about: pages fail load in private tabs

[diracdeltas]

Test plan

1. Launch Brave and open a new private tab
2. The new tab should be blank (empty white page)
3. Navigate to about:preferences and confirm that it loads properly
4. Navigate to about:brave and confirm that it loads properly

Original issue description

started happening today or yesterday

[diracdeltas]

actually looks like any about: page in a private tab will just redirect to about:error. @bridiver thoughts?

[bridiver]

opening a private tab triggers a did-fail-load event with for addressUnreachable (-109). Not sure why

[bridiver]

it's really only failing the provision load, but electron fires did-fail-load and did-fail-provisional-load in that method. I'm not sure why it only happens with private tabs, but I have a workaround until we can figure it out.

[bridiver]

maybe not. The workaround still doesn't actually load the page for about:preferences and other non-blank pages

[bridiver]

This is actually not a new issue, we just never noticed that the page didn't actually load. Trying to view about:preferences in a private tab results in a blank page. It probably doesn't make sense to view about pages (other than newtab) in a private session because they don't have their own set of persistent preferences, bookmarks, etc... The workaround I have will at least show newtab instead of error, but I think we should open other about:* pages in a new tab if the url is manually entered into a private tab. about:certerror will also display a blank error page in a private tab.

[bbondy]

Moving t 0.10.1 since there's as workaround

[diracdeltas]

The workaround I have will at least show newtab instead of error, but I think we should open other about:* pages in a new tab if the url is manually entered into a private tab. about:certerror will also display a blank error page in a private tab.

Thanks @bridiver. I believe at least the following pages should be displayable in a private tab:

• about:blank (needed for X-XSS-Protection block mode, and maybe some site functionality)
• about:newtab
• about:certerror
• about:error
• about: safebrowsing

In FF, all the about:about pages are displayable in a private window. In Chrome, at least settings, history, and bookmarks (but not downloads) open in a regular window if you try to open them in incognito mode.

[bbondy]

Moving t 0.10.5 for now.

[bbondy]

cc51723

Was due to incognito manifest setting of spanning not allowing main frame url loads.