1787559 - Firefox View's "Recently closed" section might be over-promising (it only shows closed tabs *from the same window* but doesn't make that clear)

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Firefox View, defect, P1)

Description

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

STR:

1. Using a fresh profile, open two different Firefox windows, which I'll call window "A" and "B".
2. In window A, open several new tabs, visit some sites (e.g. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/ ) and then close at least one of those tabs.
3. Click the Firefox View button (icon at top-left of the window) in window A and in window B, and compare the contents of their "Recently Closed" sections.
4. Now, close window A entirely. Again, check Firefox View "Recently Closed" again in your remaining window (window B).

ACTUAL RESULTS:
After step 3:

• In Window A, "recently closed" shows an entry for the tab that I closed.
• In Window B, "recently closed" just says "No recently closed pages" (and then also kinda-confusingly says "Never fear losing a closed tab again. You can always retrieve it here" ... despite the fact that I just closed a page and it's not here).

After step 4, looking at my one remaining window B, it still says "No recently closed pages" and still says "Never fear losing a closed tab", despite the fact that I just closed some tabs and a window and none of that is reflected here.

EXPECTED RESULTS:
Intuitively based on the content/messaging that we're offering here, I would expect "Recently Closed" to show me the same content regardless of Firefox window (in step 3) and I would expect it to help me restore "recently closed pages" that happen to be entire windows (in step 4).

(I know we've traditionally treated undo-close-tab as a per-window thing; but this section doesn't convey that expectation at all right now. And so it ends up feeling a bit confusing/arbitrary and hence shakes the foundation of the "Never fear" message that we're attempting to convey.)

Comment 1

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: screencast

Comment 2

[Ray Fambro]

Thank you for sharing feedback on our new feature! The current label was something we discussed internally and will be keeping for now. As we get more feedback on the feature, we will continue to monitor feedback and assess candidates for future enhancements.

Comment 4

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Thanks. I understand we've got to prioritize, but I'm a bit disappointed. This seems like something we could address by e.g. just replacing "on this device" with "in this window".

Are we planning on expanding this UI to eventually allow reopening tabs that were closed in other windows? If so, I can see the current language making sense, given that goal.

But if not, it seems like we've got a quite-unfortunate mismatch between what the strings promise ("Reopen pages you’ve closed on this device" & "No recently closed pages", "Never fear...You can always retrieve it here") vs. the reality (never showing or offering-to-restore any accidentally-closed windows or tabs in other windows).

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(Ah; it looks like bug 1788097 is about essentially this same issue, and is still open with some positive signs of possible future work in bug 1788097 comment 4.)

Comment 6

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] from comment #5)

(Ah; it looks like bug 1788097 is about essentially this same issue, and is still open with some positive signs of possible future work in bug 1788097 comment 4.)

We're not going to fix that bug before 106 releases.

(In reply to Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] from comment #4)

Thanks. I understand we've got to prioritize, but I'm a bit disappointed. This seems like something we could address by e.g. just replacing "on this device" with "in this window".

The choice of wording is because of the juxtaposition with the tabs from other devices that shows up at the top (though of course that isn't visible if you're still in the setup flow). I would prefer to forego the nice juxtaposition that only works some of the time, in favour of accuracy. Meridel, is there any reason not to update this string?

Comment 7

[Ray Fambro]

We've had a chance to discuss this a bit more. Let's go ahead and update the string to read: "Reopen tabs you've closed in this window"

Comment 8

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Attachment: Bug 1787559 - update recently closed tabs description in Firefox View, r?flod!

Comment 10

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/15a91d897571
update recently closed tabs description in Firefox View, r=flod,fluent-reviewers

Comment 11

[Cristina Cozmuta (:CrissCozmuta)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/15a91d897571

Comment 12

[Bogdan Maris, Desktop QA]

Verified that the message for Recently closed is now displayed as "Reopen pages you've closed in this window" and not "...on this device" for every new window opened using Firefox 106.0b2 across platforms (Windows 11, Ubuntu 20.04 and macOS 11).