[webapp-container] Outside links don't always open in overlay

It is not a bug it is the intended behavior, the decision to change the behavior to open an overlay in all the highlighted situations does not seem as obvious to me since the websites intent is slightly different in the two cases.

A command line option might be a good intermediate solution until we have a more definitive answer.

Adding design to the discussion to answer the question:

should all the urls external to a webapp be opened as an overlay or in the default browser (as it is the case now)

Well that question doesn't quite accurately capture the current scenario with "as it is the case now". Currently we have some external URLs opening in an overlay and some in the Browser app, depending on how the link is constructed by the webpage author.

But I agree with the question's premise that all external URLs should be treated the same.

And I'd welcome a command line switch to give some control to a webapp author.

not really no, the intent behind the link is not the same in the two cases, as expressed by the target="_blank" for which the intended behavior is not the same as an "in browser view" navigation to a new url,

By that logic, _blank should open in Browser and non-blank should be in an overlay, right? Since an "in browser view" is closest to an overlay. But that's the opposite of what happens today.

As a webapp author, I don't have control of which the web site uses though. In my concrete case, I have a webapp for theoldreader.com (an RSS feed reader, which always uses _blank) and one for m.reddit.com (reddit, which doesn't use _blank).

But in both cases, I believe an overlay is the best experience. Switching to the Browser is a huge context switch. And temporary page views (as happens with RSS and reddit) tend to leave lots of tabs left over in Browser.

So at least as a webapp author, I'd like the option to enable overlays for non-_blank links. But let's hear from Design too.

This bug was fixed in the package webbrowser-app - 0.23+16.04.20160405-0ubuntu1

---------------
webbrowser-app (0.23+16.04.20160405-0ubuntu1) xenial; urgency=medium

  * Add --open-external-url-in-overlay option to allow externals urls
    (not part of patterns) are opened in overlays instead of external
    browser (LP: #1548575)
  * Handle live updates to theme color meta tag and reflect them in the
    top bar background color (LP: #1550754)
  * Set address bar text color to a darker version of the theme color if
    one is defined in a webapp (LP: #1548573)

 -- Alexandre Abreu <email address hidden> Tue, 05 Apr 2016 15:42:59 +0000