Same links from external apps opening in same tabs

[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 or iOS of course), 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).
It might be that when Safari receives a URL from another app it overrides target="_blank" by inserting a target name unique to the URL – perhaps a hash of the URL. That way, each subsequent time the browser receives a request for the URL, it will load it into its appropriate tab.
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 soon in Firefox.

[Jon]

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[Anonymous]

> 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.

Anything besides the "reloading" part sounds like this:  (as long as the link target url is the same)

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dontopenduptab/

[jcady]

Thanks @Anonymous. I've installed your add-on, but for me (Mac OS X 10.12.6) it doesn't seem to work for links coming in from other applications, like Mail, etc. Is it supposed to?

[Anonymous]

@jcady  Seems you are right, that was actually something i did not expect, since my addon hooks into the tab creation  event.  ... I might have to see if there is anything i can do to improve that. Thanks for letting me know.

[Anonymous]

@jcady

The Bug/Issue seems to have been accepted.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1766116

You can add your vote if you want to show that this is of relevance to you.

And as soon as it is fixed, the addon should work as expected. 

Thought i'd let you know.

[heaversm]

Yes! This happens a lot when I am reading developer documentation and I want to keep tabs open for various links from the docs. I often forget if the tab is open or not, and if so, where, because all the tabs have the same title visible in the tab bar. I end up getting a lot of duplicate tabs when all I want is to bring a tab into focus.