1875696 - When multiple tabs selected, tab close button should be hidden (was: It's too easy to close selected tabs by accident)

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement)

Description

[jpmhouston]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:122.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/122.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Select multiple adjacent tabs in a window with many tab, such that they're at or close to the minimum width.
2. Attempt drag starting by mousing on the current tab, OR attempt to de-select all but the current tab by clicking on it.
3. Repeat such actions several times with the common level of care and caution an average user would have

Actual results:

Do this many times with all but extreme care and I predict most users will sometimes accidentally click the close button (the "x") on the current tab, closing all the selected tabs.

I've done this accidentally many times myself, much more than I've accidentally closed the current tab by accident when there hasn't been multiple tabs selected. I've been trying to think why and I would guess it's because the additional visual clutter of the selection rectangles it's harder to spot and avoid the close button. Additionally, maybe because the other selected tabs don't have a close button it's easy to overlook the possibility that the current tab does.

Expected results:

It should be made less likely to close all the selected tabs by accident. I can think of a few solutions:

• hide the close button on the current tab when multiple tabs are selected
• make the close button only appear (or work) if the user pauses over it, perhaps long enough for the tool tip to also appear
• alternately make undo work better to make accidental closure less disruptive (they currently reopen in the wrong positions - this deserves to be its own bug)

If it's decided that everyday users do want to intentionally close tabs in this manner and that any hiding, even temporary, the button would adversely impact discoverability, I would appreciate and be happy with an "about:config" setting to hide the button when tabs selected.

My use case is that I "queue" youtube videos I want to watch by opening them in tabs in a window dedicated to that purpose. I frequently rearrange them as I consider the order I want to view them in. (I'm considering making an extension which advances to the next tab and starts playing it once the current tab's video ends)

Comment 1

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

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Tabbed Browser' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Monica Chiorean]

Marking as New since it is an enhancement request so that engineering can add their input. Thank you.

Comment 3

[jpmhouston]

Recent Firefox versions have added yet another minefield in the active tab that can inadvertently be clicked on when one means to select and drag multiple tabs, now also a mute button. (Perhaps this button has been there a while, but it seems there's new styling to make the button more prominent)

The point of selecting multiple tabs is, as I see it, is to:
a) move them, or
b) perform an action on all of them deliberately, like through one of the existing menu items, as opposed to rapidly though a tiny control

To these ends, please give an option to omit showing the close and mute buttons in the active tab when multiple tabs are selected.

Comment 4

[jpmhouston]

OMG I just did this again!! To reiterate: after selecting and moving several tabs, meaning to click on the active tab so just it is selected I hit its close button by accident.

Why is this close control present when multiple tabs are selected?? There's no need for this to be a quick action one can make with a single click. Please remove it always when multiple tabs selected, or sneak in a about:config setting to choose for it to be removed. Thanks.