1421447 - Expose browser.tabs.loadInBackground pref via API

Status: NEW

(WebExtensions :: Frontend, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Luke Crouch [:groovecoder]]

A popular bug with our Containers add-on is that middle-clicks on a link to a site assigned to a container are opened in the foreground instead of the background. [1]

We can't quite fix it with browser.webNavigation.onCreatedNavigationTarget, so we really need access to the values of browser.tabs.loadInBackground and browser.tabs.opentabfor.middleclick from about:config.

That's quite an edge case, so maybe a better tracking bug/project is to expose a number of the most common & popular browser tabs prefs to WebExtensions?

[1] https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/442

Comment 1

[Bob Silverberg [:bsilverberg]]

The browserSettings API [1] would be a more appropriate place for this, and we are already in the process of exposing a couple of tabs related prefs (bug 1420969 and bug 1420974) via that. Are these the only two that you need right now? Mike might be okay with just accepting these, or they may need to go through a decision process. Let's see what Mike thinks.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/browserSettings

Comment 2

[Mike Conca [:mconca]]

Luke, can you take a look at the last comment on the github issue and see if gaborluk really found a solution?

That said, I'm not opposed to exposing these prefs, since we are trying to make useful tabs API available. Give me a day or so to see what other extensions used these and see if it might make sense to expose them.

Comment 3

[Luke Crouch [:groovecoder]]

Indeed, gaborluk found a great simple solution. You can bump this priority down from our perspective.

Comment 4

[Mike Conca [:mconca]]

I'm narrowing this bug down to simply exposing browser.tabs.loadInBackground via an API (and opening a new bug to track browser.tabs.opentabfor.middleclick).

This about:config pref is also exposed directly to the user via about:preferences (When you open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately). The policy (in general) has been to make browser preferences that are available to the user also available as a WebExtensions API.

It is recommended that this API be implemented.

Comment 5

[Mike Conca [:mconca]]

browser.tabs.opentabfor.middleclick is being tracked in bug 1424315

Comment 6

[Dmitriy]

I very much need this pref via API to be able to implement an extension that switches this pref quickly by clicking extension's button on toolbar. I need an ability to switch this pref quickly and easily, mid-browsing, to temporarily disable focus on new tabs just for certain pages from which I intend to open many links by middle-clicking.

Such toolbar button existed out of the box in MyIE2 browser (currently Maxthon). Such extension already exists for Chrome - "Tabs to the Front" https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-to-the-front/hiembaoomcehoiehhdldabfgnmphappc , but a direct port to Firefox does not work. And changing the native setting would be a better implementation anyway. Please, fix it.