Privacy state of externally opened tabs depends on currently selected tab

[ssokolow]

If I click a link in Thunderbird or run firefox something.html in my terminal, whether or not it's private depends on which tab is currently selected.

Given that, with a separate private window, externally-opened tabs always appear on the non-private window, it seems more intuitive that the same behaviour be preserved by Private Tab. (Especially since, if it happens unexpectedly, it could leak information by unintentionally granting an arbitrary site access to the cookie store for the private tabs.)

Edit: Looks like this problem used to occur in Firefox without extensions and Private Tab just broke the fix they made for it: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=829180

[Infocatcher]

It makes sense.
Especially considering fix for browser itself.

This is
resource:///components/nsBrowserContentHandler.js
handURIToExistingBrowser() (thanks for link to Firefox patch)
=>
chrome://browser/content/browser.js

    window.QueryInterface(Ci.nsIDOMChromeWindow).browserDOMWindow =
      new nsBrowserAccess();

=>
nsBrowserAccess.prototype.openURI()

And there is 3 variants for browser.link.open_newwindow.override.external preference:

Ci.nsIBrowserDOMWindow.OPEN_CURRENTWINDOW // 1
Ci.nsIBrowserDOMWindow.OPEN_NEWWINDOW // 2
Ci.nsIBrowserDOMWindow.OPEN_NEWTAB // 3

[Added 2013-08-24] See browser.link.open_external preference for SeaMonkey.

But only OPEN_NEWWINDOW and OPEN_NEWTAB may be detected without additional patches for built-in functions.

[ssokolow]

Ugh. I recognize that preference and I do have it set to OPEN_CURRENTWINDOW.

Heck, the only difference between what I've cobbled together and "single window mode" as implemented by various extensions is that I can still force a new window if I want.

[Infocatcher]

Looks fixed, but not fully tested.
Test version: private_tab-0.1.2pre1-fx-sm.xpi (source).

[Infocatcher]

Looks fixed, but not fully tested.

Works fine for me, closed.