242844 - "Close Other Tabs" Needs a Confirmation Dialog

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: General, defect, P4)

Description

[Tim Meader]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a) Gecko/20040506 Firefox/0.8.0+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a) Gecko/20040506 Firefox/0.8.0+

Borrowed from the NUMEROUS complaints and requests on this bug:

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=191578

-----------
Please add a confirmation to 'Close Other Tabs'.

For a second time I have mistakenly slipped from 'Close Tab' to 'Close Other
Tabs', and lost all of the tabs I wanted to keep (some of which had
half-completed forms in them).

I really think a confirmation dialogue would fit in. One appears when you
attempt to close a browser window that has several tabs.

Please add a 'Close Other Tabs' confirmation dialogue, before I lose more
important browser sessions.
----------------

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Open more than one tab.
2.Right click on the tab to bring up that tab's context menu.
3.Go down intending to hit "Close Tab"... accidently hit "Close Other Tabs"
4.All work in other tabs is lost.

Actual Results:  
Very often all work in 5+ tabs is blown away.

Expected Results:  
Prompt the user that he wants to close (number of) other tabs. This is EXACTLY
like the behavior that Firefox now has with closing the browser when there are
multiple tabs open. Also including the checkbox to warn you or not in the
future. Again, just like the current close behavior.

Comment 1

[Tim Meader]

Attachment: Same patch that is currently under review for the Suite

I've applied this here on the recommendation of the [e-mail], since he
mentioned that the other bug didn't apply to Firefox.  I realize that the
authors of the Suite and the authors of Firefox have different GUI ideals from
time to time. However, since the same type of dialog discussed here is already
in place for when you close the window, I can't see how there could be an
objection to this. This is  a BIG dataloss problem that has hit quite a few of
us many times.

Comment 2

[Andrew Hagen]

Confirming bug. This is a defect, not an enhancement. Dataloss.

The Mozilla-the-suite analogue of this bug is bug 191578.

Comment 3

[Tim Meader]

Attachment: Modified patch (removing the Suite code, and incorporating suggestions from jag)

This should be the final patch, assuming that jag approves of the changes made
in the Suite bug.

Comment 4

[Tim Meader]

I've submitted the patch for the Suite for final review. And barring any
problems, I'm hoping it will get put in. Once, that happens, hopefully the
simple patch for Firefox can get put in and we can clear this up once and for all.

Comment 5

[Tim Meader]

Attachment: Final version (taking into account jag and dragon's changes)

Fingers crossed. If the Suite one gets accepted, I'll submit this for review.

Comment 6

[Tim Meader]

Attachment: Fixed one conditional and variable name per Jag... Final version

There was one variable that wasn't named per the form used in the file, and one
conditional had to be added as was spotted by jag on the Suite version.

Submitting for review pending Suite version landing on trunk.

Comment 7

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

Needs discussion, +ing to invoke it. 

Comment 8

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

if we moved Close Tab to the top (which is another bug, but it makes sense) and
left this at the bottom, we might have a better solution than this, since the
idea is that its easy to miss and hit Close Other Tabs.  (Personally I use
middle-click regardless of platform, so its irrelevant to me :)

this is another one of those "stupid first-time dialogs that drive users nuts
until they get them all disabled" that make dialogs useless as warning devices.

Comment 9

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

For me, this isn't another one of those because I would not disable this dialog.
I usually go through tabs one by one before I close them. I will rarely be doing
"Close Other Tabs", if ever, and therefore I'd keep it enabled as a safety
measure. I assume a large number of people would do the same. 

Comment 10

[Tim Meader]

In the Suite related bug, there was quite a discussion of moving around the menu
as well, with no real resolution yet. The fact that it seemed to be going
nowhere fast was what caused me to go ahead and open this bug here and submit
the patches.

