433123 - Add preference UI for "always save this session", harmonize quitting/exiting options

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

I thought I'd already filed this, but wasn't able to turn it up. Feel free to dupe this against a similar entry if you find one.

Firefox currently uses the browser.warnOnQuit preference to decide whether or not to ask users if they want to save their session to disk before exiting. There's no UI for exposing this preference, and there should be.

We need to refactor the "General" tab so that "Always restore my session from last time" is more obviously related to "Always save my session". We also somehow need to tie this into the multiple-tab-close dataloss scenario that's protected by "Always warn me when closing multiple tabs."

Comment 1

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> Firefox currently uses the browser.warnOnQuit preference to decide whether or
> not to ask users if they want to save their session to disk before exiting.
> There's no UI for exposing this preference, and there should be.

Actually it uses the browser.warnOnClose preference, which is the same preference that's used for "warn me when closing a window with multiple tabs".

browser.warnOnQuit is a hidden "override" pref, and there's no way to set it to false using UI.

Comment 3

[Dave Garrett]

Quoting part of bug 433018 comment #16:
I think the best way to do this in the GUI would be to have both a "warn if closing multiple tabs" and also a "always prompt for session restore on exit" checkbox.  (the second requiring the first to be selected)  The reason I say this, is that there's also the OTHER case we're not talking about here:  the "close other tabs" context menu option for tabs.  This option is NOT just about session restore.

In theory, warnOnClose would be for check #1 and warnOnQuit would be for check #2.  This would let users select between warning on closing multiple tabs, warning on all exits (and "close other tabs"), or none of the above.

(this issue is sorta scattered over multiple bug reports, its seems... :/ )

Comment 4

[Recall]

The minute they broke it in bug 419009 I saw this issue coming, hence why I made bug 428843, but they fixed nothing there only caused problems. At the time there was a chance to make a late ui preference for "warn on close multiple tabs" and "warn on quit" which actually was partially fixed when I made bug 416696!

Either the devs really are not understanding what my bug as asking for, or it must be very complicated to implement ( although adding a simple ui preference can't be that hard can it?!)

For me save on quit was one of the great things about FF3 and now its rendered useless just because I choose not to be warned on closing multiple tabs..I cannot even override in about:config, because even though it saves true for warn on quit with warn on tabs close disabled it in fact does nothing at all.

So to sum it up these imo should be the ui preferences

"Warn on close multiple tabs" checkbox
"Warn on quit" checkbox

This way a user can decide whether to have both or only one of them.

Comment 5

[Lucas Malor (mail: c6kfnkn2uc AT snkmail DOT c0m)]

For what I've understood, the behaviour for now returns to the old one, but could change (from Bug 433018, Comment #19)

Only a little specification: I think it's better to name the second option "Always warn for save session" (and optionally a suboption "Warn only on multiple tabs"), instead of "Warn on quit".

Comment 6

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Would be nice if there would also be a "Quit Firefox" dialog when there is only 1 tab open.

Comment 7

[Gonzalo HIGUERA DÍAZ]

Looking at several bugs (bug #386067, bug #422040, bug #412640, bug #419009), it seems that not everybody is comfortable with the semantics of browser.warnOnQuit and browser.tabs.warnOnClose. I wonder if decoupling them a little more and giving them the semantics I describe in bug #384907 comment #21 would be a step in the right direction. Any thoughts?

Comment 8

[Roman R.]

(In reply to comment #0)
> We also 
> somehow need to tie this into the multiple-tab-close dataloss scenario that's
> protected by "Always warn me when closing multiple tabs."

No, "Always save my session" should be separate from warning when closing multiple tabs. Many people want these options to be independent from each other. 

Comment 9

[Lucas Malor (mail: c6kfnkn2uc AT snkmail DOT c0m)]

(In reply to comment #8)
> [...]

I agree, see my alternative suggestion at Bug 443396

Comment 10

[Rafal]

What about an option to save and close when only one tab is open there could be and option to say always warn when closing and this could give the save and quit dialogue for single tab situations as well.

Comment 11

[eyal gruss]

invalid due to Bug 592822?

Comment 12

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

I believe this is properly addressed with the implementation of MR2, more specifically, the Close Tab Modal and the enabling of Session Restore on startup by default.

@jaws: Do you think we could close this old relic?

Comment 13

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

I'll redirect this needinfo to one of the engineers who worked on MR2. Molly, can this be closed now or should it remain open?

Comment 14

[Molly Howell (she/her) (no longer active)]

I'm not entirely sure what this bug ended up asking for; it looks like one of the things it was about was having two separate settings, one for session restore itself and another for the close tab modal. We've certainly resolved that, because the close tab modal has been removed in most cases, and for the remaining cases there is indeed a separate setting. There are more things in the comments here than just that, but given the age and the lack of activity, I'm willing to close this.