688985 - "Open Link in New Tab" from context menu or from modifier-click should do the same thing

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Shad Sterling]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:6.0.2) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/6.0.2
Build ID: 20110902133214

Steps to reproduce:

Some links, such as the "Search Links" link in each current episode info on https://www.sidereel.com/users (requires a free account) do different things when selecting "Open Link in New Tab" from the context menu and when using the appropriate modifier when clicking the same link.  That example works as expected when using the context menu, but navigates in the current tab when using the modifier.

Obviously, I'd prefer that they not only do the same thing, but that they both do the requested thing - open the link in a new tab, not the same tab.

A less annoying discrepancy occurs in the link search results page, e.g. http://www.sidereel.com/Greys_Anatomy/season-8/episode-1/search (no account required; may autoplay audio).  On the result links, using the context menu works as expected, and using the modifier both opens the link in a new tab and triggers a change to the page in the current tab (a modification, not a navigation).

(The default on an unmodified click on a result link is to make the same modification and to open the link in a new window; the expectation seems to be that the user will hit "close" instead of "back" and see the "welcome back" prompt - an effect which could be achieved with the back button if the back button would show historical content rather than silently reloading, see e.g. bug 596142, bug 666067, bug 288462, bug 200208, bug 160144, etc.)

Comment 1

[Shad Sterling]

Oops, typoed two links re silently reloading, should have been bug 569142 and bug 666076.

There are also several other bugs relating to user control of where links are loaded, including bug 565621, bug 17754, bug 55696, bug 251137, bug 251693, bug 138198, etc.

Comment 2

[Vlad [QA]]

I couldn't enter the site https://www.sidereel.com/users because it's untrusted and I can't get a certificate .

Comment 3

[Shad Sterling]

I don't see that problem in Firefox 7.0.1, Safari 5.1, or Opera 11.51, each of them accepts a redirect to https://www.sidereel.com/users/sign_in and loads the expected page.  I don't see any certificates related to this domain in the Firefox certificate manager.

Using w3m 0.5.2 I get a confirmation prompt "unable to get local issuer certificate: accept? (y/n)"; "y" gets me a blank page and "n" exits w3m.

The discrepancy in "Open Link in New Tab" behaviors has not changed from Firefox 6.0.2 to Firefox 7.0.1.

Unless there's a convenient way for me to check on the difference in certificate behavior I think the only thing to do is keep my eyes out for similar discrepancies in the "Open Link in New Tab" behavior on other sites - preferably sites using http, not https.  I expect it's JavaScript-related, along the lines of bug 55696, but I don't know enough to figure out exactly what's going on myself.