1272528 - Tracking protection restarts browser without asking permission

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[benjaminmoody]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0
Build ID: 20160426151136

Steps to reproduce:

- Go to Preferences > Privacy

- Next to "Use Tracking Protection in Private Windows", click "Change Block List"

- Select a different option and click "Save Changes".

- A dialog box appears, reading "Firefox must restart to change block lists."  This has two buttons, "Cancel" and "OK".

- Click "OK".


Actual results:

The browser immediately restarts itself.

This is not acceptable behavior.  Buttons labelled "OK" are a bad idea in general, for reasons that are well documented by people more eloquent than I.

But the natural interpretation of the dialog, for anyone familiar with Firefox, is that "OK" means "Okay, I understand that my changes will not take effect immediately."  Not "Okay, you can now restart the browser and destroy whatever I was previously working on."


Expected results:

Changes will be saved, and will take effect when you next restart the browser.

Comment 1

[Loic]

Honestly, it's just a dummy PEBKAC issue. It's obvious restarting the browser is to apply the immediate change selected, id est, modifying the settings of the blocking list.

Comment 2

[benjaminmoody]

Thanks for the insult, but no, it's not obvious.

(The meaning of your statement isn't obvious either, so let me be clear.  After the browser has restarted, it is certainly obvious that it restarted as a result of the user clicking the button.  It is not obvious *beforehand*, at the time when it matters, that clicking the button will cause the browser to restart.)

Restarting the browser is a destructive operation by nature.  As a result, other configuration changes that require the browser to be restarted (e.g., installing an extension) operate in a sensible way:

- The user makes changes.

- Those changes are saved automatically, without taking effect instantly.

- A notice is displayed along the lines of "XYZ will take effect when you restart the browser; click here to restart now".

- When the user is ready to do so, they click the button to restart.

As a result of this good and proper behavior, it is reasonable for a user to expect that new features will behave similarly.  When the dialog does not clearly state "clicking OK will restart the browser", it is reasonable for the user to expect that clicking OK will *not*, in fact, restart the browser.

I will grant that the message in question gives some ambiguity as to what will happen.  I think it is fair to say that, if a particular message can be interpreted in either of two ways, one of which involves potentially destroying the user's work and one of which doesn't, a well-designed user interface will take the option that doesn't.  A *better* user interface would avoid the ambiguity, such as by labelling the button "Restart Now" instead of "OK".

Comment 3

[Loic]

"The browser must restart" (to apply the modification) is understandable, especially with the use of the modal "must". By clicking OK, you accept to restart the browser. Nothing more, nothing less.

Comment 4

[François Marier [:francois]]

This restart prompt is no longer there.