158223 - [RFE] Regular left-click open href with target=_blank in new TAB

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 103843

(SeaMonkey :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement)

Description

[Carl Alexander Sverdrup]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020530
BuildID:    20020718

Make it an option to be able to click on a link normally (left-click) that would
open the href in a new TAB insteadof a new window or having to use one of the
alternative methods to 'tab-surf'.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
N/A

Actual Results:  N/A

Expected Results:  N/A

N/A

Comment 1

[Kai Lahmann (is there, where MNG is)]

valid RFE, but I don't give it much chances.

Comment 2

[Vidar Haarr (not reading bugmail)]

Confirming as RFE.
 -> Tabbed Browser

Comment 3

[Vidar Haarr (not reading bugmail)]

I'm sorry, didn't know that changing components did not change assignee and QA
contact. Now I do =)

Comment 4

[Kai Lahmann (is there, where MNG is)]

as written in the midair-message "all changes are lost" ;)

Comment 5

[Doug Alexander]

I don't agree that this RFE has little chance - if the point of having tabs is
to minimize the number of open windows, then not offering the ability to convert
an HREF target of _blank to _newtab (if such a thing exists) seems to defeat the
purpose. I use tabs constantly, and find myself wishing every day that I could
left-click on a link and not have to worry about a new window popping up.

I think a new pref in the "tabbed browsing" pane for "Redirect new window to new
tab" would be very useful.

Comment 6

[Carl Alexander Sverdrup]

My point excactly.

Comment 7

[Carl Alexander Sverdrup]

Anything on this?

Comment 8

[jag (Peter Annema)]

This is a dupe of some other RFE to have an option to open <a href=...
target=...> in tabs instead of windows. Someone wanna hunt for it?

Comment 9

[Carl Alexander Sverdrup]

Doubtfully a dupe. Anyway, my point is that anything else then href="_self"
should be opend in a new tab if one has choosen it.

Comment 10

[Jason Bassford]

*** Bug 164390 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Jason Bassford]

Possibly a dupe of bug 103843, although it's not totally clear.

Comment 12

[Rick Stockton]

May I please double-check the meaning of this RFE: Doesn't 'Regular Left Click'
REPLACE the contents of the CURRENTLY SELECTED tab/window with the content of
the clicked HREF? I only get new Windows from HREFs within Mail/News. (I'm using
Mozilla 1.1 branch, Windoz Build). Thanks!

Comment 13

[Carl Alexander Sverdrup]

This depends on the target="" in the link. If it hasn't been set or it's set to
self then it will open in a new window. Only real problem I can see with my bug
is if one is viewing a site buildt up by frames.

Comment 14

[Jason Bassford]

> Doesn't 'Regular Left Click' REPLACE the contents of the
> CURRENTLY SELECTED tab/window

That would be my assumption.  I've been slightly confused by the later
discussion discussion here also.  Normally when you left-click a link, and there
is no explicit code to open in a new window, it will replace the current
contents.  So, when I started reading this bug, I assumed it was about *always*
opening a new tab and *never* replacing the existing contents.

> This depends on the target="" in the link. If it hasn't been set or
> it's set to self then it will open in a new window. 

What?  Are you talking about Mozilla's *current* behaviour (in which case I'm
really confused) or the behaviour you'd like to see from this bug?

Also, assuming that this bug is checked in, how do you propose to ever get the
current behaviour where window/tab content is replaced?  I'm guessing that there
must be some case, or key / click combination, you must have in mind whereby you
can re-use the existing view?

Comment 15

[Doug Alexander]

My attempt at clarification:
Current behavior: Links with a "target=_blank" setting open a new browser window.
Suggested behavior: "target=_blank" opens the link in a new tab.

That's it. Default link behavior, replacing the content in the current window
("target=_self"), would remain unchanged - only links that explicitly open new
windows would be affected. It all depends on what the link target is set to. In
sites with frames, In framesets, one can either set the link target to "_parent"
or a use a reference to a specific frame identifier, which is behavior that
would also be unaffected by this RFE. Properly written frameset links would
still behave as always.

Like I said before, since the point of tabbed browsing is to minimize the number
of open windows, this RFE makes sense because it redirects the creation of a new
window into the creation of a new tab.

Hope this helps clear things up. See <a
href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/types.html#type-frame-target">this W3
page</a> for info on reserved link targets if you're still confused.

Comment 16

[Doug Alexander]

Sorry, I'm a novice at inserting links into comments. Apologies for the ugly link!

Comment 17

[timeless]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 103843 ***

Comment 18

[Jason Bassford]

In that case, re-opening but 164390 since it was not a duplicate after all. 
(Summary text here was misleading.)

Comment 19

[Carl Alexander Sverdrup]

I'm sorry, Doug Alexander is ofcourse right. I have no idea why I posted the
last comment. Sorry again. And no, this is not a dupe of 103843.

Comment 20

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

mass-verification of Duplicates.

mail search string for bugspam: SolarFlaresAreTheCause