1480472 - Replace “Close Tabs to the Right and “Close Other Tabs” with Close Tab Options Sub-Menu

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Amy Lee [:amylee] UX]

Replace “Close Tabs to the Right and “Close Other Tabs” with Close Tab Options Sub-Menu when one tab is selected. Please see spec for reference.

Comment 1

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

Attachment: Bug 1480472 - Replace 'Close Tabs to the Right' and 'Close Other Tabs' with 'Close Tab Options' submenu. r?Felipe

Comment 2

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/b2a709a740cf
Replace 'Close Tabs to the Right' and 'Close Other Tabs' with 'Close Tab Options' submenu. r=Felipe

Comment 3

[Daniel Varga [:dvarga]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/b2a709a740cf

Comment 4

[Damira Akh]

Verified in latest Nightly.
Build ID 	20181003100127
User Agent 	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:64.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/64.0

Comment 5

[Dragory]

Is there some background as to why this change was made? As far as I see, it makes two common context menu actions now take an extra click/wait. Sorry if this is the wrong place to voice this concern.

Comment 6

[Amy Lee [:amylee] UX]

(In reply to Dragory from comment #5)
> Is there some background as to why this change was made? As far as I see, it
> makes two common context menu actions now take an extra click/wait. Sorry if
> this is the wrong place to voice this concern.

Hi, 

The change was made to introduce new actions into the context menu (i.e move tab) while not increasing the number of menu items in the context menu by moving less utilized actions into a sub menu. This is part of a larger series of changes to reorganize and update the context menu to accommodate multi-select tabs. Unfortunately, there will be trade-offs but the hope is that these new functions would be beneficial to the user.

Comment 7

[ccfb3ee765a58cae]

If this is going to be moved into a submenu, I think "Close Tabs to Left" should be added too. Otherwise as a user I hate this change and would rather just be able to customize context menus myself if the number of options is too big.

Comment 8

[jfromaniello]

I understand the change was made to introduce new options while not increasing the size of the menu, but IMHO it will be better to have "close other tabs" in the parent menu and maybe "close tab" in the new submenu. 

The reason I am suggesting this is because "close other tabs" is a frequently used action in that menu, while "close tab" is not. If I want to close the tab I will just click on X besides the tab title or just cmd+w/ctrl+w which is an standard shortcut for all tabbed interfaces in the OS.

Comment 9

[Aapeli]

I use both "close tabs to the right" and "close other tabs" options all the time (it's the only reason I ever use that context menu). But I do understand why this change was made, and why a lot of people might not be using these so often.

Would it be possible to add a setting somewhere to change this behaviour? Like `about:config`? Is there some other place for tiny config options like this? If so, I'd be very happy to try implementing that change, but maybe someone could guide me a little bit towards the right direction?

Comment 10

[37313]

>I use both "close tabs to the right" and "close other tabs" options all the time
>it's the only reason I ever use that context menu
I, too!

Autors,
Why didn't you hide the menu items "select all tabs" or "add tab to bookmarks"? Or "send to your device"? Who even selects all the tabs and sends them to the device??

Why were the _most frequently used points_ chosen for hiding? to prove that you wanted to spit on the users, and they would swallow it?

Comment 11

[kungfoobar]

Please, add an option (or about:config preference) to revert this behaviour. Many users prefer longer menus with less clicks and less mouse movement (less prone to misclicks).

There's a userChrome tweak around but it's kind of buggy.

Comment 12

[Cristian Fogel [:cfogel]]

Verified the changes with 64.0b8 on Win10, macOS10.13, Ubuntu16.04.

On the current nightly builds, are the changes reverted?

Comment 13

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

(In reply to Cristi Fogel [:cfogel] from comment #12)
> Verified the changes with 64.0b8 on Win10, macOS10.13, Ubuntu16.04.
> 
> On the current nightly builds, are the changes reverted?

Yes, they are reverted and this patch will be reverted on Beta soon enough. See bug 1502083.

