1844655 - Add "forget this site" item to identity panel after "clear cookies and site data"

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Site Identity, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

In bug 1788633 the terms we use in the sanitize dialog ("Clear History Data") and the wording we use for the "clear cookies and site data..." item in the Site Identity panel and elsewhere in preferences were inconsistent and led to confusion about what that menu item would do. But even as we work out those kinks, there's still quite the possibility of users not understanding what that item does NOT do and assuming it works more like the "Forget this site" functionality in History.

From bug 1788633 comment 5

For example, it would be possible to mitigate user confusion by simply clarifying to the user the data that are not covered by the "Clear cookies and site data" mechanism and suggesting the use of the "Clear recent history" function if the user wishes to erase those data.

We shouldn't try to cram that concept into the current "clear cookies and site data" item". I also strongly disagree about suggesting users jump to the sanitize dialog—there's a big difference between wanting to clear this current site and wanting to clear data for all sites! There's no reason to think a user wanting to do one will want to do the other instead. But we do have other options. First, maybe upcoming UI plans will make this unnecessary. The particular data the original reporter was confused about was site permissions, which that item doesn't clear. But we do show icons in the URL bar when custom site permissions are set, so it should be clear to users that if they clear cookies and those icons are still there that they should click on them and also change those settings. People are working on proposals to re-combine the Site Identity and Site Permissions panels, and when that happens it will be even clearer. The permissions are different settings than the clear data item, and if that's not clear enough then it's right there in front of you that those didn't change when you used the "clear" item.

If we think enough users really want to do this we could simply add a straight-up "forget this site" item next to the "clear cookies and site data" one. First, that will make it clear that the latter is not the same as the former. Second, it makes for easy clean-up when you accidentally click an "Oops, I really really shouldn't have come here" site.

There would be caveats to such an item though. The current "forget this site" functionality in History does not close open tabs, but any open site can immediately save more data and make more history entries. Is it better to be consistent with History, or to not suprise the user when they find data is still there even though they just said "forget"? Details to be hammered out if we wanted to do it, but off the top of my head we would have to

1. Close all background tabs open on that site. This might be a surprise so show a "you're about to close XX tabs" prompt. Cancel stops the process.

• could use the existing pref for "warn me about closing multiple tabs", or if we think this use might be surprisingly different we could have a separate one. Either way, some users will want to be able to turn this off and others will be horrified if we did it without asking.
• I assume we close tabs in all containers--the History item doesn't care about containers. To be honest I don't know if the "Clear Cookies and Site Data" item in the Site Identity panel honors origin attributes or not, but "forget" should have the same scope as that item for consistency.

2. navigate the current window to the newtab page (don't need to ask... the user said "forget")
3. run the "forget this site" data-clearing functions