285602 - Make Cancel the default button in "Sanitize Firefox" dialog

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

I just "sanitized" Firefox accidentally. I pressed the shortcut ctrl+shift+del,
followed by enter before the sanitize dialog was completely drawn.

This happened while I was editing the string in Location Bar
(ctrl+shift+left=select the word to the left of cursor, delete=delete selected
word, enter=load the url. Apparently I didn't release ctrl+shift when I clicked
del).

I think that in order to prevent things like this from happening the Sanitize
Now button should not be the default dialog button.

STR:
1. Try editing URL in location bar:
1a. Hold CTRL+SHIFT
1b. press left-arrow
1c. press del (but forget to release CTRL+SHIFT)
2. press enter to load the URL.
3. Notice the lag while Firefox clears all of your history, saved form info and
cache

Comment 1

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

If this was _easy_ to hit I'd agree with you.  But Ctrl-Shift-Del is pretty
tough to hit accidentally during normal usage.  

Defaulting to cancel isn't better, I'd rather default to nothing than Cancel,
but I don't see a serious potential for harm here.  Its definitely an edge case.

Comment 2

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

Well, yes it is an edge case for most people, but I'd rather not lose my history
because of an edge case. (In fact, for me it's not even an edge case.)

I don't have strong feelings about making Cancel button default (I think I got
this idea from that Microsoft employee's blog post about Firefox installation
troubles, where he said (iirc) that sometimes Cancel button should be default
and it is default in IE SP2).

I don't see why implementing the change I suggested is bad. If there are
reasons, please tell me.

Comment 3

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Because the expected behaviour for dialogs is default == accept, and people have
"Enter == Yes" drilled into their heads from years of experience.  Defaulting to
Cancel means that people won't get the expected result from hitting Enter on the
Sanitize dialog.  In fact, the risk is that they'll compromise their own privacy
concerns since they'll assume we're doing the right thing.  Adding more
keystrokes to trigger the feature is a hassle that I'm not willing to force onto
users for the sake of an edge case.  If you feel the risk is too high, you can
always uncheck all of the options.

Comment 4

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

Hmm that makes sense. I'd still not use the default key for a dataloss action
(making Cancel the default may be a bad idea too), but it's of course up to you
to decide.

If it was possible to uncheck all the options, I'd be content. The problem is,
their state doesn't persist (as of 20050307, will try newer build soon). Is it
supposed to?

Comment 5

[Darin Fisher]

would the button count down to being enabled approach be a viable compromise here?

Comment 6

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

fwiw, I hate those "wait a moment" buttons.

Actually, I think it would be the best if checkboxes in that dialog remembered
their state and were off by default (and keep Sanitize Now the default button).

That way, those who value their history/cache etc won't lose their data
accidentally, and those who like to "sanitize" Firefox would have to set those
checkboxes, saying they are ok with clearing that data. Afterwards they can just
press Enter to confirm that dialog.

Comment 7

[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 8

[nrlz]

I came here to say that I was also affected by the shortcut keys. I was searching on google.com and typed in "basic html4" in the search box, then decided to just search for the word "html4" so I:
1. ctrl+left to move cursor to the left of "html4"
2. ctrl+shift+left to select word "basic "
3. del to delete word; (but didn't release ctrl+shift in time)
4. pressed enter to launch google search (but actually confirmed "Clear Private Data" dialog)

Comment 9

[buovjaga]

Cancel still not default. It clears for the past 1 hour as default now, though, so not the end of the world I guess.. Offline website data and Site preferences are unticked.
Win 10, FF 50.1.0