425381 - Zoom affects all tabs from the same domain (browser.zoom.siteSpecific setting is too restrictive)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 419612

(Firefox :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Mark C]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071128 SeaMonkey/1.1.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9b4) Gecko/2008030714 Firefox/3.0b4Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9b4) Gecko/2008030714 Firefox/3.0b4

When using either full-page zoom or text-only zoom in one tab, all other tabs from the same domain are also affected by the change. This is the behaviour of Fx3 when the browser.zoom.siteSpecific setting is "true", which is the default behaviour.

Unfortunately this behaviour causes problems when different pages from the same domain need to be viewed at different zoom levels. For example an intranet server may host several web-based applications, each of which has a different idea about what the text size should be. If the user has several applications open in different tabs then adjusting the zoom in one will also adjust it in the others. The user may find themselves having to adjust the zoom each time they change tabs.

This can also be an issue where an ISP has an administration application running on the same domain as the user's web site - they may need both open as they make changes to the site, but the zoom of one affects the zoom of the other.


This behaviour does not occur if the browser.zoom.siteSpecific preference is set to "false" but then the user loses the benefit of the browser remembering the zoom setting for the majority of hosts on which the zoom does need to be the same for all pages.


I suggest changing this preference from a boolean to a numeric value with the following meanings:

0 - the same as the current "false" setting (don't remember domain-specific zoom)
1 - the same as the current "true" setting (remember domain-specific zoom and apply it to all existing tabs)
2 - the same as the current "true" setting but don't apply the new zoom level to any tabs that are already open

The "2" option allows the user to have their zoom level remembered for a domain in general, but if they alter the zoom in one particular tab it won't affect any other tabs from that domain that are already open (but would affect any new tabs that are opened). The last-set zoom value for any particular tab would be the stored value for that domain.


Other options could be added in future if appropriate - e.g. a "3" could be used to remember the zoom on a per-page rather than per-domain basis.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[John P Baker]

-> duplicate of bug 419612 ?

Comment 2

[Mark C]

Looks close enough that it's pretty much a dupe (sorry, I didn't find that one in a search), so I've marked it as such.

The main difference is that bug 419612 proposes adding a new pref rather than changing the current pref from a boolean to an integer. There are pros and cons to each approach - so long as the new pref is as discoverable as the existing one (i.e. shows up when searching for "zoom" in about:config) then I don't much mind which approach is taken.