707801 - Open link in a new tab should open a new foreground tab

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Gabriela [:gaby2300]]

Opening a link in a new tab should open a new foreground tab.

1. Hard-press on link.
2. "Open Link in New Tab" shows up.
3. Tap "Open Link in New Tab".
4. The new tab opens in the background, you have to tap the tab's number indicator to the right of the Awesome Bar to see the open tab's list and tap the last one to be able to access to the new opened tab.

Tapping "Open Link in New Tab" should should open a new foreground tab to avoid 
having to tap the tab's number indicator to the right of the Awesome Bar to see the open tab's list and tap the last one to be able to access to the new opened tab.

Comment 1

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

Not sure I agree with making it the foreground tab. If you want to make it the foreground tab, just tap it directly. The context menu action is for opening in the background so it won't disrupt your current page viewing.

Comment 2

[Gabriela [:gaby2300]]

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #1)
> Not sure I agree with making it the foreground tab. If you want to make it
> the foreground tab, just tap it directly. The context menu action is for
> opening in the background so it won't disrupt your current page viewing.

Ah! But that's just it: I can't tap it directly because I cannot see the tab's list! I have to tap the tab's number indicator to be able see the open tab's list and tap the last one to be able to access to the new opened tab. Or.... maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Comment 3

[Madhava Enros [:madhava]]

Hey there - yeah, the thinking is that if you're opening in a new tab, you're more likely opening it because you want to look at it, but not _right now_. If you wanted to look at it right now, you'd open it in the current tab.

There may well be cases I'm not thinking of here, but that seems like the more likely one.

Comment 4

[Gabriela [:gaby2300]]

I see, it makes sense, just that I didn't know that was the expected behaviour! It seems it won't be fixed anyway.

Mark, many thanks for your explanation. I really appreciate it!

Comment 5

[Naoki Hirata :nhirata (please use needinfo instead of cc)]

bug 707015?

Comment 7

[Cristian Nicolae (:xti)]

Closing bug as verified wontfix due to comment #3 and comment #4.

Comment 8

[[e-mail]]

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #1)
> Not sure I agree with making it the foreground tab. If you want to make it
> the foreground tab, just tap it directly. The context menu action is for
> opening in the background so it won't disrupt your current page viewing.

EXACTLY ... the whole purpose of opening a link in a new tab is to also retain the previous page's display for future interaction ... BUT if I am opening a link in a new tab it is obviously with the intention of wanting to view what is displayed on that new page. To force me to have to get to that display via a circuitous route is definitely NOT good user-friendly design. There should be an option in the Android Firefox to allow the user to choose whether they want to open new tabs in the foreground OR in the background ... not an assumption the Firefox knows what is "best for me".

Comment 9

[[e-mail]]

(In reply to Madhava Enros [:madhava] from comment #3)
> Hey there - yeah, the thinking is that if you're opening in a new tab,
> you're more likely opening it because you want to look at it, but not _right
> now_. If you wanted to look at it right now, you'd open it in the current
> tab.
> 
> There may well be cases I'm not thinking of here, but that seems like the
> more likely one.

Comment 10

[kie000]

(In reply to Madhava Enros [:madhava] from comment #3)

> There may well be cases I'm not thinking of here, but that seems like the
> more likely one.

I found Firefox for Android to be a complete pain until I found a plugin to fix this. The reason I open a new tab is because I want to have access to both the new tab and the old tab, I do not want to have to 

'open in new tab'
scroll, scroll, scroll
Identify the new tab is the one I wanted to look at.
Select the new tab.

^This is an absurd amount of work just to view a separate new tab and is very frustrating.

Quit dumbing down already, Firefox for android sucks pretty bad because of so many options being removed, there should be tab options in the settings and there should be 'advanced' settings for those of us who aren't dumb.

FIX IT

Comment 11

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

(In reply to kie000 from comment #10)
> (In reply to Madhava Enros [:madhava] from comment #3)
> 
> > There may well be cases I'm not thinking of here, but that seems like the
> > more likely one.
> 
> I found Firefox for Android to be a complete pain until I found a plugin to
> fix this. The reason I open a new tab is because I want to have access to
> both the new tab and the old tab, I do not want to have to 
> 
> 'open in new tab'
> scroll, scroll, scroll
> Identify the new tab is the one I wanted to look at.
> Select the new tab.
> 
> ^This is an absurd amount of work just to view a separate new tab and is
> very frustrating.
> 
> Quit dumbing down already, Firefox for android sucks pretty bad because of
> so many options being removed, there should be tab options in the settings
> and there should be 'advanced' settings for those of us who aren't dumb.
> 
> FIX IT

Please don't make demands. Please read https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html

Comment 12

[Wesley Johnston (:wesj)]

I wonder if we could morph this into updating the order that we show tabs in the tabs tray? Right now I think they're just in order opened. Maybe we should make "Open in new tab" from links open them after the selected one?

That might help with the "I had to scroll really far to find the tab I just opened" issue, while still supporting the "I want to open a bunch of articles in the background on this slow 2G connection" one.

Comment 13

[kie000]

(In reply to Wesley Johnston (:wesj) from comment #12)
> I wonder if we could morph this into updating the order that we show tabs in
> the tabs tray? Right now I think they're just in order opened. Maybe we
> should make "Open in new tab" from links open them after the selected one?
> 
> That might help with the "I had to scroll really far to find the tab I just
> opened" issue, while still supporting the "I want to open a bunch of
> articles in the background on this slow 2G connection" one.

My sincere apologies for the demand bit, I was getting really frustrated at what I felt was poor default usability with mobile Firefox.

Updating the order in which tabs are shown would work better, also, the tab list should already be scrolled to show the last opened tab.