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Issue 740293 link

Starred by 2 users
Status: WontFix
Owner: ----
Closed: Jul 2017
Cc:
b...@chromium.org
Components:
EstimatedDays: ----
NextAction: ----
OS: Windows
Pri: 2
Type: Bug-Regression



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target="_blank" links overwrite (reuse) existing tab in Chrome 59?

Reported by dedaim...@gmail.com, Jul 8 2017 
UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/59.0.3071.115 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce the problem:
1. Write a webpage containing with several href links, with target="_blank".  All of the links should go to an external website (on a different domain than the current site).  At least two of them should go to the same external webpage (though perhaps with different arguments).  Another should go to a different external webpage.
2. Click on the links and see what happens. 

What is the expected behavior?
In previous version of chrome each target="_blank" would open in a new window.   If you clicked on two links for the same external site, you would get two windows showing that site.

What went wrong?
After the chrome 59 upgrade we are now seeing:
1) target="_blank" links open in new tab rather than new window.  This change we can live with, but,
2) If two links to the same external site are clicked, the second one does not get it's own tab - instead it replaces (reuses/overwrites?) the tab for the first link.  This is a BIG problem for us.  We have multiple links to a genome browser that are all the same webpage but with different parameters (genomic coordinates).  These each need to open in a separate page/tab for comparison.

Did this work before? Yes We believe 58.x, but still trying to confirm that.  Definitely 56.x

Chrome version: 59.0.3071.115  Channel: stable
OS Version: 6.1 (Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2)
Flash Version: Shockwave Flash 26.0 r0

Comment 1 by woxxom@gmail.com, Jul 8 2017 

>target="_blank" links open in new tab rather than new window.

For me such links opened in tabs for the last 10 years or so in Chrome and Firefox, IIRC.
Anyway I couldn't reproduce the issue using a simple test html in Chrome 58, 59, 60, 61:

  <a href="http://example.com" target="_blank">link 1</a><br>
  <a href="http://example.com" target="_blank">link 2</a>

BTW the test team would need a test URL to be able to bisect the cause. 
If you're working through the weekend, try bisecting yourself, it's quite easy,
see https://www.chromium.org/developers/bisect-builds-py

Comment 2 by b...@chromium.org, Jul 9 2017

Labels: Needs-Feedback
Adding Needs-Feedback label because a test URL was requested in Comment #1.

As a temporary workaround, you can use "Open link in new tab" or Ctrl+click, until this regression is fixed.

Comment 3 by dedaim...@gmail.com, Jul 10 2017 

Unfortunately the original websites where we're seeing the issue are secure internal site, so I can't share the link.   You're right though, when I re-made a simple html file with the some of the same links in it they do not exhibit the same tab re-use behavior, despite being the exact same html.   I'm investigating further, these sites have security and persistent session cookies and perhaps something in that is influencing chrome's behavior.
Project Member

Comment 4 by sheriffbot@chromium.org, Jul 10 2017

Cc: b...@chromium.org
Labels: -Needs-Feedback
Thank you for providing more feedback. Adding requester "bnc@chromium.org" to the cc list and removing "Needs-Feedback" label.

For more details visit https://www.chromium.org/issue-tracking/autotriage - Your friendly Sheriffbot

Comment 5 by woxxom@gmail.com, Jul 10 2017 

Reporter, make sure "_blank" doesn't contain any zero-width unicode characters.

Comment 6 by dedaim...@gmail.com, Jul 10 2017 

Sorry, on further digging there was some "hidden" javascript on this page we weren't aware of.   Its catching the clicks on these links and calling "window.open"   

Looks like the problem is extra arguments in window.open, which has already been well discussed in other issues (e.g https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=738477, https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=732784)

Comment 7 by b...@chromium.org, Jul 10 2017

Status: WontFix (was: Unconfirmed)
Based on Comment #6 I'm closing this issue.  Thank you for following up.
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