[tbb-bugs] #24920 [Applications/Tor Browser]: TBA has tabs and private tabs, we only want private tabs

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#24920: TBA has tabs and private tabs, we only want private tabs
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 Reporter:  sysrqb                            |          Owner:  tbb-team
     Type:  defect                            |         Status:
                                              |  needs_revision
 Priority:  Medium                            |      Milestone:
Component:  Applications/Tor Browser          |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal                            |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  tbb-mobile, TorBrowserTeam201906  |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                                    |         Points:
 Reviewer:                                    |        Sponsor:
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Comment (by sysrqb):

 Replying to [comment:9 gk]:
 > Two things I am unsure about:
 >
 > 1) It's a bit sad to see the look of the browsing experience differ now
 from what we had before as it seems the private mode is differently styled
 (dark grey URL bar e.g.). This is not the case on desktop it seems? We get
 the same look regardless whether we have permanent private browsing mode
 on or off. I have not checked why that's the case, but I feel if possible
 then it is worth aligning the mobile and desktop experience here (and by
 that I mean that we'd ideally not make a visual difference indicating
 which mode we are on to not leak that information).

 This is an interesting point. On desktop, the only visual indication of
 using a normal or private window is in the window's title bar (at least on
 Linux). The theme doesn't change, but on Android the equivalent of "Dark
 theme" is enabled when private tabs are used. Honestly, I'm not sure what
 we should do here. Following Mozilla's lead on this and using the dark
 theme with private tabs, like Fennec does, is the easy solution and tells
 the user "you are currently using private tabs". But, this should be the
 default in Tor Browser, so maybe that visual indicator isn't needed. As an
 alternative, we can use the "normal tab" colors with private tabs like tor
 browser on desktop, and if `autostart` is disabled we can return to using
 the two different color schemes.

 >
 > 2) I spent a bit time trying to figure out why you do
 > {{{
 > +    let isPrivate = (("isPrivate" in aParams) && aParams.isPrivate) ||
 Services.prefs.getBoolPref("browser.privatebrowsing.autostart")
 > }}}
 > Is that for defense-in-depth? Or is there an actual need for that?
 Ideally, I think the check for that pref (or, better: for whether we are
 in private browsing mode or not) should be done somewhere else if it is
 missing and not at this place (but that's a bit hard to say as I am not
 sure why it is needed), but it could get at least a comment explaining why
 it is there.

 Ah, yes, I can add a comment on this. It is needed for when extensions
 open their preferences page. These pages are opened entirely within the
 chrome javascript, so the Java part of this patch is never reached. By
 default, extensions open normal tabs for their preferences.

 >
 > I am leaving this ticket open for addressing 2) and moved along with the
 changes meanwhile to get 9.0a2 built. I cherry-picked them to `tor-
 browser-60.7.0esr-9.0-1` (commits
 6d81ef66c55d5b88f39ee6527f8218b2f2e15cd8,
 1666b0186346ab2769614d3b19bc2058fd6f13f0,
 1bce86ec5cfff504baf6e61b9d356ff74c62b297, and
 41b5dac4943dcf65582f2638fe6d1b5c80127c0a).
 >
 > Could you please based your commits next time on whatever the current
 HEAD of the current tor-browser dev branch points to? I had to debug first
 why my testbuild was failing and it turned out that the Torbutton
 submodule commit you had on your branch did not point to any of the
 Torbutton commits in the repository but to one on a branch in my public
 Torbutton repo. Thus, the build was failing as the submodule update
 failed.
 >


 Sorry for this, yes, I'll be more careful about this in the future.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/24920#comment:10>
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