286985 - Firefox won't show multiple page selections on startup

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Description

[Csaba Gabor]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050225 Firefox/1.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050225 Firefox/1.0.1

If multiple files are selected in a directory on windows and then Open With
Firefox (at least from the right mouse click menu) is selected, a single
instance of Firefox comes up (that's good), with only one of the pages (that's bad).

Reproducible: Always



Expected Results:  
I figure that every file that can be reasonably displayed in Firefox should be
displayed in a separate tab in one browser instance.  For comparison, IE will
pring up each file (.htm) in a separate instance (a child of a previous
instance).  Furthermore, I would hope that the order of the tabs is the order
show in the explorer window where the files (pages) were initially selected.

The first part of this is fairly straightforward.  Windows will actually start a
separate instance of FF for each file selected with a single file as argument. 
At this point, FF should determine where it was started from (in vbscript I do
this by cycling through all the explorer windows and matching the active one). 
Then it should get a list of the selected files.  If the argument to this
instance of FF is not the first valid file in the list, then exit.  Otherwise,
open up, in separate tabs, all the valid files in the list.

Simple and useful,
Csaba Gabor from Vienna

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Did you test this with version 1.0.1? Please test with a nightly trunk build (
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/ ), as I
think I have already implemented what you request (probably accidentally).

Comment 2

[Csaba Gabor]

I had tested this with 1.0.1, the version shown above.

However, I went to the page that you showed, downloaded the .exe version, went
to c:\Program Files\Mozilla Firebird\uninstall and ran UninstallFirefox.exe,
then I doubleclicked on the downloaded .exe version (which showed that it was
planning to install 1.0 - scary).  I selected a normal install, and it finished
quickly (cool), and in the Help / About shows (with the bottom part of the text
chopped off):
rv:1.8b2\Gecko/20050320 Firefox/1.0+

This issue still happens in exactly the same way.  I selected three .htm files,
did a right click, Open With Firefox, and the single page that comes up is the
one underneath the mouse (at the time of the right click).

If, on the other hand, I use the File/Open With menu to start up Firefox, then
the single page that comes up is the one that has the focus (that's what I'm
calling the one dotted rectangle around the icon) is one of the selected files
has focus.  If a non selected file has focus (using the ctrl+arrow keys for
navigation) then the single page that is opened is the first one (according to
whatever sorting routine Explorer is using, as opposed to first in chronological
order of selection).

Csaba

Comment 3

[Mathias Wittlock]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050908 (No
IDN) Firefox/1.4

This is still the case in 1.5b1.

I tried this with different kinds of files and different applications and I just
can't find a single application that will open several files this way. Even
Microsoft Office applications doesn't do this. This leads me to believe that
Windows Explorer simply won't send more then one file name to the application as
it's launched. If this is the case, then this isn't possible to fix. It would be
really nice if it could though and I'm sure some developer quickly could find
out (or already knows) if the browser gets one or all filenames.

Also, I'm guessing this would be related to Bug 296847 either as a duplicate or
depending on it.

Comment 4

[Csaba Gabor]

Comment #3 is incorrect in regards to Microsoft Office (at least on Win XP Pro).
Select two Excel files (.xls) and hit enter.  You get one Excel application
(Excel 2003) and you can Ctrl+tab between the different workbooks (In
Tool/Options/Views you should have Windows in Taskbar unchecked).  The same is
true for Word (.doc) except that Ctrl+tab does not work to cycle through the
windows (isn't there some F# key that does this?).

However, the submitter is correct that only one file is given to each instance
of the invoked app.  This was also pointed out in the original post, and so was
a method which would deal with it (all but one instance should summarily exit).

Good observation about bug 296847 - I haven't investigated that loading mechanism.

Csaba Gabor from Vienna

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

also doesn't work from windows explorer selecting multiple files and "open with"
confirming 

Comment 6

[Csaba Gabor]

Removed dependency since, as I outlined in Bug 296847, there appear to be two distinct issues.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

You may be correct in what you lay out in bug 296847.  Still, these may have the same solution, if the solution is simpler than you suggest.  Linking them isn't saying one is 100% certain about the relationship between the two bugs, or that one must be fixed before the other.  Even if one can be merely helpful to the other then it is useful to know when one of them has changed status.  We won't know until one gets fixed and it does (or doesn't) solve or help the other problem. only time will tell. FWIW I'll reverse the relationship