1913144 - Can't drag vertical icon to another Firefox application titlebar when the other window is minimized

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 274205

(Firefox :: Sidebar, defect, P2)

Description

[Chua Chee Wee]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:131.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/131.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Switch Firefox to vertical tabs.
2. Restart Firefox.
3. Open a new tab, say on, Google News https://news.google.com/
4. Drag out the Google News tab (So now you have a separate window on the Windows taskbar)
5. On the Google News Firefox instance, drag the single icon itself (in order to put it back to the original Firefox instance in step 2) to the Firefox taskbar, so that the original Firefox comes into focus, and you can then continue dragging the icon into the list of vertical tab icons, so that it merges back into the Firefox in step 2) and closes the Google News Firefox instance.

Actual results:

The original Firefox instance in Step 2) doesn't get focus, so you can't you anything at all.

Expected results:

The original Firefox instance in Step 2) gets focus, opens itself up, and you can drag the Google News icon into the list of vertical tabs, and the Google News tab merges back into the original Firefox instance, and the Google News Firefox window disappears.

Comment 1

[Chua Chee Wee]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:131.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/131.0

Steps to reproduce:

Switch Firefox to vertical tabs.
Restart Firefox.
Open a new tab, say on, Google News https://news.google.com/
Drag out the Google News tab (So now you have a separate window on the Windows taskbar)
On the Google News Firefox instance, drag the single icon itself (in order to put it back to the original Firefox instance in step 2) to the Firefox taskbar, so that the original Firefox comes into focus, and you can then continue dragging the icon into the list of vertical tab icons, so that it merges back into the Firefox in step 2) and closes the Google News Firefox instance.

Actual results:

The original Firefox instance in Step 2) doesn't get focus, so you can't do anything at all.

Expected results:

The original Firefox instance in Step 2) gets focus, opens itself up, and you can drag the Google News icon into the list of vertical tabs, and the Google News tab merges back into the original Firefox instance, and the Google News Firefox window disappears.

Comment 2

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

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:sclements, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 3

[Sarah Clements [:sclements]]

I think fixing bug 1915167 will fix this issue too.

Comment 4

[Chua Chee Wee]

No, if two Firefox windows are both full screen on the same monitor, there's no way to drag a vertical tab from one Firefox window to another.

Comment 5

[Sarah Clements [:sclements]]

(In reply to Chua Chee Wee from comment #4)

No, if two Firefox windows are both full screen on the same monitor, there's no way to drag a vertical tab from one Firefox window to another.

Ok, that wasn't clear from the description.

Gijs, do you think this is more of a technical issue or a UX issue?

Comment 6

[:Gijs (he/him)]

I'm kind of confused because I cannot reproduce on Windows 11 (testing with yesterday's nightly).

If I drag a tab that is the only tab in its window to the Windows taskbar, and have another maximized window open, then Windows shows me two windows, and I can then hover (while still dragging) the window I want to drag it to, which then comes into view, and I can drop on the tabstrip there. This works the same in horizontal and vertical tabs mode, AFAICT, modulo the drop indicator referred to in bug 1915167.

Am I misunderstanding the steps? Are you seeing something else? Perhaps a screencast would help?

Comment 7

[:Gijs (he/him)]

If you mean two windows in F11 full screen (as opposed to maximized), then I can't get the Windows task bar to show up so the steps don't work in either vertical or horizontal tabs mode. I can work around by using alt-tab while dragging with my mouse, but of course that's not very ergonomic. Still, that too doesn't seem specific to vertical vs horizontal tabs?

I'm sure I'm missing something, just not sure what...

Comment 8

[Chua Chee Wee]

See attached video.
So, I'm trying to drag the tab (Google News) to the other Firefox window (you see it as 1913 in the screenshot).
The Firefox app should open up, and then I can continue dragging the tab into that, but as you can see, when I'm dragging the Google News tab, I can't drop it into the 1913 Firefox window, or make it open up.

Here's the attached gif:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/jnlr2g6rzeg70mnszt7js/CantDrag.gif?rlkey=wlh9lor9tpasdn6ccg1fizx7b&st=83y90nzx&dl=0

Please let me know when you've downloaded it, so I can delete it from my side.

Comment 9

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Thanks for the video. So those are two maximized windows, and it looks like Windows 10 (rather than 11) to me, with the taskbar set to show windows individually (instead of per app). But the same workflow works for me, on Windows 11 (even with the same taskbar setting). I don't know why it doesn't work on your Windows 10 machine. I don't have a Win10 machine to hand to test on. But fundamentally I expect that "drag and hover over taskbar tile brings the window to the front" is likely a Windows behaviour rather than a Firefox behaviour, so I'm not sure that there's much we can do to fix this inside of Firefox.

I'll ask around to see if anyone else can help dig into this more.

Comment 10

[:Gijs (he/him)]

OK, the gif and the results seem consistent with the target window being minimized (rather than fullscreen/maximized), and we can reproduce that. That's an old bug, not related to vertical tabs.

Comment 11

[Chua Chee Wee]

But the target window is maximized, not minimized, so is it still a duplicate bug, even though the target window is maximized?

Comment 12

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Chua Chee Wee from comment #11)

But the target window is maximized, not minimized, so is it still a duplicate bug, even though the target window is maximized?

We cannot reproduce this with the target window maximized, either on Windows 10 or Windows 11. (several of us have tried.)

If there's any more context you have on the machine (any non-default settings or unusual tools installed that may affect how Windows handles application windows?) or where you can/cannot reproduce that may help in identifying why none of us can reproduce this when the target window is maximized instead of minimized.

Comment 13

[Ray Kraesig [:rkraesig]]

Attachment: CantDrag.mp4

(Attaching user's .gif, converted to .mp4 for ease of control.)

Comment 14

[Ray Kraesig [:rkraesig]]

As :Gijs notes, the posted screen capture is consistent with the target Firefox window being minimized. Can you post another in which that window is brought to the foreground before the drag is attempted, so that it can be seen to be maximized rather than minimized?

Additionally, can you reproduce this when dropping a tab from the top, when the sidebar is not active?