Same link from an app opening in a same tab

[jcady]

Let's say that Firefox is your default browser and that you manage your mail with an email client.

When you click on a URL link in an email message, FF will open up the corresponding page in a new tab. If you click again on the same link, FF will open up that same page in yet another new tab, and so on.

This doesn't seem too inconvenient. But if you set your default browser to Safari (on Mac and iOS anyway - I haven't yet tested this with Windows), it appears that the browser first checks to see if a page for that same URL is already open. And if it is, it will simply reload that page in its tab and bring that tab into focus in the browser window.

This behavior isn't limited email clients. It appears to apply to any app that uses weblinks (and doesn't have its own browser integrated into it).

From the user standpoint, this is a really nice feature, but it's also a plus for app developers to better streamline how their apps might work with browsers. It works so well in Safari I'm hoping that we'll see it showing up soon in Firefox.

[jscher2000]

Apple discontinued Safari for Windows a long time ago, so this is news to me.

Developers can code links with a specific target. If the link is intended to ALWAYS open in a new tab, they specify target="_blank" and if they want to re-use a second tab over and over, the use a named window/tab, for example, target="myApp".

It sounds like Safari is overriding target="_blank" by switching tabs if that URL is open in a separate tab. Or maybe if it was opened from the same site in a separate tab.

You may have noticed that Firefox does offer switching to an open tab in the address bar drop-down, but I don't think that is an option with links currently. As far as I can tell, it would need to be a new feature. I guess one question would be whether people would find it confusing if the open tab was distant from the current page. Would be interesting to test.

As far as this Connect site goes, I don't know whether you should re-post this in the Ideas section or whether this Discussion is fine. Not sure how they spot promising ideas.

[jcady · Accepted solution]

Thanks for that info.

I tried out using target="myWindow1", target="myWindow2", etc., in an HTML doc and it works quite nicely. If each link has its own distinct target name, then clicking on a given link will always take you back to its specific tab, instead of opening a new tab every time.

Your explanation sounds right that Safari would be overriding target="_blank" when a URL is already open in another tab. In that case, perhaps Safari generates a name for the window/tab, based on the URL, for incoming requests.

After a bit of digging, it looks like Connect is the right place to request features, although I might want to start a new thread with "Feature Request" in the subject.