Why overriding browser.link.open_newwindow?

[emilio]

firefox-profile-js/lib/firefox_profile.js

Line 32 in 397764d

'browser.link.open_newwindow': '2',

Changes the behavior of target="_blank" links. This is problematic for two reasons:

• It doesn't work on Android (see Clicking link with target="_blank" in Android doesn't work PLUS it breaks debugging and whole add-on mozilla/web-ext#1592 for example)
• Dependent libraries have very confusing behavior as a result, so that when I'm testing web-extensions my links misbehave. I thought at first it was a browser bug (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1598947).

If there's a good reason to change default behavior like that, it'd be good to state why in a comment at least? :)

[saadtazi]

Hi @emilio ,

The default preference were ported from the old python selenium code, which used to be located here (when I created this extension) but has been moved to here. The default prefs are now defined here here (using this build file).

So it seems like the default behaviour is still to use 'browser.link.open_newwindow': '2'. But I might have missed something.

[saadtazi]

I checked my firefox install, it is set to 3 by default...

Note for self: here is an explanation of the different possible values for browser.link.open_newwindow: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.link.open_newwindow .

This link states that the default value is 3 for firefox 2.0 (??? 👀 ???) and newer...

Summary: So this library seems to use the default value used by the default selenium libraries, but I don't understand why the selenium libraries still default to browser.link.open_newwindow = 2.

Any thoughts?

[emilio]

Not sure, the default value in Gecko is defined here: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/a78233c11a6baf2c308fbed17eb16c6e57b6a2ac/browser/app/profile/firefox.js#431

But not sure why other libraries would change it.

[saadtazi]

I wouldn't mind setting it to 3, which will require increasing the major version of this library. Feel free to open a PR if you have time. If you don't have time but still think web-ext could benefit from it, let me know, I'll do it.

[emilio]

I sent mozilla/web-ext#1766 right before opening this issue for web-ext.

I don't know about other users of this library.