501290 - add preferences UI for browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 463827

(Firefox :: Settings UI, enhancement)

Description

[martinrssf]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1b4) Gecko/20090427 Fedora/3.5-0.20.beta4.fc11 Firefox/3.5b4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1b4) Gecko/20090427 Fedora/3.5-0.20.beta4.fc11 Firefox/3.5b4

When last tab remains, closing it quits firefox. This is counter-intuitive. There is already ctrl-Q (quit) command for quitting the application.

I know there is about:config option to disable this, but please provide a more friendly GUI option to turn that off, and have it off by default.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Press ctrl-W when one single tab remains
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
Firefox quits.

Expected Results:  
Firefox remains with empty tab.

I tend to close multiple tabs and always end up over-reaching and quitting instead of a blank slate to start over. This is a human factor issue, whereby the software should be simple to use for humans, not vice versa. The software shouldn't assume we are turning it fully off. I wouldn't want a car that shuts its engine off everytime I brake for full stop for more than 10 seconds.

Severity major since it's a major human factor issue.

Comment 1

[u88484]

See bug 455852, bug 455990, bug 456405, bug 456314, bug 456425 and bug 392870.  A LOT of discussion on what exactly to do here and you can most likely find a developer in one of those saying this wouldn't happen.

Changed from major to minor because you can just easily open the browser back up without issue.  Please read https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=fields.html#importance

Comment 2

[Ronny]

Go to about:config.
Change the value of "browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab" to "false" and your issue will be resolved.

-Ronny

Comment 3

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> I know there is about:config option to disable this, but please provide a more
> friendly GUI option to turn that off

That's a legitimate request. I'm morphing the bug accordingly.

> and have it off by default.

That's bug 456405.