checkbox is enabled.



Actual results:

The operation failed with an error message (see above).

A new tab was NOT created and (of course) the file URL was NOT loaded.


Expected results:

A new tab should have been created and the file URL should have been loaded into the new tab.