1009728 - Implement "Close Tabs to the Left" as a built-in feature

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement)

Description

[Patrick Storz]

We have implemented "Close Tabs to the Right" in bug 866880.
The logical next step is to also implement an option to "Close Tabs to the Left".

Actually closing tabs to the left might be even more useful than closing tabs to the right:
- In a normal workflow one opens new tabs to the right and
  reads them left to right
- This means read tabs are on the left, unread tabs are on the right.
- One possibly would not want to close unread tabs in this situation
  (close tabs to the right)
- However one would want to close read tabs if they are not needed anymore
  (close tabs to the left)

Another scenario where "Close Tabs to the Left" is more useful than "Close Tabs to the Right":
- Assume you have browsed before and minimized/closed Firefox with pages
  of this session still opened
- You start a new session (e.g. by following a link somewhere) and
  maximize/start Firefox again.
- After having opened some tabs in the new session, you realize you still
  have the pages of the old session (which will be to the left) opened
  but you don't need them anymore.
- You would want to "Close Tabs to the Left" of the first tab of the
  new session.

Comment 1

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

I disagree with the usefulness of "close tabs to the left" (ctl). In fact, over time I've become skeptical at the usefulness of "close tabs to the right" (ctr), however ctr also matches parity with Chrome.

Comment 2

[Patrik]

"Close Tabs to the Left" should definitely be an built-in feature. Especially now with the limited Add-On API where there is no way to put this option in the right position in the Context-Menu as an Web-Extension.

Also a common workflow is to pin Tabs like RSS-Reader, Mail, etc. which opens new tabs to the left of every existing tab which you want to keep open usually.

Side note why is all the most used stuff like closing tabs way down in the context menu by default? Makes absolutely no sense.

Comment 3

[Ryan Feeley [:rfeeley]]

You might like the add-on FoxyTab. Obviously adding items to the context menu is not free. It’s already becoming quite overloaded. At a certain point (a dozen?) it becomes unwieldy. Do we have any data on which items are even being used?

Comment 4

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

bwinton may be able to get you the details about which menu items are used most. We could use those details for a bug that is focused on cleaning up the context menus overall.

I'm going to close this as wontfix though since the situation described in comment #2 is a workflow that is quite narrow and we haven't had many other requests for this feature in the four years since it has been filed.

Comment 5

[Patrick Storz]

Way to go Mozilla! Break the add-ons which implemented the functionality missing from Firefox, then don't stop there but close the bugs which requested them to start with!

The only thing narrow I can see is the Mozilla Foundation's horizon (but I honestly don't care anymore as I'll be long gone when you crash into the wall nobody saw coming due to the blinders you all seem to be wearing...)

Comment 6

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

Sadly, no, I only have data for context menus in content, not in chrome…

Comment 7

[Patrick Storz]

New bug requesting the same thing: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1146224

Considering extensions are crippled in a way that makes it impossible for them to actually extend Firefox in a reasonable way here and the (existing) items in question have been moved to a submenu adding "Close tabs to the left" should definitely be revisited.

Comment 8

[Patrick Storz]

Attachment: Bug 1009728 - Implement "Close Tabs to the Left" r?jaws

With "Close Tabs to the Right" having moved into a submenu in r533105,
it's only logical to offer this functionality as well for having feature parity.

Comment 10

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/29bb42ae7d0b
Implement "Close Tabs to the Left" r=jaws

Comment 11

[Alexandru Michis [:malexandru]]

Backed out changeset 29bb42ae7d0b (Bug 1009728) for causing bc failures in browser_multiselect_tabs_close_tabs_to_the_left.js

Backout link: https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/ee771b4ba99e33e4f40b010fa70fc5e2da54aeca

Push with failures:
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/jobs?repo=autoland&tochange=067c88b48df53b3ad863d5ddcc27d5ebb4b547e2&fromchange=29bb42ae7d0b36a5c5162f925e3532213ddc87c9&searchStr=os%2Cx%2C10.14%2Cwebrender%2Copt%2Cmochitests%2Ctest-macosx1014-64-qr%2Fopt-mochitest-browser-chrome-e10s%2Cbc2&selectedTaskRun=FWWfzl8DStusKsuN_J_0Sg.0

Failure log: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer?job_id=330324829&repo=autoland&lineNumber=1942

Comment 12

[Pulsebot]

Backout by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/791ad465a0c8
Backed out changeset 29bb42ae7d0b for causing bc failures in browser_multiselect_tabs_close_tabs_to_the_left.js

Comment 13

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/539d6c25a60e
Implement "Close Tabs to the Left" r=jaws

Comment 14

[Bogdan Tara[:bogdan_tara | bogdant]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/539d6c25a60e

Comment 15

[Shane Hughes [:aminomancer]]

Hi, I'm just wondering why the access keys were chosen? They seem a little strange in English. I understand why l was chosen for close-tabs-to-the-start but the uppercase L in left is not underlined because it's only the 2nd l in the label. So the underline ends up being really tiny because it's on a lowercase L. As for close-tabs-to-the-end, why i when r exists?

Somewhat related, is there some way to control which letter gets underlined? Like maybe provide a substring index or range instead of a key? Since the "Close Other Tabs" label also suffers from this, as the o in "Close" is underlined instead of the O in "Other"