864640 - Each Private Window should have its own cookie store

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 117222

(Firefox :: Private Browsing, enhancement)

Description

[Stephan Sokolow]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:22.0) Gecko/20130418 Firefox/22.0
Build ID: 20130418112607

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open a private window
2. Log into a site in it
3. Open another private window
4. Visit the site in the second private window


Actual results:

The site loads logged-in on the second private window because private cookies are only cleared when the last private window is closed.


Expected results:

Each private window should have its own isolated cookie store, giving users an intuitive way to understand the lifetime of tracking information associated with any given activity.

Comment 1

[rsx11m]

Your suggestion may not work with web applications that open new windows on their own. Those have to be private windows as well, but would need to be aware of any context in the other private window from which it was invoked. Possible solution to this issue might be to only create a new private session context for windows which were manually opened by the user rather than by an action of a web page.

Comment 2

[Stephan Sokolow]

(In reply to rsx11m from comment #1)
> Your suggestion may not work with web applications that open new windows on
> their own. Those have to be private windows as well, but would need to be
> aware of any context in the other private window from which it was invoked.
> Possible solution to this issue might be to only create a new private
> session context for windows which were manually opened by the user rather
> than by an action of a web page.

That would be better than the current solution, but it would still be less than ideal when it comes to giving users an intuitive view of which private tabs share state.

I was imagining window.open() or target="..." behaving as "open new tab in same window" by default and allowing the user to use the drag-and-drop "tear tab off into a new window" behaviour if they really want a separate window.