Closed Bug 210173 Opened 22 years ago Closed 21 years ago

no confirmation for clear cookies

Categories

(Firefox :: Settings UI, enhancement)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
Settings UI
Platform:
x86
Windows XP
Type:
enhancement
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
VERIFIED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: glc_bugs, Assigned: bugzilla)

References

Details

Attachments

(4 files)

Privacy preference dialog with delete confirmation checkbox
84.96 KB, image/jpeg
Details
Deer Park Alpha preferences UI change suggestion
91.92 KB, image/jpeg
Details
Confirmation dialog before deleting all cookies
464 bytes, patch
Details | Diff | Splinter Review
qv test.txt
1.95 KB, text/plain
Details
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030516 Mozilla Firebird/0.6 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030516 Mozilla Firebird/0.6 There is no confirmation dialog when the Clear Cookies button is pressed. The close proximity to the "View Cookies" button make accidental clearing of all cookies really easy. The Saved Passwords section exhibits model behavior. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open the Options menu and expand the Cookies section. 2. Aim to click "View Cookies" and miss by a few pixels, hitting the Clear button. Actual Results: Whoops! The cookies were cleared. Expected Results: A "Clear All Cookies" dialog appears and gives the option to proceed or cancel. The "View Cookies" button could also be moved out of close alignment with the "Clear" button.
Confirming for review. Recommend WONTFIX Too many confirmation dialogs results in user apathy, and its bad UI practice.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
I really don't think most users clear all their cookies often enough to result in apathy. Maybe include a "Don't ask this in the future" checkbox for the few users who would. At any rate, it seems logical to have "Clear Cookies" behave the same way as "Clear Saved Passwords," which is the only other pref that has a "View" button right next to the "Clear" button.
taking QA contact, sorry about the bugspam
QA Contact: asa → mconnor
-> WONTFIX losing cookies is not drastic enough to require a dialog.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 21 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
Verified WONTFIX 2003-09-03
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
*** Bug 229500 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 266179 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 279123 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I strongly disagree. Loosing all cookies means having to sign-in again in perhaps, 100's of sites? Not to talk about loosing all websites' settings. Cookies can be valuable to loose if you're collecting more and more of them for several month, or ever severals years, without deleting them! Maybe we can sattle for "You have more than [a large # of cookies here] cookies, are you sure you want to delete them all?"
see also bug 193729. perhaps they'll make it so that the changes don't take effect until you press OK, although I personally think it's confusing.
*** Bug 284566 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 285768 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 292641 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I strongly agree with Ido: One "whoops" click and you have to log in again to several hundred websites. This is very bad. I also agree with Greg: This is such a rare selection that it won't contribute to user apathy (i.e. automatically clicking "Yes" on any confirmation dialog) as a confirmation dialog would when, say, typing in a new web page address to visit. Please reconsider the WONTFIX.
Actually, now that the Options dialog has been reorganized, I think the "Clear Cookies Now" button, which has a more urgent title and is no longer too close to other buttons, does not require a confirmation. Given the better design of new Options dialog, I'm happy with WONTFIX.
(In reply to comment #10) > perhaps they'll make it so that the changes don't take > effect until you press OK, although I personally think it's confusing. Currently it doesn't work like that. Pressing OK removes the content of cookies.txt right away and Cancel does nothing. See Bug 285836 '"Clear Cookies Now" should be canceled when you select "Cancel" in the pref dialog'.
Blocks: 285836
The additional messagebox is barely an overhead when performing this action. Especially people who allow strict sets of cookies should be prompted before deleting them. What's the biggest task : entering all sites again or clicking a second button when your mousepointer already is in the same region ? I consider cookies and passwords (forminformation ?) too important to be instantly deletable. The high number of times this bug is reported confirms this view IMHO... . I disagree with Connor on the 'too many dialogs'. It's a not too often used dialog, so it won't really bother. There are several solutions/alternatives : 1. passwords and cookies get an additional warningmessagebox 2. pressing shift(or control)/click deletes without a warning(as Windows does with files) 3. at least passwords gets it definitely 4. cancelling the main screen should bring them back
No longer blocks: 285836
In my opinion these are the 2 best options so far: 1. Pressing "Cancel" the options window brings back the cookies. 2. Have a confirmation dialog only if there are a large amount of cookies stored.
*** Bug 299701 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to comment #18) > In my opinion these are the 2 best options so far: > 1. Pressing "Cancel" the options window brings back the cookies. > 2. Have a confirmation dialog only if there are a large amount of cookies stored. Please, please, please implement a confirmation dialog if a large number (maybe 20?) of cookies are stored. I frequently clear my cache, and accidentally cleared my cookies by mistake a few days ago. I just clicked on the wrong button, which I find easy to do because I expand and collapse the items pretty frequently in that dialog box. I have had to log in to several dozen websites again. I think a reasonable rule of thumb is that if the user's destructive action would result in more than a minute or two of work to repair, then a confirmation dialog is warranted. This is rare enough an event in Firefox that the rule of thumb would not lead to a proliferation of dialog boxes.
This bug was filed mainly because of the close proximity of the "view" and "clear" buttons. This is fixed with the new dialog. It really shouldn't be an issue anymore (see comment 15). Are you using a recent build? While this is still a problem with 1.0.x builds, it seems pretty reasonable with Deer Park and future releases.
(In reply to comment #21) I agree the buttons aren't in close proximity now, but the lack of a confirmation dialog remains unacceptable, for an action that causes the user to have to log in to possibly dozens of websites as a result. Personally I've accidentally clicked it twice now, and I can't be the only one.
