1667577 - Command line option to start a search should follow the user's preferences

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Search, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Felix Irgendson]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:80.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/80.0

Steps to reproduce:

0. in "preferences", tick the box next to "open links in tabs instead of new windows"
1. $ firefox to have a window already open
2. $ firefox --detach --new-window example.com opens example.com in a new window
3. close that window again
4. $ firefox --detach --new-tab example.com opens example.com in a new tab in the first window, and gives that window focus
5. $ firefox --detach --search foo

Actual results:

a new window opens, searching for "foo" with the default search engine

Expected results:

A new tab should have opened in the already-open window, searching for "foo" with the default search engine. Ideally, the already-open window should receive focus.

If making the behavior of the command line option --search dependent on the "new tabs vs. new windows" preference is not feasible, I suggest implementing a new command line option like --search-new-tab.

Comment 1

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

Bugbug thinks this bug should belong to this component, but please revert this change in case of error.

Comment 3

[franky]

Ref: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/15288

Comment 4

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Updating summary, it would be simpler and probably better for --search to follow the user's preferences.