277580 - accidentally pressed keys lead to dataloss when posting on forums

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 48333

(Firefox :: Keyboard Navigation, defect)

Description

[denis bider]

Keyboard shortcuts may be nice for browsing (if anybody uses them?), but I would
like to call attention to their awfully dangerous side effects when writing on
online forums. It causes much frustration when one writes up long, pondering,
well-written paragraphs, just to have them obliterated when one accidentally
presses Ctrl+R (reloading the page), or inadvertently moves focus out of the
edit window and then presses Backspace (going back to the previous page, often
resetting input). These two key shortcuts alone have already caused me hours of
lost work, and I virtually never use them for what they are actually intended.

I suggest that the grief caused by accidentally pressed keyboard shorcuts to
bloggers and forum users is unacceptable and not in line with modern standards
of software usability. The undoable and irrevocable loss of data that it leads
to is more reminiscent of computers in the year 1990 than 2005. A solution
should be found to alleviate this condition - the solution could be quite
sophisticated or rather crude, but what matters is that there is some solution.

Thank you for your consideration, and kudos for your excellent work!

denis
(your avid user)

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

Possibile fixes:
* Disable dangerous shortcuts (e.g. Ctrl+R) when a textarea has focus.
* Ask for confirmation when leaving/reloading a page when a textarea has
some/lots of user-entered text (bug 48333).

Comment 2

[aancsiid]

Type text to incrementally find on page. Press backspace several times to clear
that text -- only press it a few too many times. Suddenly the functionality of
backspace changes and browser backs up several pages.

The severity of this bug is high -- The frustration caused is close to
converting me back to IE.

Comment 3

[Dan Gregory]

Hallelujah!  Yes, this bug if you want to call it that is my number one pet peeve about mozilla browsers, hands down.  In Opera and IE, if backspace is hit while the cursor is out of a text box, no data is lost.  One can simply go forward again and see everything they've written.  This annoyance can occur anywhere there is a text box (like here for example).  It happens in web mail all the time, aahhhh!!! I love you I love you !! but ahhh!!!!!

Comment 4

[Aaron Leventhal]

Backspace shouldn't be a problem anymore, because of fastback. When you go back forward the form contents are in the state that you left them.

Also, when I press Ctrl+R I don't lose the data I have in a textarea. Maybe that's a change from how things used to be.

Is this still a bug?

Comment 5

[David Bolter [:davidb] (NeedInfo me for attention)]

Mass un-assigning bugs assigned to Aaron.

Comment 6

[buovjaga]

No response to question in comment 4 in over 10 years, closing as WFM. Feel free to revisit, if still considered relevant.

However, this is something that sites with editing functionality should take care of (and mostly do these days with "Stay on page / Leave page" pop ups).

Comment 7

[denis bider]

The browser is intended to serve the user, regardless of the behavior of web sites.

Many sites do not implement a "Leave page" pop-up. Case in point: this very Bugzilla form. Pressing Ctrl+W while typing this closes the tab. If it's the last tab, it closes the browser.

In practical use, I continue to work around this usability issue with an AutoHotkey script:

; Disable extra mouse buttons being sent to Firefox (they act as Forward and Back)
#IfWinActive ahk_class MozillaWindowClass
XButton1:: return
XButton2:: return
^w:: return
#IfWinActive

This disables mouse button 4, mouse button 5, and Ctrl+W from being sent to Mozilla, ever. Because Mozilla cannot be trusted with this.

Most users affected by this implementation choice do not have the knowledge (or the idea) to set up AutoHotkey. Those who do, must suffer this problem a number of times before they will act.

This continues to be an issue that requires fixing. It is indicative of neglect that it's not fixed.

Comment 8

[buovjaga]

First: isn't it enough to have bug 48333 open?
Second: the points in comment 4.
Third: if you have typed stuff to this Bugzilla form, Ctrl+W'd, you can right-click the tab area, select Undo close tab and find your text intact.

Please close this as duplicate of bug 48333, if you agree. Otherwise you have to formulate some proposal of what you want.

Comment 9

[denis bider]

Yes, duplicate of 48333 is appropriate.

And that one stems from August 2000. Yikes.