523140 - Improve language of "Start New Session" string in about:sessionrestore

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[Michael Kohler [:mkohler]]

Follow-up of bug 477322.

Mike Beltzner suggested in that bug to rename "Start New Session" to "Close":

> - changing the text of "Start New Session" to "Close" (probably needs a new
> bug so we don't get held up on string freeze)

Comment 1

[u88484]

"Close" is not descriptive and in turn not helpful at all.

I haven't seen this page in a while so I'm going off memory here.  Users are present with a list of tabs and windows that were opened when the browser crashed.  So they can either select the option to "Start New Session" or "Restore Session" (Restore session restores the selected tabs and windows).

Mike, how is "Close" going to let the user know what is going to happen when they close that page?  They are not informed that closing the page will start a new session and their tabs and windows will be lost.  Also, with the tabs and windows having check boxes (Which I think are by default all selected) users may think that instantapply is in effect and those tabs and windows will be restored.

Comment 2

[Robin Berjon]

Switching it to "Close" certainly wouldn't help, but it's vital that there be a confirmation dialog for this action. I regularly lose my session because "Start New..." sounds like the right thing to click, and Firefox gives me no chance to fix my mistake before wiping everything out. Just saying "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO WIPE OUT DAYS OF CAREFULLY ACCUMULATED RESEARCH AND CRY FOR AN HOUR AFTERWARDS" in a big scary confirm dialog default to "OMG NO!" should do the trick.

Comment 3

[Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (not bugmail, email directly)]

FWIW, you can press the back button after you press "start new session" and then restore your session.

Comment 4

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

(In reply to Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] from comment #3)
> FWIW, you can press the back button after you press "start new session" and
> then restore your session.

OMG you can? I did not know that. That's amazing! I lost a complete set of tabs SO MANY TIMES now because I accidentally clicked "start new session" as opposed to "restore", thinking that it would "start a new session" with all my tabs restored! :(((

I wish the session restore did something, anything! To a) make sure the wording implies, clicking this will vaporize all 20 of the 20 tabs in your previous session and b) give me any indication that if I accidentally click this, then I can go back and still restore my session, and I don't need to recreate all my previous tabs from memory because I misclicked once on accident.

Faaborg, any words of wisdom? :)

Comment 6

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Rewording "start new session" to "close" is fine.  We wanted new to mean "fresh" or "empty" but it looks like people are parsing it as "try again"

Comment 7

[Shyam Prasad Murarka]

Hi,

We could try this alternative.

Below the list of pages that crashed, just give one button that stays "Restore selected pages" and a checkbox beside it (preferably on the left) that says "Deselect All".

Thanks.

Comment 8

[Andrew Liu]

Hello,

I'm interested in taking this as my first bug.

Before I start to work on it, is there a consensus that we simply want to change "Start New Session" to "Close"? If so, then I will start work on it. If not, then here is another suggestion that has two parts:

(1) change "Start New Session" to "Erase session data and start new session". This might make it more clear to the user that the session data will be lost.

(2) make the "Restore" button green, and make the "Erase session data and start new session" button red. This might help direct half-awake users to automatically click on the green button. Even if this is not what they wanted, at least they didn't lose any data.

Please let me know what you think.

Thanks!

Comment 9

[Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (not bugmail, email directly)]

(In reply to Andrew Liu from comment #8)
> Hello,
> 
> I'm interested in taking this as my first bug.
> 
> Before I start to work on it, is there a consensus that we simply want to
> change "Start New Session" to "Close"? If so, then I will start work on it.

I think that's what we're going to do. As of now (well, 2 days ago really) I'm pretty much unavailable to mentor until the first week in October.

I'm CCing Dietrich who I'm sure will be happy to help. Alternatively, you can ask for help in #fx-team on irc.mozilla.org and there are a bunch of people there who can help on the specifics of changing a string.

As a launching point, this link should help: https://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?string=restorepage.cancelButton

Comment 10

[Andrew Liu]

Thanks for getting back to me, Paul, and providing the link. So far it looks like here is what I need to do in mozilla/browser/locales/en-US/chrome/browser/aboutSessionRestore.dtd:

1. change the string for restorepage.cancelButton from "Start New Session" to "Close"
2. change the string for restorepage.cancel.access from "S" to "C"

I wonder if changing the function name from startNewSession() to something else (close()?) is in the scope of this bug.

I will look more into this later.

