128631 - Right click menu selection for Close Tab does not work on a single tab

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Jaime Rodriguez, Jr.]

Build ID: 2001-03-01-03-trunk
Reproducible: Always

Steps:
1. Launch the browser
2. Add a new tab
3. Right click and select to remove the new tab
4. One tab is still remianing
5. Right click and select to remove the remaining single tab


Results: Remaining tab can not be removed (i.e. Closed)

Note: Mozilla should either close the remaning tab, when only one tab is
remaining, or allow the user to close the last tab, as the tab UI occupies
almost the same amount of browser UI as 2 toolbars

Comment 1

[Jaime Rodriguez, Jr.]

Nominating for nsbeta1, because I want the pixels back in the browser window.

Comment 2

[Peter Henderson]

What should a window with no open tabs look like? Just the chrome but no content?

Or if you mean the tab _bar_ should be hidden and not the tab itself, go to Edit
-> Preferences -> Navigator -> Tabbed browsing -> Tab Display -> Hide the tab
bar when only one tab is open.

Comment 3

[Jaime Rodriguez, Jr.]

agreed ... "Hide the tab bar when only one tab is open.", is a better statement
of the problem I discovered. Changing Summary to reflect the better stated
request. Thanks for the assist.

Comment 4

[Peter Henderson]

Maybe I wasn't too clear, but I was talking about a pref that does already
exist. I think you might have been tyring to report bug 112699, which says that
changing the pref does not take effect immediately. Or else you might have meant
bug 109651, that the X button does nothing with only one tab open.

Comment 5

[Jaime Rodriguez, Jr.]

Ah, I think mine report is similar to both those reports, but still different.
In my case, I am I am using context menu to Close Tab on the last remaining tab
in the browser. The selection says *Close Tab*, so I assume it should close
(i.e. hide the  tab).

Comment 6

[Peter Henderson]

Bug 112695 - when there's only one tab, some context menu items should be
disabled or removed

Comment 7

[Jaime Rodriguez, Jr.]

Yeah, that would be related, if not a dupe, but I think that request, ask for
the menu items to be removed. This bug, would request to make those menu, or at
least this one selection, function as expected.

Comment 8

[Blake Ross]

What is the expected behavior if you have the "Hide tab bar when only one tab is
open" pref off and you choose Close Tab on the only open tab?

Comment 9

[Jaime Rodriguez, Jr.]

IMHO, when a user selects a menu item, s/he believes that an action should
occur. In this case, by selecting "Close Tab", as a user I would expect the tab
to be closed. Much like, when I select "Reload Tab", it reloads the tab. 

Now, the fact that changing the pref to ON for "Hide tab bar when only one tab is
open" does not take into affect *immediately* (bug 112699), only serves to
compound the problem, because there is no way for the user to correct the
problem, and the user now has experienced 2 instances where their desire hide
tab bar, resulted in nothing happening.

Filed bug 128706 [RFE] Hide tab bar when only one tab Pref should be on by
default to determine what the state of the PREF should be by default, and bug
128708 [RFE] When making a selection to "Close Tab" on the single remaining Tab
the "Hide tab bar when only one tab" Pref should be change to ON.

Comment 10

[jag (Peter Annema)]

Instead of disabling the close button and the "Close Tab" (context) menu items,
we could hide the tab strip for just this window (instead of changing the pref).
I discussed this solution with Marlon and he and I agree that that would be
rather strange and shouldn't be done (Marlon: but please correct me if I recall
this incorreclty).

The tab strip doesn't show by default for one tab (if it does, that's a
regression that needs to be fixed), it should show/hide in currently open
windows when changing the pref (patch exists, will get checked in soon I hope),
and the button and menu items should get disabled (I believe the button got
plussed, the menu items minused however) if the pref to hide the strip is off
and there's only one tab. This should address the concerns you have.

Comment 11

[Peter Trudelle]

If it were possible to close the tab yet leave the window intact (with empty tab
bar), then that might be an acceptable solution, IMO, as long as there were no
wierd repurcussions (e.g., drag & drop failures).  A more likely possiblity is
that on Close Tab we close the window instead.  This may seem odd for the
context menu or when clicking the tab bar 'X' icon, but we already change Ctrl-W
from Close Tab to Close Window when there is only one tab in the window, so
doing the same for these other ways to close tab would just increase
consistency.  ADT triage team did not consider the active yet unresponsive close
tab affordances to be worth fixing, and I'd hate to lose the Ctrl-W mapping to
Close window in this case as part of disabling close tab elsewhere.  When I
close the last content area in a window, I am all through with that window.

Comment 12

[Peter Trudelle]

nsbeta1- per Nav triage team, ->1.2

Comment 13

[HJ]

Close Tab (the last one) should set the tabstrip visibility to 'false' and load
a blank page. After this, you're ready to go on or to close the whole browser
window. Who says I want to end the session after closing the last tab?

I've implemented this a long time ago in MultiZilla because of the demand for
it. A lot of people surf to pron pages and they like to close the last tab also,
if someone sneaks into their room or office.

This btw also counts for the missing menuitem 'Close All Tabs', because there's
no way to close all tabs at once. I can make a patch for mozilla if you like,
just ask for it.

