WebExtensions : Creating tabs on Firefox Android

Add-ons Development
#1

Hello, I am developping my first addon with WebExtensions API (available on AMO here and on GitHub here) and I am facing some issues with Firefox Android about creating tabs:

  1. In Android Firefox Nightly 57.0, in the browserAction popup when a user clicks on a button to open a new tab, the new tab is created but the popup closes and focus is given to the previous active tab (before openning popup). I have to use a setTimeout to focus again the new tab as below.

browser.tabs.create({url: "https://example.com", active: true},function(tab){
   if(android) setTimeout(function(){
      browser.tabs.update(tab.id,{active: true})
   },500);
});
  1. In Android Firefox all versions, API doesn’t provide any method to open a private tab. browser.tabs.create doesn’t accept incognito parameter and the only method is to use browser.windows as below which is not supported on Android.

browser.windows.create({url: "https://example.com", incognito: true});

How to force new tabs to be active from browserAction popup on Android ?
Is there any alternative method to create a private tab on Android ?

#2

Seems like you found a pretty good workaround. Fennec is often somewhat buggy. BrowserActions have only just been added to it, just wait a few versions and the bugs will probably be fixed.

You can specify a cookieStoreId when opening tabs. Maybe you can use that to open private tabs.

#3

Thank you for your reply. However, the value cookieStoreId is not supported in Firefox Android according to MDN.

#4

Dammit. I guess that means all you can do is look for / file a bug.

#5

Ok, I found exactly the same issue reported in bugzilla 4 months ago and there doesn’t seem to be any solution for the next versions of Firefox Android for now.

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