I agree that some of the pop up dialogs in Mozilla and Firefox are rather
annoying, but the ones I would classify as annoying would be the same ones that
Internet Explorer shares in this regard. I don't know a single person that opts
to have the "Warn when going from ____ type of page to ____ type of page"
dialogs continue to show up after their first appearance. However, the first
extension that 5 people I know who use Firefox downloaded after installing 0.8
was the TabWarning one to pop up a dialog when they had more than one tab open
and went to close the browser. People make mistakes, and they don't want to lose
all their work when they do. The fact of the matter is that it's a minor
inconvenience for people to have to deal with a one time dialog box if they
truly use "Close Other Tabs" all the time. However, people get turned off to a
product REAL fast if it has a situation where they can potentially lose data
like with this bug or the already fixed Close Window with Multiple Tabs. I would
wager that a large majority NEVER use Close Other Tabs to begin with, and thus a
small protection to help them out when they accidently activate this feature
would not do any harm.

The only other thing I wanted to add was that, while I too use the middle click
to close tabs often on my desktop PC... the middle click option is rarely
available for laptop users, unless it's a right+left combo click, and
non-existant on Power and iBooks, and most Macs in general.

Comment 11

[Tim Meader]

Also, while I would personally have no problem with moving "Close Tab" to the
top of the list (if only to match Mozilla Suite in this regard)... I would argue
against changing the menu ordering around too drastically. People develop muscle
memory to small frequent mouse movements that become REALLY embedded in their
usage of a product. If it is decided eventually to rearrange the menu, I would
shoot for that being the final change. One reason my friend stopped using the
Mozilla Suite was that he got fed up with the constant movement of right click
tab menu options. Everytime something would change position on the menu, there
would be a one to two day readjustment period where he was constantly hitting
the wrong selection. In the short term, I would rank a pop-up as a MUCH more
viable fix. If the menu gets rearranged sometime down the road, then once the
odds of accidently hitting "Close Other Tabs" drops to nill, the normal response
for people like netdragon and me would be to then simply change to unchecking it
and not having it show up anymore... I don't see this as too large an issue either.

Side note, I do currently prefer Firefox's tab right click menu though, since it
follows the natural "New ___" first layout that all standard "File" menu items
share.

Okay, no more talking about menu reorderring from me ;)

Comment 12

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

The annoying ones are just kinda "cover our behinds" message boxes, like when
you first submit a form. Those would be encountered continuously, whereas this
one would be kinda rare, and most people would probably appreciate it after
their heart skips a beat because they click the wrong place. I really don't
think there is a way you can rearrange the menu to do anything but deter
clicking in the wrong place. Its going to happen to people regardless of how you
order the menu.

> I would wager that a large majority NEVER use Close Other Tabs to begin with

Like me, and I can't imagine the small minority who use it a lot use it more
than a few times a day.

This will not preclude rearranging the menu, just supplement it. If people don't
like the message box, they can turn it off. Its better there than not there.

The discussion about reordering the menu is here:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=512622

There is really no corresponding bug to go with it, nor really should there be
until there is a decision, because that's a decision that will only be made by
the people who make the final UI decisions.

Comment 13

[Stefan P. Wolf]

Sorry if this is a stupid comment (if so, just tell me frankly):

I personally would want the warning (as I would never really want to click
"close all tabs" -- if this is what I want, I would close the whole window
after Ctrl-N for opening a new one) 

BUT

the CONSTANT warning (if I would keep on clicking this function accidentally) 
would also annoy me.

The NATURAL solution would be to have a means to get rid of the unwanted 
function (better: all unwanted options) by disabling or by removing them
from the menu.

So now the stupid (?) suggestion:

Could the warning toggle do three things: 

1) "close all tabs" function enabled, warnings on
2) "close all tabs" function enabled, warnings off
3) "close all tabs" function disabled OR removed from menu

???

I mean, the GUI is based on a toolkit that allows post-compile modification
resp. configuration, doesn't it? This would be the perfect place to use it!

Alternatively the warning could have a link called "Click here to learn
how to disable unwanted menu items or how to remove items from a menus"
pointing to a short introduction to Moz/Firefox GUI tweaking.

