460360 - undo of page closing should be integrated with Edit -> Undo

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Menus, enhancement)

Description

[Marc Bejarano]

the current way to undo closing of a tab is History -> Recently Closed Tabs -> <tab>.  not only does this not help when you've mistakenly closed the last tab, but it's also cumbersome and non-obvious to certain users.  a simple Edit -> Undo should work for tab closings, too.  this is especially important since bug 252646 concluded that we shouldn't warn users who just typed up a long email in their webmail that they're closing a page they've entered text on.

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

Previous discussion: bug 254021 comment 6 through 14.

> not only does this not help when you've mistakenly closed the last tab

Bug 394759.  Seems orthogonal to whether "undo form editing" and "undo closing" share the same undo stack and keyboard shortcut.

> but it's also cumbersome and non-obvious to certain users

Perhaps, but I think it would be even more confusing to mix "undo form editing" with "undo closing".  Closing a tab would interfere with undoing of form editing and vice versa.

Comment 2

[Ed Avis]

If I might add my two cents, I used Firefox for a long time (since it was called Phoenix) without ever realizing there was a 'recently closed tabs' menu until someone mentioned it on bugzilla!  I am perhaps pretty stupid for not seeing it, but a lot of users must be just as slow on the uptake as I am.

Some kind of visual reminder when you close a tab would help to make sure users discover the 'recently closed tabs' feature.  Perhaps a shortcut to the list of closed tabs could appear at the right of the tab gutter.

Comment 3

[Marc Bejarano]

jesse: i'm not convinced that it'll be a perfect solution, but i think it's better than what we currently do.  Safari integrates the undo stack, btw.  do you have any better ideas?  do you think the status quo is better than my proposal?

Comment 4

[Jesse Ruderman]

Safari on Leopard does not integrate the undo stack.

Yes, I think the status quo is better.

Comment 5

[Marc Bejarano]

oh.  maybe it's Saft w/ Safari on Leopard that is giving me the integration?

do you think it is currently clear to the average non-geek user what to do when he/she accidentally closes a tab with a long unsent email in it?  i don't.  i think almost all users are familiar with the Undo feature as most programs implement one and put it in the place that fx puts its.

Comment 6

[Jesse Ruderman]

I don't think that's the right thing to optimize for.

Comment 7

[Marc Bejarano]

you lost me.... you don't think that making it obvious how to use a feature that we spent time implementing is worth "optimizing" for?

Comment 8

[Jesse Ruderman]

Consistency with other apps, and making it possible/sane to undo editing without undoing tab closing (and vice versa), are also important.  How long we spent implementing each feature is irrelevant.

Comment 9

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

We've discussed this to death, mixed Undo stacks are not really intuitive or predictable, so we're not going to mix them like this.