193729 - Add a Y/N dialog to clearing history

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Settings UI, enhancement)

Description

[Ron Baldwin]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021207 Phoenix/0.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021207 Phoenix/0.5

There should be a "Are you sure?" dialog when clicking the "Clear History"
button.  This is because there is no real consequences for clearing the cache
(just re-download of cached items), but there are for clearing hisory (it's
gone!).  During a momentary brain lapse, it's too easy to click the wrong button.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[David Tenser [:djst]]

Confirming, however it's still up to the developers to decide. Reassigning to ben.

Comment 2

[Carsten Menke]

Please, don't yet another begging window. We are just talking about the history, 
really nothing serious. Pop up Dialogs all over makes them less important, as 
the user is used to simply click 'Yes' all the time. You just got already enough 
such dialog boxes when you use MS Windows. 

So, please don't let us get to windowish here.

Comment 3

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

taking QA contact, sorry about the bugspam

Comment 4

[Ron Baldwin]

Some people don't care about history, others do.  I do not want to lose data
because I accidently clicked the wrong button in a list of "Clear" buttons.  In
response to comment 2, the desire to not bog down every action with a "Are you
sure" dialog is legitimate, but does not override the need to protect the user's
data.  

A solution that addresses both concerns would be a "Are you sure" dialog with a
"Do not ask again" checkbox.  This should be done for every Clear button (with
the  probable exception of the cache), as well as the "Clear All" button.

Comment 5

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

the privacy panel should follow the same convention as the rest of the Options
dialog in that changes made are not finalized until the dialog is closed.  this
would help reduce the potential for dataloss.

Comment 6

[Ron Baldwin]

(In reply to comment #5)
> the privacy panel should follow the same convention as the rest of the Options
> dialog in that changes made are not finalized until the dialog is closed.  this
> would help reduce the potential for dataloss.

You could do that, but it goes against de facto UI conventions and will probably
confuse users.  Normally when you click an "action" button in a dialog the
action takes place immediately.  Some examples:
   * "Clear History" and "Delete Temp Files" in IE's options dialog
   * "Apply to All Folders" in Windows Explorer's Folder Options dialog
   * Both "Clear List" buttons in the Customize Start Menu dialog

Comment 7

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Its not a universal convention, and with things like the popup sites list and 
the cookie windows, we're already using the "OK confirms changes made" model.

Some user feedback could be added to indicate that data will be cleared when 
the window is closed.  We could even go so far as to have a warning that 
appears at the top of the panel indicating that changes will be complete once 
OK is clicked.  This beats a dialog, since people don't read dialogs anyway.

Comment 8

[Mike Kowalski]

*** Bug 275977 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

*** Bug 258328 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

In light of mconnor's comments here, is this wontfix in deferrence to a better solution (eg bug 258328)?

Comment 11

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

We no longer have a big button for this.  CPD should be better, if it isn't already...

Comment 12

[Zhenshuo Fang (:fang) - Firefox UX Team]

Not sure what the previous UI look like but now you have to click on "clear recent history" and then "clear now". The chance of accidentally clear history is very low. So wonfix for this.