345298 - Opening Firefox on another desktop fails

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 135137

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Ihor Bobak]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4

Dear developers of Firefox,

We develop the tool IBDesk (www.ibdesk.com) which allows to have multiple
desktops (using native Windows API CreateDesktop, OpenDesktop, SwitchDesktop, etc). Internet Exporer is working fine with IBDesk: it can be launched in any
number of copies on any desktop. But unfortunately, Firefox does not.

When Firefox 1.5.0.4 is launched on the first desktop, and you try to
launch it on the second - it give us a message box

"Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new
window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your
system."

If Firefox is launched twice on the first desktop - there are 2
processes in Task Manager, and there are no problems. The problem is that when
Firefox is started on the second desktop: it "sees" that there are running
processes, but it tries to access existing  windows (with some purpose)
or another desktop-bound objects and, of course, fails, and this is
the reason of that message box.

I am ready to help in improving the Firefox start procedure,
and I will gladly grant a free license to those who can help
Firefox running on any desktop.

Feel free to contact me.

Best regards,
 Ihor Bobak
 [e-mail]
 ICQ: 70279410
 MSN: [e-mail]
 Phone: [phone]

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. download IBDesk from www.ibdesk.com and install it
2. run Firefox on the first desktop
3. switch to the second desktop (Win+2)
4. run Firefox on the second desktop

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

duplicate of bug 239223?

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

dup to 135137?
see also bug 342870.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

vendor describes what seems to me is a dangerous workaround at http://www.ibdesk.com/support.html