Best regards, Stefan.

Comment 14

[Tim Meader]

Stephen, the popup would be identical almost to the one that exists now for when
you close a window with multiple tabs. It prompts you,warning about what is
about to occur, and how many tabs will be affected by it. There is a small
checkbox in the bottom left of the popup that will, if unchecked, allow you to
never see the popup again.

Also, just to be clear... this is "Close Other Tabs"... not "Close All Tabs". 
It closes everytab except the currently active one.  Like you said, "Close All
Tabs" would essentially be "Close Window" or "Close Browser".  There is no
"Close All Tabs" in either product to my knowledge.

Comment 15

[Tim Meader]

This is essentially what it looks like:

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=191578#c20

Comment 16

[ken hamilton]

Sorry if this is slightly OT, but since I have kvetched here before,
I cannot resist commenting now because two posters have mentioned the
"middle-click option".  I never knew about this.  Since the only option
I ever want is "close this tab", this solves my problem (in Windows via 
clicking the mousewheel).  I'm surpised because I don't remember seeing 
this workaround mentioned before.  I wonder what other middle-button
shortcuts might exist, and how users stuck in the 2-button paradigm might
discover them?

Comment 17

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Stefan: You can customize the toolbars in Firefox (but not context menus yet),
and I'm sure there are bugs for allowing additional things to be customized.
Yes, it would be doable, and would require a bit of a rewrite of the interface
code. Still, its a different enhancement request. :-)

For now, just unpack your chrome and modify tabbrowser.xml

ken: Three button mouse emulation. Clicking left and right buttons at the same
time functions as a middle if you have it enabled in mouse properties of the OS.
Middle-click close doesn't exist on Linux, and personally I'm against it on Win32.

Comment 18

[Tim Meader]

Last comment about this:

There is one other middle click feature that I use all the time, which is middle
clicking on a link to open it in a new tab. Extremely useful. 

However, to get back to the reason that middle click to close should not even be
taken into account as a consideration for not implementing this (I realize that
you didn't expressly say that was a reason, but just pointed out you only use
middle click)... laptops.

It just occurred to me that 8 out of the probably nine to ten times this problem
has hit me was when I was using a laptop away from home. VERY few if any laptops
have a middle click button to use shortcuts like open in new tab and close tab.
In addition, a lot of people, myself included, use the touchpad as both the
cursor movement and the left click button. Obviously ones accuracy decreases
slightly (to largely) depending on how steady a hand they have. I wouldn't say
I'm "surgeon like" but I do have a relatively stable hand, but even so, 8 times
this has hit me has been after right-clicking, moving the cursor down to "Close
Tab", lifting my finger to tap, then coming down ever so slightly above "Close
Tab"... but far enough that "Close Other Tabs" was hit instead. The last time
this happened I was paying bills... I had five other tabs open, all in sessions
that required me to log in via a username and password. Believe me, the minor
annoyance of a popup after my mistake would have PALED in comparison to the vast
annoyance of having to log back in to five different websites. That is the kind
of thing that many would see happen once, and then ditch the product entirely.

Comment 19

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Besides, middle-click close isn't supported on Linux.

Its also known that once we implement the delink tabs feature (bug 102132),
we'll probably remove the "Close other tabs" option.

Comment 20

[Stefan P. Wolf]

Tim, yes, sorry for the typo -- of course it's "close other tabs".

My idea was to actually "enhance" the warning dialog to allow complete
removal of the dangerous menu item. This would IMHO be better than moving 
the function to a safer spot in the menu -- I guess from the commnets that 
most people who want to move would even more prefer to REmove the function.
I would.

But Brian gave the relevant hint, context menus are not customizable at
runtime. If they were, this indeed would be a "good thing" (tm)

Stefan.

