658529 - Can't open shortcuts/links in firefox if I have several profiles and a window of the choosen profile is already open

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[fdsa]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110420 Firefox/3.6.17
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110420 Firefox/3.6.17

If I have several profiles and the profile manager lets me choose, which profile I want to use if i klick on a .lnk-shortcut or on a link in e.g. Thunderbird.
If a window is open using the profile I choose to open that link, I get the message:
"Firefox cannot open the profile "XY" because it is in use.
To continue, close the running instance of Firefox or choose a different profile."


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. create different profiles
2. don't set any profile as default, so when you open firefox, the profile manager lets you choose the profile
3. open a firefox window.
4. now open (in windows an .lnk- ) shortcut or an link in thunderbird.
5. choose the profile which was already used to open a window in step 3.
6. you get the report mentionned above


Expected Results:  
You can open shortcuts/links using any profiles even a firefox window of the profile you want to use to open the shortcut/link is already open.

Comment 1

[Cree]

Can confirm this is a bug and is still broken (version 48.0.2 on Windows 10).

Comment 2

[5cb_1ksb7e7rrvbd]

Still broken in Firefox 56.0.

Comment 3

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

I can also confirm this issue on the latest Firefox 64.0 on openSUSE Tumbleweed.

Please let me elaborate a little why this issue is a deal-breaker for me, and the main reason why during the last few weeks I've transitioned away from Firefox towards Chromium. (Although I hate with all my heart Chromium due to the fact that Google has melded itself even into the open-source variant, I have no choice...)

So I'm involved in two completely separate projects, and for each I have a separate GitHub and Trello accounts. Now when I receive via email notifications from either project I use the Open With plugin to open that link (to either a GitHub issue or Trello card) in its respective Firefox profile. However if I already have one window open I can't do that anymore, and instead I need to copy-paste it.

(In fact, by using the same plugin and with a custom script, I managed to open specific of sites (mostly involving authentication) in separate profiles, and leave my "main" Firefox profile for browsing with a more aggressive "blocking" and privacy policy.)

Moreover I found this issue (inability of opening "external" links in a particular profile that is already open) in may other posts on the internet, and I find it strange that Firefox, a major mature browser, doesn't support this simple feature... (Despite the fact that "some time" ago it supported it via a hack involving -remote argument, which was subsequently removed: in #1080319.)

Comment 4

[Jessica Bassett]

Attachment: same problem

Thanks from dantaicrowti1970.