1673363 - Bookmarks Menu Only on New Tab flashes when opening in a new window

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, defect, P3)

Description

[B.J. Herbison]

Nightly 84.0a1.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Set the Bookmarks Menu preference to Only on New Tab.
2. Open a link in a new window.

Expected: Only the new page is displayed.

Actual: The new window is loaded with the Bookmarks Menu, and then the menu goes away.

The problem with this is 1) the distracting flash of the menu, and 2) since something appears and vanishes it can make the user think they missed something.

(I found the preference this morning when the Bookmarks Menu appeared on a new tab page. I decided to leave it on to try it, but now that I see this annoying flash I'm turning it off.)

Comment 1

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

The component has been changed since the backlog priority was decided, so we're resetting it.
For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 2

[:Gijs (he/him)]

We're struggling to reproduce this on our end. Does this happen for you in a clean profile? How exactly do you "open a link in a new window" (context menu, middle mouse click, something else) ? Does it matter what website it is? Does the same thing happen in private windows?

Comment 3

[B.J. Herbison]

Thank you for looking into the issue.

I tried a new profile and didn't see the problem. Then I set "Homepage and new windows" and "New tabs" to about:blank and the problem appeared in that profile. (I didn't test which of those two settings apply, I just changed both at once.)

I've seen the problem in two ways, opening links in a new window from the context menu (right-click W) and opening Nightly from Thunderbird: Nightly was exited after my new profile test and I saw the short appearance of the bar when I clicked the link in the Bugzilla e-mail to enter this comment.

I have seen the problem opening links from https://news.google.com/, https://www.texastribune.org, https://www.cnn.com/, https://www.mozilla.org/, https://foundation.mozilla.org/, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/, https://wiki.mozilla.org/, https://github.com/, and other sites. My working assumption is that the web site doesn't matter.

The context menu in private windows doesn't include "Open Link in New Window" and I've never seen the problem opening in a new tab (either it doesn't occur or I don't switch to the tab fast enough). I did try Open Link in New Private Window and I saw the Bookmarks menu appear and them vanish as the page was drawn in the private window.

Comment 4

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Ah, yes that makes more sense. When about:blank is set as the New Tab page we show the toolbar on about:blank, and a new window opened directly to a link would have about:blank temporarily before the new location is loaded.

The simple fix here would be to change this behavior and not show the toolbar on about:blank.

Otherwise we will need to know what the loading URI is when opening the window to short-circuit showing of the bookmarks toolbar in the new window.

Comment 5

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me) from comment #4)

Ah, yes that makes more sense. When about:blank is set as the New Tab page we show the toolbar on about:blank, and a new window opened directly to a link would have about:blank temporarily before the new location is loaded.

We still pass the new location as an argument to the new window if opened externally or using "open link in new window", and we could use that to avoid this situation.

It looks like we don't do that when the user has also configured Firefox to open new windows instead of new tabs, and the user clicks a _blank link that opens a new window -- but that's probably more of an edgecase, so even a partial fix would be a good idea.

Comment 6

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Attachment: Bug 1673363 - Check the URIs to load in new windows when determining to show the bookmarks toolbar.

Comment 7

[Chris Morgan]

I’m observing these symptoms when opening unloaded tabs after session restore. I believe that would be covered by this?

Comment 8

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Chris Morgan from comment #7)

I’m observing these symptoms when opening unloaded tabs after session restore. I believe that would be covered by this?

It wouldn't - the codepaths are quite different, and the fix would likely be different too - please could you file a separate bug? Thank you!

Comment 9

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/3552fd66bb76
Check the URIs to load in new windows when determining to show the bookmarks toolbar. r=Gijs

Comment 10

[Cosmin Sabou [:CosminS]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/3552fd66bb76

Comment 11

[B.J. Herbison]

The fix works for manually opening in a new window and for:
<a href="http://mozilla.org" target="mozilla">Mozilla</a>
but the flash still appears with:
<a href="http://mozilla.org" target="_blank">Mozilla</a>

Comment 12

[B.J. Herbison]

The toolbar also appears temporarily when "Open All in Tabs" is clicked for a bookmarks folder (on every tab created) and when external links are open from Thunderbird.

Comment 13

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Can you please file new bugs for these issues instead of re-opening them? After a patch has landed, we only reopen a bug if the patch has been backed out.

Comment 14

[B.J. Herbison]

Created three odd bugs: bug 1675143, bug 1675145, and bug 1675147.

Comment 15

[B.J. Herbison]

The previous three bugs covered the cases mentioned above. I also filed bug 1675148 covering View Page Source.

Comment 16

[Daniel Cicas [:dcicas], Release QA]

Hello,

Verified this issue on Fx 84.0b1 on Win 10, ubuntu and mac os.