427395 - when prompted to allow cookie, focus shifts to new tab, but shouldn't and didn't used to.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 405239

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[PJ]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b5) Gecko/2008032620 Firefox/3.0b5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b5) Gecko/2008032620 Firefox/3.0b5

Cookies are allowed to be set; "ask me every time" is also selected. 
This works well.

Tools/Options/Tabs tab/  has 
"New page should be opened in a new tab"
then
"Warn me when opening and closing" are both checked
"Always show the tab bar" is checked
BUT
"When I open a link to a new tab, switch to it immediately" IS NOT CHECKED

When responding to the allow or deny setting cookies dialog, I check the "use my choice for all cookies from this site"

This is what happens:

If the site does not need to set a cookie, the new site's page is opened in a new tab and the focus remains on the original page (say the Google results page) from there I can open all the sites I like without change of tab-focus. 

In previous versions, if the linked-to site in the new tab needed to set a cookie, the dialog box would come up, but, after the response is selected and the dialog box closes, the focus would still remain with the original page (in this case Google results).

Since Beta 3, if I have to respond to the "allow cookie" dialog, the focus switches to the new tab. If the linked-to site does not require the dialog box, the focus does not change to the new tab, but remains with the original tab. FireFox only switches tab focus when I have to respond to the "allow cookie" dialog box.

If I right-click on a link and select "open in a new tab" or just click on the link, the action is the same if I have to respond to the "allow cookie" dialog.
Regardless of whether allow or deny the cookie to be set, action is the same.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. "When I open a link to a new tab, switch to it immediately" IS NOT CHECKED
2. Setting cookies "ask me every time" is set to positive
3.open a site that needs a cookie to be set - after you respond to the dialog, the focus will go to the new tab. It should stay with the originating tab/site.
Actual Results:  
focus went to the new tab  IF no cookie dialog is required, it works properly. This only happens when I have to respond to the cookie dialog.

Expected Results:  
focus should have stayed with the originating tab/site



I don't know about severity. 

It's a medium pain in the neck for me, the user. 

It does NOT cause a crash, a lock up or make a page unreadable.

It should work as advertised.

You know what's on your plate better than I do.

Comment 1

[lenochod]

PJ - Are You use Firefox or SeaMonkey?

Comment 2

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Firefox, obviously !

Comment 3

[Jacob Champlin]

Confirmed on Linux (Gentoo)

Comment 4

[Rotch Groblin]

This is still broken in RC1

Comment 5

[Lucas Malor (mail: c6kfnkn2uc AT snkmail DOT c0m)]

You must also consider that if the tab focus is not switched, you couldn't know which page has requested to set the cookie, if you have opened very much tabs. IMO Fx3 behaviour is correct.

Perhaps browser.tabs.loadInBackground could become an integer entry, with 0 and 1 as current behaviour, and 2 to never lose focus?

Comment 6

[Nicholas Smith]

I don't agree that this is the correct behaviour; if it is really necessary to focus on the tab that's requesting the cookie, then, given the options selected in the original bug report, the focus should go back to the original tab after the cookie decision is made.

(Incidentally, personally I don't believe that it is necessary to focus on the new tab at all, as most of us who use this specific setup probably want to deny all cookies (ad sites, web stats, etc.) except those from the domain we are browsing (and its sub-domains), so if we actually want to accept the cookie, we can usually tell which tab is requesting it (as it's closely related to the site we navigated to).  What would probably be ideal in this situation would be a button on the cookie request form to focus on the tab requesting the cookie, or at least put the url of the tab as a field when you click "show details" on the cookie request box.  I don't expect these new functions are important enough to be worth the risk for FF3, as annoying as I find it, but the FF2 behaviour should remain at least in about:config if it is not the default, and maybe my other suggestion(s?) in a succeeding point release?)

Also, I can confirm this on FF3RC1 on Ubuntu 8.04, so OS->All and Status->New?

Comment 7

[Lucas Malor (mail: c6kfnkn2uc AT snkmail DOT c0m)]

> if it is really necessary to focus on the tab that's requesting the cookie, 
> then, given the options selected in the original bug report, the focus should 
> go back to the original tab after the cookie decision is made.

You are right, I agree now.

Comment 8

[Arie Paap [:wildmyron]]

This is a duplicate of bug 405239 which has been resolved WONTFIX.

bug 429287 proposes to restore the current tab after dealing with the modal (cookie) dialog.