831609 - Defect - Don't open the home page when launching Metro Firefox for protocol activation, search activation, file activation, and secondary tiles.

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox for Metro Graveyard :: General, defect, P1)

Description

[Matt Brubeck (:mbrubeck)]

Steps to reproduce:
1. Make sure Firefox is the default browser
2. Make sure Metro Firefox is closed
3. Click a link in another app to open a web page

Expected results: Metro Firefox launches and starts opening the link immediately.

Actual results: Metro Firefox launches and loads the default start page, then starts opening the link in a second tab.

This makes startup seem more janky and distracting, hurting perceived performance.

Comment 1

[Matt Brubeck (:mbrubeck)]

Our nsICommandLineHandler.handle implementation (in BrowserCLH.js) gets called twice when Firefox is launched from a link in another app -- first without a URL, then with the link URL.  Ideally we would get just one command line.

Comment 2

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

I agree. This is pretty ugly. How difficult is this to fix? I think this should probably become a v1 work item. For the person who is really living in Metro, this will quickly become very annoying.

Comment 3

[Marco Mucci [:MarcoM]]

Hi Asa and Brian, let me know if this does need to be worked on so it can be scheduled?

Asa, if this is worked on, we should treat it as a Defect linked to:  Bug 831887 - Story - Activating Firefox from links in other apps

Comment 4

[Brian R. Bondy [:bbondy]]

Has not been worked on but needs to be worked on. I think treating it as a defect sounds good.

Comment 5

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

I agree with Brian.

Comment 6

[Brian R. Bondy [:bbondy]]

I have this working I just need to do some patch cleanup / comment removals tonight then I'll post it.

Comment 7

[Brian R. Bondy [:bbondy]]

Attachment: Patch v1 - Front end code

This cleans things up a lot.

Clean shutdown:
- Opening a secondary tile (pinned site to win8 start): Opens start UI
- Clicking on a link in Metro: Brings up that page as current page, no start UI
- Activating a secondary tile: That tile as current page, no start UI
- Search: Opens that search as current page, no start UI
- File activation: Opens that file as current page, no start UI

Unclean shutdown or if open-tabs-from-last-time option is on (Note closing from the application bar on the left via right click currently gives an unclean shutdown, that's not part of this bug):
- Opening a secondary tile: Opens previous tabs, no start UI
- Clicking on a link in Metro: Brings up that page as current page, and previous tabs as other tabs
- Activating a secondary tile: That tile as current page, and previous tabs as other tabs
- Search: Opens that search as current page, and previous tabs as other tabs
- File activation: Opens that file as current page, and previous tabs as other tabs

All of the metro platform integration cannot be easily tested by the way.  I think metro\base\test\browser_context_ui.js tests the startUI.

Comment 8

[Brian R. Bondy [:bbondy]]

Attachment: Patch v1 - Widget

So the main idea behind the widget patch is to stash away the startup activation URI and then give access to it through metro utils.  We do this so the front end code can detect whether or not it should load StartUI early, or even not load it at all (see previous comment for a breakdown). 

The only somewhat complicated part of this patch is for secondary tiles. If we detect command line args for secondary tiles then we stash it away in the same way we do protocol activations.  If we have command line args that are not from secondary tiles then we need to stash away all command line args and process them after xpcom init.

Comment 9

[Matt Brubeck (:mbrubeck)]

Comment on attachment 724231 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch v1 - Front end code

Review of attachment 724231 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

::: browser/metro/base/content/browser.js
@@ +139,5 @@
> +    function loadStartupURI() {
> +      let uri = activationURI || commandURL || Browser.getHomePage();
> +      if (uri === self.getHomePage()) {
> +        self.addTab(uri, true);
> +        StartUI.show(); // This makes about:start load a lot faster

Instead of (uri === self.getHomePage()), you should test (StartUI.isStartURI(uri)).

Comment 10

[Brian R. Bondy [:bbondy]]

Attachment: Patch v2 - Front end code

Carrying forward r+. Updated 3 instances of getHomePage() to StartURI.isStartURI

Comment 11

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Comment on attachment 724233 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch v1 - Widget

no comments after all, looks good.

Comment 12

[Brian R. Bondy [:bbondy]]

Attachment: Patch v2' - Front end code

Updated commit message

Comment 13

[Brian R. Bondy [:bbondy]]

Attachment: Patch v1' - Widget

Updated commit message

Comment 14

[Brian R. Bondy [:bbondy]]

m-i closed, adding check-in needed.

Comment 15

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/85952c1d69b9
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/84b769712139

Comment 16

[juan becerra [:juanb]]

Tested on 2013-03-20 using Nightly built from http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/8156df33b757
Having set Firefox Nightly as the default browser, and performing the actions while it wasn't opened already:
- Tested going to the Bing app, clicking on one of the trending links at the bottom, then clicking on a search result tile. This opened Firefox Nightly for Metro with the link.
- Tested searching for something in the Bing app then clicking on one of the results, this opened Firefox Nightly for Metro with the search result page.
- Tested typing and entering http://www.bing.com/ in the Start page. This opened the Bing web site in Firefox Nightly for Metro.
- Tested by clicking on links in other apps like the Weather app which opened the links in Firefox Nightly for Metro.
- Tested creating secondary tiles and then clicking on them which opened Firefox Nightly for Metro with those pages.
- Tested opening a file by typing and entering the name of the file in the Start page (some sample html file), and this opened Firefox Nightly for Metro with that page.
- Tried to set Firefox Nightly as the default .mp4 file handler, but I could not find a way for the Metro version to become the default handler.

Tested this when the option was set to open with previously open tabs as well as default session preference. In all cases I didn't see a Start UI when launching the application using one of these forms of activation.

Comment 17

[Samvedana (:Samvedana)]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; Win64; x64; rv:26.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/26.0
Build ID: 20130812030209
Built from http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/87c1796bc46c

WFM
Tested on windows 8 using latest nightly for iteration-11. Followed steps provided in comment7 and 16 and got expected result.

- Tested going to the Bing app, clicking on one of the trending links at the bottom, then clicking on a search result tile. This opened Firefox Nightly for Metro with the link.
- Tested searching for something in the Bing app then clicking on one of the results, this opened Firefox Nightly for Metro with the search result page.
- Tested typing and entering http://www.bing.com/ in the Start page. This opened the Bing web site in Firefox Nightly for Metro.
- Tested by clicking on links in other apps like the Weather app which opened the links in Firefox Nightly for Metro.
- Tested creating secondary tiles and then clicking on them which opened Firefox Nightly for Metro with those pages.
- Tested opening a file by typing and entering the name of the file in the Start page (some sample html file), and this opened Firefox Nightly for Metro with that page.

Comment 18

[Samvedana (:Samvedana)]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:26.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/26.0
Build ID: 20130825030201
Built from http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/01576441bdc6

WFM
Tested on windows 8 using latest nightly for iteration-12. Followed steps provided in comment7 and got expected result.