626851 - App tabs do not appear in multiple windows

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 587873

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Matt Giuca]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:2.0b9) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b9
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:2.0b9) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b9

In Firefox 4 beta 9, if I open a new browser window (File -> New Window, or just launch a new Firefox instance), that window starts off with only one tab (my home page), and none of my pinned app tabs. An important consequence of this is that if I close my first Firefox window, my app tabs will be lost (see steps to reproduce).

I have seen other bugs discussing this, but they weren't directly about this issue and have been marked fixed, yet this problem persists. In Bug 580512, deitrich writes:

"In this app-tabs-aren't-mirrored world, we can definitely expect users to have task-specific windows with app tabs that are particular to those tasks on them. (Note: I think we might be shifting to app-tab mirroring across windows.)"

So perhaps this issue will go away, but I wanted to report this specific bug (loss of app tabs). The way I read this feature, my normal tabs are transient things. They represent what I'm looking at now. If I open multiple windows, I see different sets of tabs for different tasks, and when I close them, the tabs go away.

App tabs are supposed to be different. They represent places where I "live" on the web. For example, I pin Gmail so I can always see my mail. Given that I have nominated Gmail as something I wish to permanently have around no matter what else I have open, it doesn't make sense that in my second browser window, I can't see my mail. It certainly doesn't make sense that I have to be careful to close my "secondary" browser window (without apps) before I close my "primary" browser window, or lose my apps.

I don't want to have to have a "primary" browser window and a "secondary" one. I just have a collection of windows with different content, and they should all share the same apps.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. With a single browser window ("Window A") open, right-click a tab and choose "Pin as App Tab".
2. File -> New Window ("Window B").
3. Close Window A.
4. Close Window B.
5. Launch Firefox again.
Actual Results:  
Window B does not contain the pinned app tab. Upon relaunching Firefox, the pinned app tab is no longer open.

Expected Results:  
Window B should also have the pinned app tab. Upon relaunching Firefox, the pinned app tab should remain.

Comment 1

[Luke Iliffe (Harlequin99)]

The issue of losing app tabs if you close a window, is the current behaviour and was covered by bug 594831. This problem will not be solved until app tabs are made global and persist across multiple windows which is the intention, however it will be done post firefox 4. That work is currently tracked in bug 587873.

Comment 2

[Matt Giuca]

Changing to a duplicate of bug 587873. Since some discussion on bug 594831 told me I was in the wrong place -- I am suggesting that apps should appear in all windows, not just that they shouldn't close when you close the last tab (that is just a side-effect of the fact they are not in all windows).