307244 - Links from other applications open in a new tab in popup, but tabs remain hidden.

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 243893

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Daniel Jackson Peacock]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

If the 'Open links from other applications' setting is set to open in a new tab,
then it always opens in a new tab of the most recent window, as advertized.

However this causes problems when the most recent window is a popup, where the
tabs menubar, etc hidden. Because the tabs remain hidden, it is not entirely
obvious what has happened. Visually it appears as though the new page was loaded
in the same window/tab. There is a way to get back to the previous tab (press
Ctrl-W) but it is very unlikely that the user would be able to figure this out.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to a site that opens a popup. For example click the Example link half-way
down the page at this site:
http://www.java-scripts.net/javascripts/Criteria-PopUp.phtml
2. Select the popup window.
3. Click a link in an outside application.
Actual Results:  
The newly loaded site appears to replace the one previously in the popup-window,
but in reality it has opened in a new tab, and the tabs are just hidden. You can
verify this by pressing Ctrl-Tab to cycle between tabs in the window.

Expected Results:  
Personally, I think these stripped-down windows are a big hassle, and would
really prefer to just not give web developers the option :) But since we can't
do that I guess there are a couple things that can be done to improve the
situation. 

First, I think it would be good to exclude pop-up windows from the list of
most-recent windows when opening links from external applications. Thus when an
external link is opened, open it in the most recent non-popup window, or a new
window if no non-popup windows are open (Although I am sure that what is and
isn't a popup window is more fuzzy that I am making it).

In addition, when opening a site in a new tab, check if tabs are visable, and if
not make them so (or open the link in a new tab in a non-popup window). This
would be a good idea in general, such as when a user middle-clicks a link in a
popup-window, not just for external links.

Comment 1

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 243893 ***