765619 - Add a preference to open the tab with search bar results in the background

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Search, enhancement, P5)

Description

[adrianna.pinska]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0
Build ID: 20120601175215

Steps to reproduce:

I typed a search query into the search bar, and middle-clicked on the search button.


Actual results:

The search results loaded in a new tab, which immediately gained focus.


Expected results:

The search results should have loaded in a background tab, as happened in previous versions of Firefox, since I have set every existing preference related to loading tabs in the background to True.

As far as I understand, a few versions ago a decision was made to make the search bar (as well as other UI elements) stop respecting one of the preferences (707672), and also to make the search bar open new tabs in the foreground by default (I tried, but I can't find the bug in which this change was discussed, probably because it is also closed).

While I completely disagree with the rationale provided for the latter decision, I don't really mind what the default is as long as I can change it.  This currently appears to be impossible.  I find the current behaviour of the search bar extremely frustrating and disruptive, and I would like to make a request for a new preference to be added to govern this behaviour (or for the search bar to respect one of the many existing preferences).  I commented in bug 707672, but since that is closed, I'm reporting a new bug.  This may be a duplicate of e.g. 530383, but I don't know enough about Firefox's UI internals to know whether these issues are actually related.

Comment 1

[Loic]

Middle-click = opening the request into a new tab, that's all.

Middle-click on a link on a webpage, middle-click on the search button, middle-click on the Home icon, middle-click on Go button in location bar, etc... all these tasks open the request in a new tab, not in the current tab.

Comment 2

[adrianna.pinska]

This bug isn't about loading something in a new tab vs loading it in the current tab.  It's about new tabs loading in the background vs loading in the foreground (grabbing focus).

Comment 3

[adrianna.pinska]

To be absolutely clear: when I said "should have loaded in a background tab" I meant "should have loaded in a new tab which did not grab focus from the current tab".

Comment 4

[Loic]

Okay, I see. You want a new pref called 'browser.tabs.loadSearchesInBackground' like https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Preferences/browser.search.context.loadInBackground for search results requested from the context menu.

Comment 5

[adrianna.pinska]

Yes, please.

Comment 6

[Loic]

Changed title for something more clear.

Comment 7

[Raymond Lee [:raymondlee]]

There are several ways to open search results in a new focused tab.
1) middle-click the search button
2) ctrl/cmd the search button
3) set browser.search.openintab to true

If we introduce a new preference to open search results in new background tab, we should handle those 3 conditions IMO.  The new preference might be better to start with browser.search.*

Comment 10

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

There's a work around for this: Press shift and do middle click on the search bar. That opens a new tab in the background.

If we do change anything here, we'll want to do it in sync with bug 1536756, as that would be changing it for the address bar as well.

Comment 12

[Jim Shepard]

Attachment: same problem

Thanks from neuhamprenstor1984.