1610129 - New tabs opens a new window instead

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[wulfieb]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:72.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/72.0

Steps to reproduce:

When opening a new tab Firefox it also opens a new window and copies all the tabs from the previous window. Eventually I get a 'chain' of windows open. If I close the other windows it then also closes down all the tabs in the other windows, effectively closing the page I had open.

This is also non surprisingly slowing down my machine. I'm someone that works with several tabs open, and now this is proving impossible.

Actual results:

Upon a cold reinstall using an older version it worked normally again until it updated itself, then it returned to opening a new window for each new tab, plus copies of the tabs open in the previous window.
This bug seems to be related to the latest version of Firefox.

Expected results:

I have followed all checks to settings. All options are correct. All settings 'under the bonnet' are correct. All settings in about:config are correct.
I have followed all the fix steps available as its been reported as a bug before. None of it has worked. It also 'forgets' my previous sessions if I don't shut the correct windows before logging out. This is very frustrating.
Reports of this issue go back to 2016 and seems a regular recurring issue as it is mentioned on a few sites: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/firefox-keeps-opening-new-windows-not-tabs-when-i-click-on-links-4175584899/

Comment 1

[Alexandra Martin]

Hi,
Thank you for submitting this report. Unfortunately I wasn't able to reproduce the issue on Windows 10 x64 with Firefox versions Release 72.0.2, Beta 73.0b8 and Nightly 74.0a1 (2020-01-21). Could you add a simplified test case, so I can try again?

Also, it can be very useful if you can try again using a clean profile (https://goo.gl/AWo6h8), maybe even in Safe mode (https://goo.gl/AR5o9d), with the latest Firefox Nightly version and see if the problem still persists. (you can find the latest Firefox Nightly version here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/)

I am assigning a component, so our developers can take a look and maybe offer more insights on the problem.

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Clear a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user.

Inactive users most likely will not respond; if the missing information is essential and cannot be collected another way, the bug maybe should be closed as INCOMPLETE.

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.