506988 - When opening multiple tabs, the 'loadBookmarksInBackground' pref is ignored

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Rick]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090715 Firefox/3.5.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090715 Firefox/3.5.1

(This bug was carved out from Bug 452183 - see for more info)

Background: The mechanisms for opening multiple tabs are:
- "Open All in Tabs" menuitem on a folder or multiple selected items
- <Ctrl+click> or <Middle-click> on a folder
- <Ctrl+Shift+click> on a folder

By default, <Ctrl+click> should open the tabs in the foreground while <Ctrl+Shift+click> should open them in the bg (see Bug 506986).  The 'loadBookmarksInBackground' pref should swap the behavior of these two key combos, as it does with single bookmarks, but currently is ignored.

Personally, I think this pref should be dropped to fix this (affects single bookmarks too) as it just complicates things for little benefit.  If we do, the default arrangement should be kept, ie <Ctrl> opens in the fg while <Ctrl+Shift> opens in the bg.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Reporter, are you still seeing this issue with Firefox 3.6.13 or later in safe mode or a fresh profile? If not, please close. These links can help you in your testing.
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles

Comment 2

[Rick]

Yes, still seeing it in 3.6.13 and 4.0.b12 (nightly build 02/07/11). Specifically seeing this: Ctrl+click on a container appends all tabs in the -foreground- while Ctrl+Shift+click replaces the current tab in the -foreground- while inserting the remaining tabs. The 'loadBookmarksInBackground' pref does not swap or alter the behavior.

Comment 3

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Marco, can we dupe it to bug 440093 or should we handle it separately because of this bug is covering the keyboard shortcuts?

Comment 4

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Marco, can we dupe it to bug 440093 or should we handle it separately because
> of this bug is covering the keyboard shortcuts?

duping this stuff is a hard call due to the fact there are varoius spreaded bugs about the same issue, there is bug 423789, bug 440093, bug 469456... probably others?
But I don't think the keyboard shortcuts are a good argument to avoid duping to one of those, clearly fixing the implementation involves fixing the keyboard shortcuts.

Comment 5

[Cornel Ionce [:noni] [Hubs QA]]

Please check to see if this reproduces to you in latest nightly using a clean profile:
http://nightly.mozilla.org/

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles#w_creating-a-profile

Comment 6

[Rick]

This bug is still there (tested as requested). Perhaps this pref was dropped.

Comment 7

[primexx]

This bug still remains to this day.

Firefox 94.0.1

set browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInBackground to true

open a single bookmark in new tab opens it in the background

open a bookmark folder in new tab automatically focuses on the first bookmark in the folder

expected behaviour:

when opening multiple bookmarks they should all open in the background. behaviour should be consistent with opening a single bookmark.

Comment 8

[vlasic.vojislav]

Firefox 124.0.1 and this issue still remains.
When opening multiple bookmarks they should all open in the background. behaviour should be consistent with opening a single bookmark.

Comment 11

[EpicTux123]

I can confirm this still happens. Setting "browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInBackground" to "true" and opening multiple bookmarks from a folder with a single middle-click will make the 1st page of the folder to be open in the foreground, therefore ignoring the preference.

Firefox, Linux, version 127.0.2.

Comment 12

[vlasic.vojislav]

Why is this ignored for such a long time, is it really that hard to fix it?