995152 - Option "Open new windows in a new tab instead" not working from within Visual Studio

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[cremor]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:28.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/28.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20140314220517

Steps to reproduce:

1. Make sure Firefox is running and that the option "Open new windows in a new tab instead" is checked.
2. Open or create a C# project in Visual Studio 2013.
3. Press F1 anywhere in the code window.


Additional information:
According to this Microsoft Connect issue the issue is within Firefox: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/849438/f1-help-always-opens-a-new-firefox-window-instead-of-a-new-tab
Internet Explorer and Chrome don't show this bug, which supports the claim from Microsoft.

This might be caused by issues in the command line parsing, since Visual Studio 2013 opens Firefox differently than Visual Studio 2010 (where the bug doesn't occur), at least when they start a new process (I couldn't find an easy way to see the command line arguments that were used if Firefox was already running). The command line that is shown by the "Process Explorer" tool when Firefox is started by Visual Studio 2013 has the following format:
"path\to\firefox.exe" <url> (note: no quotes around the URL, but it doesn't contain spaces)
The command line shown for Visual Studio 2010 is the same that is used for protocol activation:
"path\to\firefox.exe" -osint -url "<url>"

My about:config settings (all those have their default value):
browser.link.open_newwindow;3
browser.link.open_newwindow.disabled_in_fullscreen;false
browser.link.open_newwindow.override.external;-1
browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction;2


Actual results:

Each press of F1 opens a new Firefox window.


Expected results:

Each press of F1 should open a new tab in the existing Firefox window.

Comment 1

[mrhandle]

I can confirm this on Windows 8 using Visual Studio 2013 Express.
I checked "Open new windows in a new tab instead" and set browser.link.open_newwindow.override.external to 3 but still have the same issue.

Comment 2

[cremor]

Still happening in Firefox 30.
Also, Windows 7 shows the same problem.

Comment 3

[superspart]

A similar problem with Visual Studio 2012 Pro/Express (Windows 7 x64, Firefox 31)

Comment 4

[Lazarin]

Same with Windows Server 2012, Visual Studio 2012 Update 3 and Firefox 33.1.1, build id 20141113143407

browser.link.open_newwindow.* settings are the same as reported by cremor.

Comment 5

[Jens Vegeby]

Same problem here, Windows 7 (x64), Firefox 34.0.5.

Comment 6

[cremor]

Same problem with Visual Studio 2015 and Firefox 39.0