431675 - Firefox doesn't handle gnome virtual desktops and external links very well

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Shell Integration, defect)

Description

[Daniel Falk]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080404 Firefox/2.0.0.14
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080418 Ubuntu/7.10 (gutsy) Firefox/2.0.0.14

When clicking a link from any external program, I would expect firefox to open up the link in the last-focused window on the current virtual desktop, and if there is no window on the current desktop, one should be created.

Currently however, Firefox opens that link in the last focused window, regardless of what desktop that happens to be on.  Also there's no indication of what window the link was opened in, so sometimes I'm forced to hunt through all the windows on every desktop to find the one which opened the link.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open firefox on desktop 1
2. Open firefox on desktop 2 and make sure the window has focus
3. Go back to desktop 1 without giving firefox focus
4. Open the run dialog and enter a URL.
Actual Results:  
The link is opened on desktop 2, no focus to that desktop is given and there's no indication that the link has been opened

Expected Results:  
I would expect firefox to open the url in the last-focused window in desktop 1

If step 1 is omitted, I would expect firefox to create a new window on desktop 1 and open the url in it.

I'm running Ubuntu, using gnome/compiz.  This is firefox 2, gutsy, but I'm pretty sure it's happened in FF 3 beta 5 on hardy as well.

Also.  I understand that some people would not desire it to work this way.  I think there should be options in place for alternate behavior, preferably in a more prominent place than about:config, unless my proposed behavior is the default :-)

Comment 1

[Nicolas Sebrecht]

> Also.  I understand that some people would not desire it to work this way.  I
> think there should be options in place for alternate behavior, preferably in a
> more prominent place than about:config, unless my proposed behavior is the
> default :-)

I agree.

In see a lot of people on various forums looking to disable this feature. I guess the priority should be increased and change the status to "new".

Duplicated with bug 425879 posted the 2008-03-28.

Comment 2

[Clément Lefèvre]

The behavior appears to still be the same years later with much older versions of both Firefox (current nightly, version 57) and Gnome (3.24 now on my Archlinux!)

This is still pretty annoying and the behavior requested by the reporter would really make more sense than a random window on whatever other desktop/space.

Confirming the bug as status NEW in the same time.