(In reply to Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (away 9/12-10/4) from comment #9)
> (In reply to Andrew Liu from comment #8)
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I'm interested in taking this as my first bug.
> > 
> > Before I start to work on it, is there a consensus that we simply want to
> > change "Start New Session" to "Close"? If so, then I will start work on it.
> 
> I think that's what we're going to do. As of now (well, 2 days ago really)
> I'm pretty much unavailable to mentor until the first week in October.
> 
> I'm CCing Dietrich who I'm sure will be happy to help. Alternatively, you
> can ask for help in #fx-team on irc.mozilla.org and there are a bunch of
> people there who can help on the specifics of changing a string.
> 
> As a launching point, this link should help:
> https://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?string=restorepage.
> cancelButton

Comment 11

[Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (not bugmail, email directly)]

(In reply to Andrew Liu from comment #10)
> Thanks for getting back to me, Paul, and providing the link. So far it looks
> like here is what I need to do in
> mozilla/browser/locales/en-US/chrome/browser/aboutSessionRestore.dtd:
> 
> 1. change the string for restorepage.cancelButton from "Start New Session"
> to "Close"
> 2. change the string for restorepage.cancel.access from "S" to "C"

The other thing that needs to happen (as a byproduct of our L10N process) is that we need to change restorepage.cancelButton (and the other) to something else, like restorePage.closeButton (I liked cancelButton since it's the general format for the type of page, but oh well).

> I wonder if changing the function name from startNewSession() to something
> else (close()?) is in the scope of this bug.

Nah, that's not necessary.

Comment 12

[pallavi]

Attachment: Change about improving language has been made.

Comment 13

[Andrew Liu]

Sorry I didn't make any progress. Looks like pallavi already has a patch so I'm not going to work on this bug any further. Thanks.

Comment 14

[Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (not bugmail, email directly)]

Comment on attachment 573491 [details] [diff] [review]
Change about improving language has been made.

Review of attachment 573491 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Hey Pallavi, thanks for jumping in here. It just needs a little bit of tweaking and then it's good to go. Request review from me when you have a new patch up and we'll get this checked in.

::: browser/locales/en-US/chrome/browser/aboutSessionRestore.dtd
@@ -10,5 @@
>  
>  <!ENTITY restorepage.tryagainButton "Restore">
>  <!ENTITY restorepage.restore.access "R">
> -<!ENTITY restorepage.cancelButton   "Start New Session">
> -<!ENTITY restorepage.cancel.access  "S">

Due to the way our localization tools work, we actually need to change the entity names here, so something like restorepage.closeButton and restorepage.close.access probably work best.

You'll need to update aboutSessionRestore.xhtml as well to pick up the new entities names.

Comment 15

[Michael Kohler [:mkohler]]

pallavi, are you working on an updated patch?

Comment 16

[pallavi]

I was stuck with some priorities past few days.Ya I am up to it now.

Comment 17

[pallavi]

Attachment: language of "Start New Session" string in about:sessionrestore has been improved

Comment 18

[Michael Kohler [:mkohler]]

Comment on attachment 607124 [details] [diff] [review]
language of "Start New Session" string in about:sessionrestore has been improved

The changes you made look good to me at a first glance. Unfortunately the diff didn't work correctly. Could you please upload a patch which diffs only the changes necessary to this bug (without the no-diff changes). After that please request review from Paul O'Shannessy since I'm not a peer.

Comment 19

[Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (not bugmail, email directly)]

Comment on attachment 607124 [details] [diff] [review]
language of "Start New Session" string in about:sessionrestore has been improved

Review of attachment 607124 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

You have some extraneous changes in here (README, pageloader.js, report.js). Otherwise I think it looks good. I'll give a new patch a quick review and then it should be good to go.

::: browser/locales/en-US/chrome/browser/aboutSessionRestore.dtd
@@ +10,5 @@
>  
>  <!ENTITY restorepage.tryagainButton "Restore">
>  <!ENTITY restorepage.restore.access "R">
> +<!ENTITY restorepage.closeButton   "Close">
> +<!ENTITY restorepage.close.access  "C">

nit: please add an extra space in there so the quotes all line up.

Comment 20

[Chris Lee (:cleer)]

Attachment: Patch

Fixed up pallavi's last patch

Comment 21

[Chris Lee (:cleer)]

Attachment: Patch

Fixed pallavi's last patch

(and forgot to mark as patch the last time)

Comment 22

[Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (not bugmail, email directly)]

Comment on attachment 630036 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch

Review of attachment 630036 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks Chris!

(In reply to Chris Lee (:cleer) from comment #21)
> (and forgot to mark as patch the last time)

For future reference, you can just go to the attachment details page and mark it as a patch there - no need to upload again.

Comment 23

[Tim Taubert [:ttaubert] (inactive)]

Will check this in.

Comment 24

[Tim Taubert [:ttaubert] (inactive)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/fx-team/rev/715f521dd3e2

Comment 25

[Tim Taubert [:ttaubert] (inactive)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/715f521dd3e2