How can I prevent sites from opening private windows?
Many websites, such as Moodle (classroom tool) and YouTube try to open certain new content, especially Google-hosted content, in private windows. In may cases, such as YouTube comment panes, there is now way to avoid this, and even if there is I forget sometimes.
Private windows clog up my Recent Windows history, which I depend on for things like keeping my webcomics organized, and cannot be merged into normal windows in order to prevent this. As a result, if I don't want to do a great deal of of tab reorganizing every day, I can't use any of these sites.
Please tell me how to either disable site-opened private windows, or close private windows without them appearing in my Recently Closed Windows list. Better yet, make the latter a permanent part of the browser; a private window that leaves no traces isn't much good when a snooper can simply reopen it.
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hello dalek955, are you sure that those sites are opening in new private windows (which shouldn't be possible at all for websites to trigger) or just common new windows?
in the first case please try if you can replicate this behaviour when you launch firefox in safe mode once in order to see if an addon might be interfering here: Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems
otherwise you could try tweaking this setting when you enter about:config into the address bar: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.link.open_newwindow
I assume that you mean pop-up windows that might be left unnoticed when they are opened behind the current Firefox window.
You can modify the behavior and change these prefs to open all links in tabs:
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/browser.link.open_newwindow
1: current tab; 2:new window; 3:new tab;
You can change the value of the browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction pref to 0 to open all JavaScript window.open() calls in a tab
You can open the about:config page via the location bar and accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.
_newwindow was already 3, and I edited _newwindow.restriction to 1. Most of the problem children quieted down, but the Google+ validation for things like YouTube commenting didn't. That opened in a new tab too, but then it immediately closed and left me still unable to actually leave the comment.
Some web pages only work with a pop-up window and won't work when you redirect the pop-up to a tab (both windows may have to be visible at the same time). If that is the case then you will have to switch browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction to the default of 2
I have the PrefBar extension with buttons to control some prefs including this pref, so I can quickly swap between 0 and 2 if necessary.
Newwindow.restriction was originally set to -1, not 2. Could that have been the problem?
Is there a way to close windows while specifying that they not appear in the Recently Closed Windows list, or to delete them from said list?
Hi dalek955, I don't know why browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction would have been set to -1, that isn't one of the documented values.
There is a different preference that is set to -1 by default, browser.link.open_newwindow.override.external, but as the name implies, that one isn't relevant to new windows originated from within a Firefox tab.
The windows and tabs listed on the History menu under Recently Closed Tabs and Recently Closed Windows are part of your session history. There are a few add-ons relating to sessions, but I don't know whether any of them allow you to delete an item from the menu. (There is no built-in way to do it.)