1505960 - UX problem with tab.discard restore via tab focus

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect, P5)

Description

[Milkii]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:63.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/63.0

Steps to reproduce:

Using the https://github.com/rNeomy/auto-tab-discard addon.

Discard a tab, then select that tab again.


Actual results:

The tab restored.


Expected results:

The tab gives a message in the viewport requesting user interaction via a click of the viewport to restore the discarded tab

Restoring the tab on viewing the tab a) does not allow one to view the tab url before opting to restore the tab (a la the Chrome extension The Great Suspender), and b) discarding a tabs moves the tab focus to the next tab, causing it to restore.

See further information on https://github.com/rNeomy/auto-tab-discard/issues/41

Comment 1

[Derek Basch]

Can confirm this bug.

Comment 2

[laszlo.bialis]

Hi,

I've managed to reproduce the issue above on Ubuntu 16.04 on latest Nightly 65.0a1 20181112100105. 
I am assigning a component to this issue in order to involve the development team and get an opinion on this.

Comment 3

[Stefan Fleiter (:sfleiter)]

This is not only a UX issue but wastes great amounts of CPU, battery and memory ressources.
The purpose of discarding tabs is completely destroyed by the fact that closing the active tab regularly wakes up a discarded tab.
The unnecessary work caused by this also makes the browser feel slow.

Should this bug be "tagged" MemShrink?

Comment 5

[Ruben Petersen]

This is not a defect but "just your opinion, man". People who heavily use keyboard-based navigation (ctrl-tab) and no extension to bypass discarded tabs when doing so (Auto Tab Discard lets you bind hotkeys, but this is awkward because default Firefox hotkeys cannot be unbound) will probably want this. People who use a tab setup where discarded tabs are clearly greyed out and mouse navigation will only click them when they want to restore them, and for them it's Working As Designed right now.
Don't alienate a happy group to satisfy an unhappy one. It would make for a nice to have feature, also considering Chrome cannot do this, but should not be forced upon users as default.

Comment 6

[Milkii]

I'm in the happy Ctrl-PgDn and Ctrl-PgUp (and Vimium) group, and would really like discarded tabs not to start loading when I page up past them.

Proposal: display mechanism with a simple "Press space or enter to restore tab." or such message in the viewport?

(I guess F5 would work, but more intuitive ways would be better.)

"but should not be forced upon users as default."

I think a synergy is possible, especially as I am one of those users. How does the proposal above sound? There can also be options relating to the behaviour of the action on viewing a suspended tab.

Aside from times where I simply cannot keyboard or mousewheel scroll to switch between two active tabs without restoring several discarded tabs (requiring me to point and click), I also have a frustrating experience where a slip of the mousewheel in the incorrect part of the screen and I activate a discarded tab or two.

Comment 7

[varun.kamath]

(In reply to Ruben Petersen from comment #5)

This is not a defect but "just your opinion, man". People who heavily use keyboard-based navigation (ctrl-tab) and no extension to bypass discarded tabs when doing so (Auto Tab Discard lets you bind hotkeys, but this is awkward because default Firefox hotkeys cannot be unbound) will probably want this. People who use a tab setup where discarded tabs are clearly greyed out and mouse navigation will only click them when they want to restore them, and for them it's Working As Designed right now.
Don't alienate a happy group to satisfy an unhappy one. It would make for a nice to have feature, also considering Chrome cannot do this, but should not be forced upon users as default.

Obviously it could just be an option. Please fix this bug :)

Comment 8

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S3. However, the bug has 29 votes.
:dao, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 9

[BugBot (nomail) [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The last needinfo from me was triggered in error by recent activity on the bug. I'm clearing the needinfo since this is a very old bug and I don't know if it's still relevant.

Comment 10

[herrgotlieb]

(In reply to BugBot (nomail) [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte] from comment #9)

The last needinfo from me was triggered in error by recent activity on the bug. I'm clearing the needinfo since this is a very old bug and I don't know if it's still relevant.

Definitely still relevant! Even with mouse navigation, closing one tab and landing on a discarded one wakes it up. A toggle to require a mouse click before waking up a tab would solve this