Comment 14

[Cristian Fogel [:cfogel]]

Awesome, thank you for the info!

Comment 15

[adrianna.pinska]

I'm very happy to hear that this has been reverted. Another major usability issue this caused for me, which I haven't seen anyone else mention, is that the when the menu is is open it obscures the "undo close tab" option which is *right under it* and also very frequently used. I have accidentally moused over the submenu and selected one of the "close tabs" options countless times, which would have been disastrous if I didn't have the confirmation dialog enabled. It has been very frustrating.

Comment 16

[eric.m.klingensmith]

(In reply to kungfoobar from comment #11)

Please, add an option (or about:config preference) to revert this behaviour.
Many users prefer longer menus with less clicks and less mouse movement
(less prone to misclicks).

There's a userChrome tweak around but it's kind of buggy.

Was this ever done? I completely agree with kungfoobar and have looked all over about:config for an option to no avail.

Comment 17

[r-giakrd-reventlov]

(Taken from official rationale for the change)

This change was made for the following reasons:

As feature are added and context menus grow, we would like to keep the size of the menu short enough to be read quickly. One of the ways we can do this is to group similar commands. By grouping the commands that close multiple tabs together, we can shorten the height of the context menu by one menuitem. It should be noted that we also do not want to remove context menuitems just for the sake of it because some context menuitems are the only accessible non-keyboard-shortcut way for keyboard-only users to access such functionality as Pin Tab, Mute Tab, Duplicate Tab, etc.

I guess I understand this argument, however I, as well as many others I've talked to about this change, only ever right client to do one of two things:

1. Pin a tab (I personally do this infrequently... enough so that when I do it I have to concentrate and am unlikely to make a mistake)
2. Close tabs to the right

From talking with colleagues, and extrapolating that to the Firefox user base at large, I can tell you that there are a massive number of uses for which the "close tabs.." option is the only reason to right click a tab.

I understand the requirement to keep a menu short, however I also believe you should have those items used frequently only taking a single click, and having them located as close to the mouse right click as possible.

Some users have reported that they accidentally clicked the "Close Tabs to the Right" and the "Close Other Tabs". While a user has the ability to restore their tabs through the "Undo Closed Tabs" menuitem, some data may have been lost as well as potential increased network usage if we are unable to restore the pages from the Firefox cache. We decided that adding a little "speed bump" before a large destructive action could benefit users. We prefer this over a modal dialog that requires users to move their mouse across the screen and thus requires more time.

As many users as have been inconvenienced only a daily basis as this change? I think not. The case could also be made to move the items which the users intended to click on to a less prominent position. I can only deduce that these users must be doing one of the following, based on observing the current menu structure (assuming the menu is ordered as to make the most likely/useful actions closest to the top):

1. Reload the tab (this one seems odd to me, the behavior I've seen is to either hit F5, place the cursor in the address bar and hit enter again (I'm not making that one up), or to hit the reload on the toolbar.)
2. Mute tab (This is another odd one... If something is playing on the page I usually go to the source and stop it there)
3. Pin tab (very useful but rarely used in my case)
4. Select all tabs (I can't even think of a use case for this although I'm sure one exists)
5. Bookmark tabs (This can be helpful however the "star" icon is much easier to access and does the same thing)
6. Move tabs (I'm not sure this is handy, I just grab the tab and move it with my mouse)
7. Send to device (Can be handy, but I rarely use this)
8. Close multiple tabs
   8.1. Close Tabs to the Right (Finally we've got here... the most useful item in the menu nicely tucked down at 8.1 (hidden in a sub menu and as such unlikely to ever be used)
   ...

Are the items rated above 8 really more useful, or alternatively have more users selecting them? mmm.

I'm just one person and as such these views are (mostly) my own... however I'm the one willing to spend some time trying to help.

Comment 18

[Murz]

I use right-click menu most times exactly for "Close Tabs to the Right" and now must always use submenu - this is bad UX! Please give back "Close Tabs to the Right" at first level of menu, or provide option to configure this "feature"!