949619 - [Feature Request] Open link in new tab and switch to that tab

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Patrick McClard;pmcclard]

As a firefox for android user I'd like a way to open a link in a new tab and immediately switch to that tab that I just opened.

Comment 1

[:Margaret Leibovic]

I thought it would be a fun experiment to make an add-on that does this, so I did:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/switch-to-new-tab/

Comment 2

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only: ex-Mozilla]]

Ian, is this something we'd want to add?

(Potentially a long-press context menu action so blocking bug 718437)

Comment 3

[:Margaret Leibovic]

I definitely don't think we should add a new menuitem for this, and I'm not convinced that we should add an option for this somewhere in user-visible settings. I think our current behavior of opening in the background is a good default.

I would argue this is a good use-case for an add-on, especially since it was pretty easy to make one! :)

Comment 4

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

I agree with Margaret that this is probably better suited to an add-on for the time being. Certainly a useful thing to tweak, but not a common enough case to make it the default or a pref in the browser yet.

The current behaviour is modeled after the way in which most of our users use "Open link in new tab", as a sort of short-term "save for later" queue, the added benefit of which being that the new tab can load in the background while the user is on the current page.

Comment 5

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Closing as WONTFIX, since we won't make this part of the product.

Feel free to send me bug reports about the add-on though! :)

Comment 6

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Looks like we are actually going to go ahead with something like this in bug 790299.