(In reply to comment #22) > have to log in to possibly dozens of websites as a result. Personally I've > accidentally clicked it twice now, and I can't be the only one. I think I've lost it more than twice, with more than 100 entries that require some sorts of manual input :) (In reply to comment #1) >Too many confirmation dialogs results in user apathy This reasoning is laughable at best. Who presses "Clear Cookis Now" button more than twice in a day and gets apathy? Clearly protection against data loss is more important than 'user apathy'.
This screenshot shows my proposal for a new checkbox by which the user indicates if he/she likes to be warned before deleting any of the stored privacy information.
(In reply to comment #24) The Options dialog doesn't look like this anymore. Try a Deer Park Alpha build and see if it still seems necessary to you.
I'm currently trying Deer Park Alpha I The UI changes of the options dialog are impressive ! Much user friendly and versatile. However, I insist on a warning message before any/some deletions. This setting might very well be moved to the General tab instead of Privacy.
Yes, it still needs a confirmation box. I clicked "Clear Cookies" instead of "Clear Cache" once. Very annoying. Anything that can irreversibly destroy information should have at least one level of confirmation.
Come on now. This is at LEAST AS SEVERE as losing your typed passwords. BOTH instances require you to go to websites and retype passwords, but this one also causes the loss of settings! There really should be a dialog similar to the clear passwords confirmation.
Someone remind me why we can't make it so clicking Cancel reverses the effect?
(In reply to comment #29) > Someone remind me why we can't make it so clicking Cancel reverses the effect? See comment #16 and Bug 285836
*** Bug 308212 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 320133 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 331593 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
In Firefox 1.5 there doesn't seem to be a "Cancel" button, only a "Close" button. So perhaps this bug should be reopened?
(In reply to comment #34) > In Firefox 1.5 there doesn't seem to be a "Cancel" button, only a "Close" > button. So perhaps this bug should be reopened? I can see Cancel for the Options dialog in the trunk. Perhaps you meant the View Cookies dialog. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060330 Firefox/1.6a1
> I can see Cancel for the Options dialog in the trunk. Perhaps you meant the > View Cookies dialog. I guess it must have been added then; it's not there in Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060225 Firefox/1.5.0.1 And no, i didn't mean the View Cookies dialog, I meant the preferences dialog as a whole.
(In reply to comment #36) There is a Cancel button for the Options window in Firefox 1.5.0.1
Windows has a Cancel button, Linux has a Close button.
(In reply to comment #38) > Windows has a Cancel button, Linux has a Close button. Does it have any profound design intention behind it, by any chance? If not, I guess it's a bug...
*** Bug 343412 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
sorry for bugspam, long-overdue mass reassign of ancient QA contact bugs, filter on "beltznerLovesGoats" to get rid of this mass change
QA Contact: mconnor → preferences
*** Bug 356018 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 363699 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Please reconsider the WONTFIX on this. Seeing the large number of duplicates being filed against it, it seems that I am not alone in thinking that this is a bug. Yes, constantly nagging the user with confirmation dialogs is annoying, but not when it comes to potential dataloss and not on a seldom-used control. Losing all cookies is definitely drastic enough to warrant a sanity-check from the user.
And wontfix is wontfix, unless there are new arguments. Instead of a confirmation we could provide UI to undo accidental removal of all cookies. http://www.alistapart.com/articles/neveruseawarning This is what bug 285836 is about.
This patch is all that would be necessary to add a confirmation dialog to the Remove All Cookies operation from the latest FF 3.6 repository. I realize the issue is marked as WONTFIX but thought I'd try submitting a patch just for the hell of it. :)
Thank you Scott! Earlier, Nickolay said: "And wontfix is wontfix, unless there are new arguments." Well, here is a new argument. The patch has already been written so minimal effort is required to use it, and the patch is small so the risk of breaking things is small. I propose Scott's patch be accepted temporarily as a stopgap solution until such a time as bug 285836 or similar is fixed. Perhaps Scott's solution isn't the "ideal" one, but it is still preferable to the current irreversible dataloss behavior.
Having a patch is not a new argument. I suggest that we put effort towards bug 285386 if people are fired up about this issue. Stopgap UI has a nasty habit of becoming permanent wallpaper, so it's not a zero-cost operation. This is the wrong solution, allowing Undo is the right solution. Please focus any efforts there.
Well I can see that my encounter with this Firefox usability issue is one that has been around for a long long time - 2003 - wow! To Mike, I would offer the Voltaire quote "The perfect is the enemy of the good.". Realistically, is there any chance of proving undo for a delete all cookies function? In my lifetime :-) ? I agree with other bug comments along the lines of thinking that deleting cookies is hardly a mainstream UI encounter for the vast majority of users. My opinion is that any "delete all" capability, especially ones that are in a UI section infrequently used, are perfect areas for requiring a confirmation step. Per my comments in duplicate Bug 561673, I think a better long term approach would be to help prevent the possibility of leading the user into making a mistake to begin with, by disabling delete all cookies button when any particular cookies have been selected in the dialog ... after all the way the user got to this dialog in the first place is from "remove individual cookies"! It seemed "intuitive" to me that highlighting a domain ("site") in the dialog then pressing "Remove All Cookies" would remove all cookies from just that domain. FWIW - Google Chrome 5.0.342.9 has a very similar behavior to FF - no confirmation for delete all, and easy to delete all even when an individual cookie domain is currently selected. I am +1 for changing this from WONTFIX. I don't see the harm of using Scott's patch for the next few years .. then deleting that code once we reach some nirvana state of undo.
At least cancel button should undo the changes. But conformation alert is preferred.
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