Firefox creates a second dock icon

[Paul Tansom]

When starting Firefox from the default icon that comes with the dock applet used by Mutiny a second icon is created for the running application. The original icon continues to flash. If you click on the original icon it opens a new Firefox window, whereas the new icon brings up the running instance of Firefox.

A temporary fix is to delete the default icon and pin the new one (stored under the user's .local directory structure), but this then needs editing to have the Open a New Window and Open a New Private Window right click options. If you do pin the new one it works as expected and starts Firefox without adding another icon to the dock.

Looking at the newly created .desktop file the key difference seems to be that the Exec line refers to the full path to Firefox:

/usr/bin/firefox %u

instead of just:

firefox %u

I would assume that somehow this is stopping the dock matching the running application to the action of starting it (leaving the icon flashing and resulting in the second one). It could be related to bug #1715236 where other applications run but leave the dock icon flashing.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.10
Package: mate-dock-applet 0.79-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.12.0-12.13-generic 4.12.8
Uname: Linux 4.12.0-12-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.7-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: MATE
Date: Sun Sep 10 12:02:01 2017
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-06-16 (85 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-MATE 17.04 "Zesty Zapus" - Release amd64 (20170412)
SourcePackage: mate-dock-applet
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to artful on 2017-09-01 (8 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package mate-dock-applet - 0.81-0ubuntu1

---------------
mate-dock-applet (0.81-0ubuntu1) bionic; urgency=medium

  * New upstream release. (LP: #1715234, #1730015, #1716218, #1630766)

 -- Martin Wimpress <email address hidden> Wed, 07 Feb 2018 10:37:31 +0000