242540 - back button removes all tabs

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 222386

(SeaMonkey :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Christophe Combelles]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040421
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040421

clicking on the back button removes all tabs (see steps)

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
- Open a saved group of tab from the bookmarks.
- open a new page with the "new" button
- open any URL in this new page.
- click on the back button
=> all the tabs disappear and I get only an empty window.
Actual Results:  
All the tabs are lost

Expected Results:  
Two possible behaviours :
- either the back button should be disabled because there is no history on the
new page.
- or the back button should lead back to the empty tab.

I could reproduce this bug with 1.7rc on winXP, and 1.6 on Debian Sid

Comment 1

[OstGote!]

What for a setting do you have for this:

Preferences - Navigator - Tabbed Browsing: 
When opening a bookmark group
 ( ) add tabs
 ( ) replace existing tabs

I guess you have replace active. Could Bug 203961 be related?

Comment 2

[Christophe Combelles]

Yes, "replace existing tabs" is active.
And the back button is enabled as soon as you create a new tab : no need to load
a page on it to see the bug : just load a group of tabs, add a new tab, then
click back. 

It is related to 203960, 203961, 158365, 153016, 134800, 118835,
but none of them describe it precisely. This bug is just one of the symptoms of
the buggy, unuseful and dangerous "replace tabs" fonction.


After reading these bugs, I just put here my own opinion about bookmark groups
behaviour: By default, opening a bookmark group should just open a new window
with the group. (If the current window is completely empty, it can replace the
single current empty tab.) There is no dataloss and no need to implement any
buggy "undo" functionality. Because this current bug seems to be a bug caused by
the implementation of this "undo" function.
Adding a bookmark group in an existing window could be done by drag and drop of
the group onto any position of the tab area.
The option for replacing all the existing tabs could be completely removed : you
'd just have to open the group (by default in a new window), and close the old
window.
So you would have all the current functionalities, but without any option in the
prefs.


summary: YAPFBG (yet another proposal for bookmark groups):
-----------------------------------------------------------
- click on a bookmark group if there are existing tabs => open a new window with
the group
- click on a bookmark group if the window has only EMPTY tabs => replace the
tabs with the group
- drag and drop the group onto the tab area => insert or append the group in the
existing tabs.
-> REMOVE the "replace existing tab" option, since it can be done with no
dataloss in two clicks: click on a group, then close the old window
-> REMOVE the "add tabs" option, since it can be done by drag'n'dropping the
group onto the tab area.
-> REMOVE any "undo" function because now you'd have no dataloss.

Comment 3

[OstGote!]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Yes, "replace existing tabs" is active.
This setting is needed to reproduce the bug.
> And the back button is enabled as soon as you create a new tab : no need to load
> a page on it to see the bug : just load a group of tabs, add a new tab, then
> click back. 
Yeah, confirming with 1.8a build 2004050208 on WinNT4. Without the new tab the
behavior is ok, go back to the first empty tab. But because a new one is
appended this is not ok, this one doesn't belong to the group. After the first
change in one of the group tabs the back button is greyed out for the others.

I would add a dependency to Bug 135915.

Comment 4

[Patrick]

isn't this a dupe of bug 222386?

Comment 5

[Patrick]

duping. if i'm mistaken, please reopen.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 222386 ***