279990 - Bookmarks get deleted without a prompt

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 208399

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Zhen-Jock Lau]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

When you keep the Bookmark sidebar open and the current focus is on the sidebar,
pressing delete will remove your bookmarks without prompting! This is extremely
destructive, as I have managed to get two folders worth of bookmarks deleted by
accident.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Open the bookmark sidebar (Ctrl+B)
2.Click anywhere in the bookmark sidebar.
3.Press delete.

Actual Results:  
The bookmark / folder of bookmarks gets deleted.

Expected Results:  
A prompt should show up to ensure that the user really wants to delete the
bookmark / folder of bookmarks.

Comment 1

[Hawk]

(In reply to comment #0)
> User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5)
Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
> Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5)
Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
> 
> When you keep the Bookmark sidebar open and the current focus is on the sidebar,
> pressing delete will remove your bookmarks without prompting! This is extremely
> destructive, as I have managed to get two folders worth of bookmarks deleted by
> accident.
> 
> Reproducible: Always
> 
> Steps to Reproduce:
> 1.Open the bookmark sidebar (Ctrl+B)
> 2.Click anywhere in the bookmark sidebar.
> 3.Press delete.
> 
> Actual Results:  
> The bookmark / folder of bookmarks gets deleted.
> 
> Expected Results:  
> A prompt should show up to ensure that the user really wants to delete the
> bookmark / folder of bookmarks.

I managed to reproduce this bug. You can UNDO the delete, but if it is
accidentally deleted, the user may not notice before its too late.

Comment 2

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Deletion of individual bookmarks doesn't normally warrant a warning, since its
not generall critical or non-recoverable data.  However, there might be value in
a threshold pref, i.e. deleting more than X bookmarks triggers a warning.  What
an appropriate default would be is something that would be debatable as well.

Comment 3

[Hawk]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Deletion of individual bookmarks doesn't normally warrant a warning, since its
> not generall critical or non-recoverable data.  However, there might be value in
> a threshold pref, i.e. deleting more than X bookmarks triggers a warning.  What
> an appropriate default would be is something that would be debatable as well.

shouldn't the deletion of ANYTHING come up with a prompt? 
Bookmarks may not be critical, but if you bookmark a site, its normally because
you do not want to remember the full url. If deleted, you may not be able to
find back that bookmark again. So it is quite important

Comment 4

[José Jeria]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 208399 ***

Comment 5

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Warning dialogs are only useful in cases where they're not expected.  If you
always get a warning dialog for most actions, then the warning loses meaning,
and you end up with people who never read warnings.

Comment 6

[Stasys Adiklis]

Why won't you folks agree to disagree and solve the problem via the magic of a
checkbox?

Delete confirmation should be an option and: 1. off by default on Linux as is
demanded by GNOME UIG, 2. on by default in Windows build as is the convention in
Windows land.

Comment 7

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Prefs are not the answer.  That's a huge cop-out.

Comment 8

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

sorry for bugspam, long-overdue mass reassign of ancient QA contact bugs, filter on "beltznerLovesGoats" to get rid of this mass change

Comment 9

[David Carter]

There's another problem related to this, which I will report as "new":  When I deleted an empty folder I'd just created, the folder just below it was deleted -full of URL's I wanted.  Whether or not I had the wrong line highlighted for deletion isn't the issue.
. . . The issue is. . . . The deleted folder did NOT go to the Microsoft Recycle Bin, therefore I could not recover/restore it.
. . . Microsoft IE6 sends deleted folders to the Recycle Bin.

If Firefox did this, then this bug, 279990, would cease to be vexatious - there would be a recovery mode and thus this discussion of prompts, etc would be unimportant.