Firefox "pinned tab" causes DS to launch selected IdP in new tab

Nothing we can do about this. Its a firefox 'feature'.

A large 'Thank yo' to all for the helpful comments.

So pretty much by design then I guess.

So, after 2.5 years I had zero memory I reported this. Heh. I think because the pinned tab feature is awful and useless and I stopped using it.

We can create an INFRA issue to look at dup'ing the EDS onto the two SP sites instead of sharing it on a separate vhost, but that's probably not happening soon.

I suspect that the different behavior springs from some sort of usability helper in firefox which infers a "open in new tab".

Firefox seems to check host name in href i.e. it seems to open in new tab when different host. Occasionally it opens in the same tab, though (e.g. auto redirection by HTTP status 302, form GET).

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pinned-tabs-keep-favorite-websites-open

• Links to other websites open in a new tab so that your Pinned Tab doesn't change.

  • Many web apps, like Facebook, already do this but a Pinned Tab will make this happen even when the website isn't set to do it.

So if you have EDS on wiki.shibboleth.net, this issue will disappear.

I'm not sure whether it helps, but the distinction between the icon link and the drop down is that the former is a <a href="....">

<a href="https://wiki.shibboleth.net/confluence/Shibboleth.sso/Login?SAMLDS=1&amp;os_destination=%2F&amp;target=ss%3Amem%3A50a5f58023ab155c0e0bf818655a1f716b3ab1e55bfbb8b0519da3fc79f4f330&amp;entityID=https%3A%2F%2Fidp2.iay.org.uk%2Fidp%2Fshibboleth">
<div class="IdPSelectPreferredIdPImg">
<img alt="SDSS (Fountainhall)" src="https://idp2.iay.org.uk/images/heads_80x80.jpg" height="80" width="69">
</div>
<div class="IdPSelectTextDiv">SDSS (Fountainhall)</div>
</a>

And that the latter is a form submission

<form autocomplete="OFF" method="GET" action="https://wiki.shibboleth.net/confluence/Shibboleth.sso/Login">
<input value="1" name="SAMLDS" type="hidden">
<input value="/" name="os_destination" type="hidden">
<input value="ss:mem:50a5f58023ab155c0e0bf818655a1f716b3ab1e55bfbb8b0519da3fc79f4f330" name="target" type="hidden">
<input id="idpSelectInput" type="text">
<input value="https://idp2.iay.org.uk/idp/shibboleth" name="entityID" type="hidden">
<input id="idpSelectSelectButton" value="Continue" type="submit">
</form>

I suspect that the different behavior springs from some sort of usability helper in firefox which infers a "open in new tab". This can be confirmed by clicking on the "help" link in both pinned (open in new tab) and unpinned (open is same tab) tabs.

Confirmed. Note that I could not reproduce this with a page (pinned) which has a hyperlink to a secured page.