2020243 - Loading a youtu.be link (and agreeing to open in external app) results in "Cannot Complete Request" error page in Firefox

Status: NEW

(Firefox for Android :: App Links, defect)

Description

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

STR:

1. In Firefox Settings, set "Open Links in Apps" to "Always" (or you can leave it at "Ask" and just accept all the prompts during the STR)
2. Load this link in a new Firefox tab (e.g. by copypasting it into the address bar, or by long-pressing and choosing "open in new tab" and then switching to that tab): https://youtu.be/twksX_S3vkg
   --> YouTube gets launched.
3. Switch apps back to Firefox.
4. Reload the foreground tab (e.g. with 3-dot-menu | reload)
   --> YouTube gets launched again.
5. Switch apps back to Firefox.

ACTUAL RESULTS:

• The foreground tab that you see step 3 is a broken-looking solid-black tab, with a globe icon rather than a Unified-Trust-Panel shield, and that globe icon does nothing when tapped.
• The tab in step 5 is a differently-broken-looking tab, with "Cannot complete request" in the content area, and with a Unified-Trust-Panel broken-shield. When you click the shield, there's a notification saying "Be careful on this site" and "Connection not secure" (which doesn't entirely make sense because this was a https URL, which -- if we actually loaded it -- would have resulted in a secure connection).

EXPECTED RESULTS:

• Consistent-looking foreground tab in step 3 and 5.
• ...and that tab shouldn't look too broken. (Could be a blank page, or some sort of "this URL was launched in an external app" stub page.)

See also bug 1891916 where I encountered similar issues with Google Calendar and Google Photos links in the past.

Comment 1

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: screencast of bug when pasting youtu.be link directly into URL bar

Comment 2

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

I actually first encountered this when tapping a link on to a YouTube video on Facebook. In that case, the link goes through a l.facebook.com redirect/bounce URL, which redirects to youtu.be URL (though the address bar still shows l.facebook.com).

When coming from Facebook, for some reason, it ends up skipping the "solid-black tab" phase in STR step 3 and it ends up going directly to the "Cannot complete request" tab.

Comment 3

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: screencast of bug when tapping a YouTube link on Facebook

Here's a screencast showing how this looks when tapping a YouTube link on Facebook (e.g. tapping the video title after searching facebook for "mozilla youtube" (for which this same sample video shows up in the 4th search-result or so).

In this case, you can see at t=1s that we briefly show the "Cannot complete request" page just before we launch the external YouTube app (so you see it briefly as the app switch is happening). And we still show it when you return to Firefox, as I do a moment later.

Comment 4

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

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

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