1765440 - Bookmarks and history items opened from the library force the browser window to the front

Status: ASSIGNED

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect, P3)

Description

[busy1]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.13; rv:99.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/99.0

Steps to reproduce:

FF-Preferences-General-Tabs (Settings) 3rd line: "When you open a link, image or media in a new tab, switch to it immediately". Box for selecting option is NOT checked.

Actual results:

Link immediately opens in new tab.

Expected results:

Link should have created a new tab, but not switched to new tab.

Comment 1

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

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Preferences' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Hi busy1,

Is this for all links that you click, or a specific link that you're clicking where you see this behaviour?

Comment 3

[busy1]

I apologize for not being more specific.

The most irritating problem occurs primarily when I choose Manage Bookmarks in order to open multiple links in new tabs in FF.

On the Manage Bookmarks page, when I click on a selected link to open in a new tab, the new tab is created and the the selected link opens immediately. I don’t always want to switch immediately; I want to stay on the Bookmarks page to select other links to view also. I don’t want to constantly switch back and forth between the Bookmarks page and the FF window with the tabs of chosen links.

Also, if I’m on an article web page/web site that contains a link that I want to visit, the link opens immediately on the page I’m viewing. Alternatively, I use the right button on my logitech mouse to select "open the link in a new tab", which happens more often than not. When doing a “search" with multiple results, I want to review several responses, so I have to select “open link in a new tab” with each link.

Could you offer an option in Preferences to “save/create link in a new tab” to be activated when a link is clicked on, that works for both Bookmarks and FF? Could the default be changed to create the tab without switching immediately?

I hope this explanation helps.

Comment 4

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

It does a little bit - although I'm curious about what you mean by "Manage Bookmarks" page. What page is this? We have a separate "Library" window that lets you manage your bookmarks. I'm not aware of any in-content bookmarks management UI that ships in Firefox by default. Is this management UI from an add-on that you've installed? Would you be able to show me a screenshot of it (feel free to redact or omit your actual bookmarks from it) so I can be sure of what you're referring to?

Comment 5

[:Gijs (away/busy until Mar 10)]

(In reply to Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️) from comment #4)

It does a little bit - although I'm curious about what you mean by "Manage Bookmarks" page. What page is this?

I think they mean the library window - the bookmarks menu labels it "manage bookmarks". I'm morphing this bug based on this interpretation (bracketed edits are mine):

(In reply to busy1 from comment #3)

On the Manage Bookmarks [window], when I click on a selected link to open in a new tab, the new tab is created and the the selected link opens immediately. I don’t always want to switch immediately; I want to stay on the Bookmarks [window] to select other links to view also. I don’t want to constantly switch back and forth between the Bookmarks [window] and the FF window with the tabs of chosen links.

It's maybe useful to note that bookmarks don't use the default pref, but use browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInBackground (in about:config, set to false by default) to avoid selecting the opened tab. The fact that this is a separate pref is already on file as bug 469456.

That still doesn't change that opening the page will refocus the main browser window though.

Moving this to the bookmarks & history component so folks there can have a look to see if there's anything to be done about the manage bookmarks in-window behaviour. I guess if we opened the library in a tab, this problem would go away...

Comment 6

[Shane Hughes [:aminomancer]]

Attachment: WIP: Bug 1765440 - Changes to openLinkIn focusing top window. r=mak,Gijs

Opening a single bookmark or history entry from the Library window will
focus the top browser window, even if the loadInBackground parameter is
true (e.g., user is trying to open several bookmarks).
PlacesUIUtils.openTabset doesn't have this problem, just openLinkIn.
Still focus if where is "current" or loadInBackground is false.

Comment 7

[Oana Botisan, Desktop QA]

I will change the status to NEW, because I managed to reproduce the issue on Firefox 99.0, Firefox 100.0, Firefox 101.0b9 and Nightly 102.0a1 using macOS 10.15, Ubuntu 18.04 x64 and Windows 10 x64.

Comment 8

[:Gijs (away/busy until Mar 10)]

Adding needinfo for me to look at the WIP patch, which phab didn't ping me for. :-(

Comment 11

[:Gijs (away/busy until Mar 10)]

Huh, this patch got very lost. :-(

Shane, do you just want to actually ask for review here? Looks like it needs rebasing in any event...

Comment 12

[Shane Hughes [:aminomancer]]

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #11)

Huh, this patch got very lost. :-(

Shane, do you just want to actually ask for review here? Looks like it needs rebasing in any event...

Ha, I forgot about this too. I'll resubmit it with a test.

Comment 13

[Shane Hughes [:aminomancer]]

Attachment: Bug 1765440 - Don't focus target window when opening a background tab in it. r=#places-reviewers,Gijs!

Comment 14

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/d16ac4c1714c
Don't focus target window when opening a background tab in it. r=Gijs,places-reviewers

Comment 15

[Serban Stanca [:SerbanS]]

Backed out for causing mochitests failures in browser_library_open_bookmark.js.

• Backout link
• Push with failures
• Failure Log
• Failure line: TEST-UNEXPECTED-FAIL | browser/components/places/tests/browser/browser_library_open_bookmark.js | Library window is not focused - Didn't expect [object Window], but got it

Comment 16

[Shane Hughes [:aminomancer]]

Thanks, I'll look into the failure. The failure screenshot bizarrely shows that the correct window is focused. Maybe the method I'm using to check the focused window behaves differently on Linux.

Edit: Actually, looking at the titlebars, it looks like the library window is focused but somehow behind the main window. I didn't know this was a possibility. I'll try Services.focus.activeWindow instead of checking the most recent window.