Comment 21

[Tim Meader]

Attachment: Resubmitting final patch, to mirror patch that was checked into Mozilla Trunk

I've gone ahead and brought this up-to-date with the analogous patch that was
checked in for Mozilla Suite. Hopefully this can get looked at soon, and
checked in if there's no issues. The one checked into Mozilla Suite has been
working fine for me for the past week+, as for several others I've heard from
thanking me for finally patching the Mozilla Suite version of this issue.

Submitting for review to [e-mail]

Comment 22

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

(In reply to comment #19)
> Besides, middle-click close isn't supported on Linux.
sure it is, you just need to disable the stupid middlemouse.paste pref first.

FYI, I don't think blake's done anything on Firefox in three months, not the
best reviewer to pick.

Also, you can always use userContent.css to permanently hide the menuitem, its
just not something you can really do on the fly.  In theory we could even have a
pref to do that, but we're not going to do that.

Comment 23

[Tim Meader]

Comment on attachment 148766 [details] [diff] [review]
Resubmitting final patch, to mirror patch that was checked into Mozilla Trunk

I was just going by who this was assigned to, sorry. If you don't mind, I'll
set it to you for review, unless you can give me another suggestion? I know who
I used for the review for the Mozilla Suite, but I'm assuming it's a different
group for Firefox, at least for interface stuff like this.

Please let me know when you get the chance.

Comment 24

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

I still don't think we need this, I'll let ben make the final call though.

Comment 25

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

> sure it is, you just need to disable the stupid middlemouse.paste pref first

I did that and it didn't make a difference.

But here is the thing: Removing the menu item doesn't solve the issue, nor does
re-arranging the items. The reason is that basically in the first case, we are
taking away choice of the user. The user should be allowed to choose to have the
item on there, but only use it once in a blue moon. Still, he could accidentally
choose it when he doesn't want to. Rearranging the items is a deterrent, and it
might not even help those with major disabilities.

The patch is there, written, the code change is minor, the affects are arguably
nothing but positive. Only one more pref is needed.

Comment 26

[Tim Meader]

Not to spam this too much... but I just wanted to say one last time that the
small "hassle" that anyone who actually MEANS to use Close Other Tabs has to go
through (ie - click Yes on a dialog box one time, and unchecking the pref) PALES
in comparison to the people that accidently hit that menu option, losing all
their work. One is a condition where the user might say "Yes, damnit, of course
I want to close the other tabs." and then never have to see it again. The other
condition is where one might say... well... I won't say it here, but it involves
explatives, and a general distaste for Firefox from that point on. I don't feel
that the menu item should be eliminated. It use a useful function, and one that
I'm sure comes in handy for many. But a little hand-holding for those who don't
use it regularly, and merely stumble upon it at the worst possible time... can't
be too bad.

Comment 27

[Tim Meader]

Comment on attachment 148766 [details] [diff] [review]
Resubmitting final patch, to mirror patch that was checked into Mozilla Trunk

Setting to mconnor for review, since Blake seems to be gone at the moment :(

Comment 28

[Bernard Alleysson]

Have you ever considered adding a "File | Undo Close Tabs" command ?
Personally I will disable the confirmation dialog because it's annoying and I'll
be beaten again! I would prefer "Undo Close Tabs". Maybe there's another bug for
that.

Comment 29

[José Jeria]

Attachment: Opera dialog screenshot

Opera has a "Do not show this dialog again" checkbox, this would be good to let
the user decide to have this or not

Comment 30

[Tim Meader]

Comment #29, this patch already has that included. Thanks though.

Comment #28, Tabbed Browser Extensions already has the feature you're
requesting. This is for the bug mentioned ONLY.

Comment 31

[Blake Ross]

Fixed.

Comment 32

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

I find it strange that bug 218565, which has the exact same summary, was marked
WONTFIX while this one was fixed. Was that a case of someone without authority
WONTFIXing it?

