Investigate and potentially improve handling of blocked opening of new tab for "Test" feature

[jbphet]

When the user presses the "Test" button in order to try out their translation, our code opens a new tab and puts the translated simulation in it. In our last update to Rosetta we added a feature that allows the client code to log a problem in the server log, and I recently took a look and saw several instances of the following message:

phet-server2.int.colorado.edu rosetta[864582]: error: Client error reported: Unable to open new window

In fact, this occurred 15 times during the month of August.

We may want to investigate this and see if we can make it go away or at least provide the user with a helpful message if they run into this.

[jbphet]

I asked ChatGPT about why this might be happening, and one of the things it said was essentially that Safari might not like they way the Rosetta code tries to open the test window.

@Nancy-Salpepi - I think you mostly work on Mac, right? Can you try using the Test feature on the live version of Rosetta from Safari and see if it works okay for you? Thanks.

[Nancy-Salpepi]

The behavior is the same as when I press Test in PhET-iO Studio. The first time, it will be blocked. Once I allow pop-ups, there isn't an issue.

TranslationUtility.mp4

[jbphet]

I just checked Rosetta's log, and found the following instance of the error report:

Sep 04 11:39:37 phet-server2.int.colorado.edu rosetta[864582]: error: Client error reported: Unable to open new window

There is no easy way to confirm that this came from @Nancy-Salpepi's testing, but it's very likely that it did given the timing. This gives me a reasonable degree of confidence that this is the scenario that other translators are encountering that causes this to be logged.

[jbphet]

@Nancy-Salpepi - Let's try one more thing. I uploaded a simple test page to https://phet-dev.colorado.edu/jb-tests/test-window-open.html. This page has two buttons, each of which should open a new tab, but they do it in slightly different ways. Can you please test this and see if there is any difference in Safari's behavior between the two buttons?

[Nancy-Salpepi]

@jbphet neither of the tabs were blocked. When Tab 1 button was pressed, a new tab was created, but the focus stayed on the original test-window. When Tab 2 button was pressed, the new tab was opened and focus moved to that tab.

tabsNotBlocked.mp4