437526 - Add "Open all in a New Window" to the context menu of bookmark folders

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Previously there has been a lot of debate over if opening a set of bookmarks in tabs should add to the current set of tabs, or replace it.  We eventually decided that replacing the current set of tabs was causing too many problems with users not expecting their current session to be effectively obliterated, so we changed the default behavior.  However, there are still a lot of users who like to use bookmark folders to set up specific tab groups, moving through completely different sets of tabs at a time.

To somewhat enable this use case, what do people think of adding "Open all in a New Window" to the contextual menu of bookmark folders (similar to the two commands of "Open in a New Tab" and "Open in a New Window" that are available for single bookmarks)?  This is a little different from the previous behavior in that the user now has multiple windows that must be closed with accel-w when completing interacting with a particular group of tabs, but I think it gets at the root use case that people want.

Comment 1

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

sorry, meant shift-accel-w to close the window containing the new group of tabs.

Comment 2

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

As a note, Shift+Middle Click on the folder or Shift+Click on Open in Tabs will already achieve this.  Not sure if it needs to be more discoverable though.

Comment 3

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

>Not sure if it needs to be more discoverable though.

I don't really care about discoverability as much as keeping the menu consistent with interacting with bookmarks.

Comment 4

[michael-bugzilla-firefox]

> We eventually decided that replacing the current set of tabs was causing too many problems with users not expecting their current session to be effectively obliterated, so we changed the default behavior.

Then why am I still getting this behavior today?

Mac 10.5.5
Firefox 3.0.3

Firefox was was active, with no on-screen windows (Thank you f-8 and desktops).

I select a group of items from bookmarks, say "Open all in tabs". An existing window from a different desktop is made active, and then all the tabs (which I wanted; I put it on a different desktop so I could get back to it later) were replaced.

> As a note, Shift+Middle Click on the folder or Shift+Click on Open in Tabs will already achieve this.  Not sure if it needs to be more discoverable though.

Yes, yes, absolutely. Does this work on the mac?
No middle click, but shift-click can be tested.

Comment 5

[michael-bugzilla-firefox]

Alright, I just tested.

Move to a new desktop. Apple-tab to Firefox. No window active.

Click on bookmarks. Move over to the group I want. Shift-click "Open all in tabs".

Moves to other desktop, activates previous window, replaces all tabs.

The current behavior is the worst-case behavior.

Comment 6

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Bug 451915 - move Firefox/Places bugs to Firefox/Bookmarks and History. Remove all bugspam from this move by filtering for the string "places-to-b-and-h".

In Thunderbird 3.0b, you do that as follows:
Tools | Message Filters
Make sure the correct account is selected. Click "New"
Conditions: Body   contains   places-to-b-and-h
Change the action to "Delete Message".
Select "Manually Run" from the dropdown at the top.
Click OK.

Select the filter in the list, make sure "Inbox" is selected at the bottom, and click "Run Now". This should delete all the bugspam. You can then delete the filter.

Gerv

Comment 7

[BMO Automation]

Per policy at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bug_Triage/Projects/Bug_Handling/Bug_Husbandry#Inactive_Bugs. If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.