Comment 33

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

*** Bug 218565 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 34

[Brad Cardwell]

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7)
Gecko/20040723 Firefox/0.9.1+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7)
Gecko/20040723 Firefox/0.9.1+  

It looks like that the original patch offered up to fix Bugzilla Bug
242844("Close Other Tabs needs a confirmation dialog") was mutilated by someone
just before landing on the aviary branch about 7/13/2004. The option to disable
browser.tabs.warnOnCloseOther does not work. So you get the
confirmation(warning) dialog in every instance or you don't get it at all
depending on the value of browser.tabs.warnOnClose which defaults to true. I
doubt this was actually intended?  We should be able to disable
browser.tabs.warnOnCloseOther separately from browser.tabs.warnOnClose! 

Comment 35

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Blake: Reopening

Firefox 7/26, browser.tabs.warnOnCloseOther isn't in about:config, even when I
explicitly set it in prefs.js. 
I don't get the confirmation dialog either with my current profile or a new one.

When I download the Firefox Linux nightly, I don't see warnOnCloseOther in
all.js,  yet I see warnOnCloseOther in
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/modules/libpref/src/init/all.js#140 

What is going on? Did the trees get screwed up or something?

Comment 36

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

WFM !
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040723
Firefox/0.9.1+

Why don't you verify with others before reopening this bug ?

Comment 37

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Two people seeing the same behavior is enough to reopen. We'll wait to see if
others see the same issue. As of yet, its 2-1, meaning its more likely to fail
than not. Besides, you didn't describe what worked and what didn't.

Comment 38

[Blake Ross]

The pref is browser.tabs.warnOnClose not browser.tabs.warnOnCloseOther.
browser.tabs.warnOnCloseOther doesn't do anything. I'll remove the pref. This is
only fixed on the branch now, I'll check it in on the trunk soon. I have my own
system for tracking that. I believe this is fixed. Reopen with compelling
evidence please.

Comment 39

[Brad Cardwell]

(In reply to comment #36)
> WFM !
> Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040723
> Firefox/0.9.1+
> 
> Why don't you verify with others before reopening this bug ?

Comment 40

[Tim Meader]

Blake, the warnOnCloseOther in all.js is used by Mozilla Suite 1.8.  If you
remove it completely from that file in all trees, please be sure to rewrite the
Mozilla Suite patch as well to take its removal into account. Personally, I
don't feel that the all this trouble was worth having the dialog box say "1 tab"
instead of "1 tab(s)" as the original patch did. If there was a good reason
beyond that though, thanks for taking the time to address it before checkin.

Comment 41

[Brad Cardwell]

(In reply to comment #36)
> WFM !
> Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040723
> Firefox/0.9.1+
> 
> Why don't you verify with others before reopening this bug ?

sorry.  Let me try again.  Maybe I'm confused.  Is it now possible to keep
confirmation dialog for closing browser window with multiple tabs still open BUT
disable confirmation dialog for closing multiple "other" tabs ( when browser
window remains open)?  Yes would be WFM.  Otherwise
pref("browser.tabs.warnOnClose", true); appears to generate confirmation dialog
in all cases of multiple tab closing whether browser window is about to be
closed or not.

Comment 42

[Tim Meader]

The situation is that, prior to checkin, Blake modified the patch I submitted
rather extensively. He changed it so that 1) when you are down to only 2 tabs
remaining, the dialog generated says "1 tab" instead of "1 tab(s)", and 2) so
that the warning dialog for Close Other Tabs and the warning dialog for closing
the window with multiple tabs open use the same preference in the backend. I had
a rather lengthy discussion about the reasoning behind this with both blake and
mconnor (moreso mconnor) on IRC a few days back. While I can understand their
reasoning (the two actions both involve warnings for closing multiple tabs), I
still don't agree that that the two operations should be linked like that.
However, I don't plan on fighting about it any more, as personally, I keep both
warnings enabled. My only concern at this point is that if something is done to
the all.js file, it will in turn break Mozilla Suite 1.8, which got this warning
dialog about 2 months prior to the Firefox one being checked in.

Anyhow, that should bring everyone up to date on this bug.

Comment 43

[Brad Cardwell]

Got it.  Well I tried.  Thanks all.