491214 - Should "View Image" open a new tab by default?

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1690030

(Firefox :: Menus, enhancement)

Description

[K. Austers]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; lv; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042316 Firefox/3.0.10
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; lv; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042316 Firefox/3.0.10

When you have an image in a page, you have a right-click menu entry "view image".
Clicking this opens ONLY that image in the same tab.
This feature is very good and useful, but not where the image is opened (same tab).
Much better option would be that this button ("view image") opens the image in a NEW tab (as opposed to the SAME tab), because then you wouldn't lose all the stuff that has been loaded in the tab (very important if you're on dial-up or have to pay per MB).

P.S. I know that there is an extension to do this, but I think that this has to be integrated in Firefox.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open a page with images
2. Right click on any image
3. Select "View Image"
Actual Results:  
Image is shown in the same tab

Expected Results:  
Image is shown in a new tab

Comment 1

[Mardeg]

Middle-click "View Image". It is built in.

Comment 2

[K. Austers]

Wow you rock! xD

I would've never thought that you could middle-click right-click menu entries.

Still, this should be by default :P

Comment 3

[Nochum Sossonko [:Natch]]

Perhaps this can be made more discoverable? Maybe a small arrow icon at the end of the menu entry that opens it in a new tab?

Comment 4

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Perhaps this can be made more discoverable? Maybe a small arrow icon at the end
> of the menu entry that opens it in a new tab?

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Err, I meant to respond to this comment...

(In reply to comment #3)
> Perhaps this can be made more discoverable? Maybe a small arrow icon at the end
> of the menu entry that opens it in a new tab?

That's not an option as it would be totally non-standard, IMHO.

Comment 6

[reb]

Middle-click does not work for me in SeaMonkey 1.1.14 nor 2.0 Alpha 3.

Same or new tab, any "View Image" still fails due to Bug 185618, respects "Content-disposition: attachment" header if present and will download instead of view in browser.

Comment 7

[eyal gruss]

i suggest the following:
1. change the string to "view image in a new tab" and implement this behavior
2. ctrl-click/middle click will open in the current tab

would this be a good first bug to take?

Comment 8

[Yuan Wang(:Yuan) – Mobile Firefox Design Lead]

Thanks for catching this. I agree with the 1st suggestions above.
Viewing image should not be loaded on the current tab by default, which interrupts user's normal task flow.
So I agree with the suggestion. Change the string to "View Image in a New Tab" to indicate the exact location.

For shortcuts, one thing to keep in mind is that the people usually have the same expectation on things that are in pattern. It's easier for them to memorize. For example, on Mac, "command+click" on hyper link is to open it in a new tab; so "command+click" on image should also open it in a new tab, not in the current tab.

Comment 11

[algotechie]

For what it's worth, on Windows, holding down the Ctrl key while clicking the context menu entry "View Image" does open the image in a new tab for me. (This is also the case with "View Background Image".)

Comment 12

[Alain Knaff]

Actually, you can view an image in a new tab by doing the following:
1. Right click on the image, and immediately release button => context menu appears, and stays up even after releasing button.
2. go to "view image" in menu, and middle-click it => image appears in new tab

Comment 14

[t8av]

(In reply to Alain Knaff from comment #12)
> Actually, you can view an image in a new tab by doing the following:
> 1. Right click on the image, and immediately release button => context menu
> appears, and stays up even after releasing button.
> 2. go to "view image" in menu, and middle-click it => image appears in new
> tab

Maybe bugzilla should adopt some of facebook style. I would have attached a LIKE to the above comment.

Even though I like it, please note that:

1. This method is probably only for advanced users.

2. Some websites disable middle mouse click above images.

Comment 15

[Dan Jacobson]

Other browsers have "View image in new tab".
Without explicitly listing "View image in new tab" in the menu,
most users will never know there is a way to do that.
Instead they will have to sacrifice the webpage they are reading,
just to get a better look at the image (or disturb it with CTRL+++++)
and then hope the webpage will still be there intact when they hit BACK,
thus not allowing them to view the image again if they chose, without repeating the whole rigamarole,
all because there is no "View image in new tab" menu entry.

Comment 16

[Jonathan Watt [:jwatt]]

Mass bug change to replace various 'parity' whiteboard flags with the new canonical keywords. (See bug 1443764 comment 13.)

Comment 17

[Kolya]

Loading the image in the same tab means that you can potentially lose uncached data.
There are no downsides to loading the image by default in a new tab as far as I can see.

Comment 18

[:Gijs (he/him)]

We implemented this in bug 1690030.