Comment 14

[HJ]

Attachment: diff -u

Don't ask, here it is!

Comment 15

[HJ]

Attachment: diff -u

Ah, I took the wrong file. 
1.Removed: xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
2.Removed: extra } in <method name="removeAllTabs">
3.Changed: this.mCurrentBrowser.loadURIWithFlags(about:blank);
into: this.mCurrentBrowser.loadURIWithFlags('about:blank');

Comment 16

[HJ]

Attachment: diff -u

<Dr_P> fix indentation in your for loop
<HJ> Dr_P: done

Comment 17

[Morten Nilsen]

Comment on attachment 82358 [details] [diff] [review]
diff -u

r=[e-mail]

I will test this patch when my tree is behaving again.

Comment 18

[HJ]

My new patch will respect the pref setting "browser.tabs.autoHide" and some of
the lines in tabbrowser.xml will be simplified. Any other suggestions?

Comment 19

[HJ]

Attachment: respect browser.tabs.autoHide and small code changes

Comment 20

[Morten Nilsen]

Comment on attachment 82400 [details] [diff] [review]
respect browser.tabs.autoHide and small code changes

looks good...
r=[e-mail]

Comment 21

[Jason Bassford]

This bug has already been addressed in bug 150099.  All that needs to be done
now is to link the Close from the context menu to the code introduced by Jag.

(It would be wrong / inconsistent to have the context Close behave differently
from the tab close button.)

CCing Jag.

Comment 22

[Jason Bassford]

<red faced>  Colour me stupid.  My apologies for not noticing Jag was already
the assignee.  Any public chastisement coming my way is my due.

Comment 23

[jag (Peter Annema)]

Well, if we implement this, we'll have to change the text from close to hide tab
bar. Btw, ctrl+w currently closes the window for the last tab, while the close
box hides the tab bar. Which one should the context menu item be consistent with?

Note that the menu item is currently disabled for the last tab, which IMO is
just fine.

Comment 24

[Jason Bassford]

Currently:

Window closes with: Ctrl-W, File -> Close Tab.
Tab bar hides with: Tab bar close.
Nothing (inactive): Context menu close. 

As I've stated here, and elsewhere, I think that all "close" methods should do
the same thing. Having some UI elements behave differently than others is just
confusing.

Comment 25

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

I tested in both Firefox and Mozilla and this bug appears fixed. It appears when
you have only 1 page open, no tab bar appears. When you open a new tab, then
close it, the tabbar disappears. You can only have two tabs at a time, not one.
Comment #21 suggests that the issue first mentioned in this bug is no longer an
issue. Last comment in 2002.

-> WORKSFORME

Comment 26

[Jason Bassford]

> You can only have two tabs at a time, not one.

Not at all true.  I've had one tab open all the time ever since tabs were
introduced.

Preferenced -> Tabbed Browsing -> Hide the tab bar when only one tab is open.

To reproduce this bug, just uncheck that box.

Reopening.

Comment 27

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Wouldn't the tab bar always being visible be the expected behavior then if you
unchecked that preference? If you closed the last page, then there would be no
page loaded in the browser at all (not even about:blank). Do you want the home
page to be opened when you close the last document? Otherwise, you'd have a
browser window with no document at all.

Comment 28

[Jason Bassford]

> Do you want the home page to be opened when you
> close the last document?

I have no idea.  See comment 24.  Currently almost every UI method of closing
the last tab results in different behaviour.  There's no consistency here at
all.  This bug is, AFAIK, to resolve some of the inconsistency, by allowing the
context menu click on a single tab to do the same thing as one of the other methods.

To summarize, context menu close tab should do the same thing as Ctrl-W / File
-> Close Tab, which should do the same thing as tab bar close button. 
Currently, they all do something different - which is terrible UI.

(If we are to leave the context menu greyed out and disabled, then we should
also disallow Ctrl-W, grey out and disallow File -> Close Tab, and grey out and
disallow the tab bar close button.)

Comment 29

[Jason Bassford]

FWIW: My *personal* opinion is that when you only have a single tab, everything
should be greyed out / disallowed.  (Suggesting opening the home page opens up a
huge can of worms when you consider that tab groups can be set as the home page.
 Would you really want to accidentally close the last tab only to have 5 more
(if you have 5 tabs in your group) open up?)  Having the tab bar simply close
is, IMO, the wrong thing.  (See bug 156082.)  However, that's all just my
*personal* opinion, and I don't want to debate it here.  Somebody in charge of
the UI should make a definitive decision as to what should happen - and then
apply that decisons to ALL methods of closing the last tab across the board.

Comment 30

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

I agree it should be greyed out.

Comment 31

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

is this not a dupe of bug 154335?

Comment 32

[Jason Bassford]

> is this not a dupe of bug 154335?

No.  This bug was originally (and shouldn't be morphed from that) about the context (right-click) menu of the last remaining tab open.  Bug 154335 was about the close tab button.  They are different UI elements and, still, exhibit different behaviour.

Comment 33

[:Hb]

Fixed. Context menu items are now greyed out.