439785 - Empty tabs that lose focus should auto-close

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement)

Description

[Brian Feraudo]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0

A wonderful feature would be to have empty tabs that lose focus automatically close.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
(feature request)

Expected Results:  
If a new tab is opened, but nothing is entered in the address bar for the tab and nothing (no web page, etc) is opened in the tab, an option to have the tab automatically close when it loses focus would be wonderful.

Comment 1

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

I would find that extremely annoying.  For example, create a new tab,
than realize that the URL you wanted to paste there is in a different
window, switch to that window, select and copy to clipboard, switch
back to the original window to paste the URL... eh, the tab is gone?

And how would the suggested feature handle the case where I open many
tabs? (that is, type CTRL+T ten times)  only one will be opened?

Besides, it's pretty easy to close an unwanted tab with CTRL+W or clicking
the X button.

Comment 2

[Brian Feraudo]

im certainly not saying that every FF user would want this feature or want it on, but usually I use the cntrl+t to open new tabs. like you said, i sometimes forget to copy a URL/etc and need to switch back to a tab. It's much faster, in my opinion to cntrl+t again since the URL bar immediately comes into focus to paste/type the address. In my experience, i end up opening a new tab for this reason and then end up with the tab I wanted open and a blank tab, which i don't need.

If a feature like this were to be implemented, i'm guessing only one blank tab could be opened at a time, but why would you want 10 empty tabs open?

(In reply to comment #1)
> I would find that extremely annoying.  For example, create a new tab,
> than realize that the URL you wanted to paste there is in a different
> window, switch to that window, select and copy to clipboard, switch
> back to the original window to paste the URL... eh, the tab is gone?
> 
> And how would the suggested feature handle the case where I open many
> tabs? (that is, type CTRL+T ten times)  only one will be opened?
> 
> Besides, it's pretty easy to close an unwanted tab with CTRL+W or clicking
> the X button.
> 

Comment 3

[Faraz Hyder]

I have to agree that there is no need for more than one blank tab and even though this is probably not a feature that is going to be used wide spread, it could still be quite useful in cleaning up extra unused tabs. 

(In reply to comment #2)
> im certainly not saying that every FF user would want this feature or want it
> on, but usually I use the cntrl+t to open new tabs. like you said, i sometimes
> forget to copy a URL/etc and need to switch back to a tab. It's much faster, in
> my opinion to cntrl+t again since the URL bar immediately comes into focus to
> paste/type the address. In my experience, i end up opening a new tab for this
> reason and then end up with the tab I wanted open and a blank tab, which i
> don't need.
> 
> If a feature like this were to be implemented, i'm guessing only one blank tab
> could be opened at a time, but why would you want 10 empty tabs open?
> 
> (In reply to comment #1)
> > I would find that extremely annoying.  For example, create a new tab,
> > than realize that the URL you wanted to paste there is in a different
> > window, switch to that window, select and copy to clipboard, switch
> > back to the original window to paste the URL... eh, the tab is gone?
> > 
> > And how would the suggested feature handle the case where I open many
> > tabs? (that is, type CTRL+T ten times)  only one will be opened?
> > 
> > Besides, it's pretty easy to close an unwanted tab with CTRL+W or clicking
> > the X button.
> > 
> 

Comment 4

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

Even if it's optional it still has to be implemented, tested and maintained
and the claimed convenience over just typing CTRL+W isn't worth the
resources it would take to do that, IMHO.

Comment 5

[Frank Yan (:fryn)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> im certainly not saying that every FF user would want this feature or want it
> on, but usually I use the cntrl+t to open new tabs. like you said, i sometimes
> forget to copy a URL/etc and need to switch back to a tab. It's much faster, in
> my opinion to cntrl+t again since the URL bar immediately comes into focus to
> paste/type the address. In my experience, i end up opening a new tab for this
> reason and then end up with the tab I wanted open and a blank tab, which i
> don't need.

According to this, what you really want is for bug 565575 to be fixed.

This feature would violate the principle of ux-control: When simply switching tabs, additionally closing the tab that lost focus is not part of the expected result. (On the other hand, closing a blank tab when selecting 'switch to tab' from the awesomebar does imply that the user's intention is to navigate to that page and simply opened the blank tab, because the user had forgotten that he/she already had that page in a tab.)

Rest assured that work is already being done for prevent superfluous blank tabs. (See bug 320989.)

Comment 6

[Frank Yan (:fryn)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> im certainly not saying that every FF user would want this feature or want it
> on

Also, we are very wary of adding more prefs to the browser.