1753974 - Opening page in New Windows or New Private Window via extension also opens blank tab in said windows

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(WebExtensions :: Developer Outreach, defect, P3)

Description

[Alex Cornestean]

Attachment: 2022-02-07_14h58_29.mp4

=

=
[Affected versions]:
Nightly (98.0a1/20220206212741)
Beta (97.0/20220202182137)
Release (96.0.3/20220126154723)

[Affected platforms]:
Windows 10 x64
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
macOS

[Steps to reproduce]:

1. Install Sidebery (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/).
2. Make sure the sidebar provided by Sidebery is displayed. In case it’s not, click on the extension browser action to display it.
3. Grant Sidebery access to run in Private Windows.
4. Open a new tab and access any website (example: https://www.wikipedia.org/)
5. From the Sidebery sidebar, identify the entry for the above opened website and right click it.
6. From the opened menu click on “Move to New Window”.
7. Notice a new window is opened containing 2 tabs – one blank “New Tab” and the second with the website opened at Step 4.
8. Click on the second opened tab and notice the website loads with no issues.
9. Click on the first tab (the blank “New Tab”) and notice the address bar contains: `about:blank#tabsdata%5B%7B%22lvl%22%3A0%2C%22panelId%22%3A%22firefox-default%22%7D%5D”.
10. In the new window, observe that the sidebar is not displayed. Click on the browser action to open the sidebar.
11. Notice the blank tab closes immediately as the sidebar is displayed.

Note:
Repeating Steps 4 to 11, but instead of selecting “Move to New Window” you select “Reopen in new private window” as part of Step 6, will produce the same results but with Private Windows.

[Expected results]:
Only the selected website to be opened in either a new window or private window should be displayed in the respective new window and private window.
No blank tab should be opened first.

[Actual results]:
Selecting to open a website in a new window or private window via the Sidebery extension, opens a blank tab in tandem with the chosen website.

For further details, see the attached video.

Comment 1

[Tomislav Jovanovic :zombie]

Hey Alex, this looks like intentional behavior from the extension. Not sure how/why you were testing this, but if someone reported it to you, I suggest redirecting them to report the issue directly to Sidebery developers.

Comment 2

[Alex Cornestean]

Hi Tomislav !

I stumbled across this by accident while doing some exploratory testing. Initially it seemed the browser was also to blame for how it handled the moving of the pages to new windows/private windows so that's why I reported the issue.

My apologies and I'll be more careful in the future.

Thank you !

Comment 3

[Luca Greco [:rpl] [:luca] [:lgreco]]

Closing as fixed, I gave it a try and a recent version of sidebery doesn't seem to be hitting this anymore, and so it looks the extension developers have already fixed it.