Introduction
A little-known feature of web browsers is their ability to duplicate a tab. Say you have navigated through a few pages, but would like to branch off: this allows you to copy the tab, and navigate to different pages in each tab. Each tab has a copy of the navigation history so far.
However, this feature can cause issues with web applications, which keep much more complex state compared with simple web pages. In the case of Orbeon Forms, it usually does not make sense to be able to duplicate the state of a form. For example, if you are following a simple workflow to fill out form data, branching off in the middle of the workflow and saving two different versions of the completed form is very likely to be incompatible with the business logic.
Introducing a warning message
Until now, Orbeon Forms would let you duplicate the tab, but you would get an error after using the copied tab. With Orbeon Forms 2024.1.3, we have added duplicate tab detection, which will warn you if you try to duplicate a tab.
While it is not possible to prevent the browser from trying to duplicate the tab, but we can detect the situation once the new tab is open, and tell the user that the new tab will not be usable. In fact, we make sure that the new tab is only able to show the user a message, and we disable the form’s functionality.
We hope you will like this new feature of Orbeon Forms 2024.1.3!