651813 - Closing a Tab Group should not delete the tab group, it should restore the last view the user had

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox Graveyard :: Panorama, defect)

Description

[Duncan]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; WOW64; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; WOW64; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0

The default behavior after opening and then clicking the close, the "X" at top right of tab group window, is wrong.

The user expects the "tab group" window to close, instead the tab group... and all tab-windows are gone!  After this happend to me I tested this with 4 new FF4.0 users, all had the same problem.  All expected the "tab group" window to close not all their tabs to disappear.

This does cause serious data loss, without any sort of warning.

Suggested change: change behavior of "X" to close the "tab group" and restore the last view.  Add a "Delete this tab group" type button at the bottom, preferably with a "are you sure dialog".

Related Bug: Bug 611921.  That should apply to the "delete" button if that is added as suggested above.  

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Click "Group your tabs"
2. A overlay dialog appears showing all opened tabs.
3. Click the "X" at the top right, all tabs are deleted.
4. Presently an "Undo" is shown, however new users do not understand at this point that they deleted all their tabs by "closing" a dialog.
Actual Results:  
Normal user will now have lost all his/her tabs and all 4 of my test candidates were first very confused (and then very angry).

Expected Results:  
Closing a dialog should close the dialog... not delete everything that the dialog is showing you.

Windows need to work in a consistent fashion, closing the window should not be equivalent to a delete.

Considering that 5 out of 5 new FF4 users lost all their tabs, this is a serious bug.

Comment 1

[tinagma]

Wouldn't that be confusing with the close tab behavior?

also, there are plenty of ways to get back to your original tab

1. clicking it
2. press esc
3. press the tab groups button again

we don't need another way

Comment 2

[Duncan]

No, closing the tab is equivalent to closing a content window.  The tab window closes, albeit with out a confirmation as other programs (e.g. word processor) would normally do.  Only the data in the window gets removed and it is fairly easy to "reopen closed tabs".

The "Group your tabs" presents itself like a selection dialog.  Dialogs when closed only close the dialog box itself, not the information the dialog is referring to.

Think of a "show all open windows" dialog in your desktop interface: closing that without choosing a window will leave you back at the desktop with all windows open.
What Firefox is doing now is equivalent to that Expose/Alt-Tab function closing all your tab-windows, without the option to save them.

Comment 3

[Tim Taubert [:ttaubert] (inactive)]

(In reply to comment #0)
> The default behavior after opening and then clicking the close, the "X" at top
> right of tab group window, is wrong.

You closed a group of tabs so that's expected behavior. To get out of Panorama you can click the tab group button again, press Ctrl+Shift+E, press Esc, click on the Firefox window's close button or click on a tab...

> Steps to Reproduce:
> 1. Click "Group your tabs"
> 2. A overlay dialog appears showing all opened tabs.
> 3. Click the "X" at the top right, all tabs are deleted.
> 4. Presently an "Undo" is shown, however new users do not understand at this
> point that they deleted all their tabs by "closing" a dialog.

If you see an undo button then you just closed a group. You know that you can have multiple tab groups, right? We should do better and show what's possible with Panorama, like so:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Projects/TabCandy/Design/FirstRun

That kind of welcome page will be re-enabled with bug 626926. Another possibility is to implement a small toolbar with an explicit close/exit button to not let users accidentally close groups:

http://areweprettyyet.com/4/panorama/#

But there's no definitive design or decision, yet. You can follow bug 630792 if you're interested.