509212 - Moving mouse away while clicking Close Tab button still closes tab

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[etcoproc]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; pt-BR; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/2.0.0.11;MEGAUPLOAD 1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; pt-BR; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2;MEGAUPLOAD 1.0

Normally, buttons give you a chance to regret: if you move the mouse away after
clicking, but with the button still depressed, the action won't be taken (i.e.,
the event fires on MouseUp instead of OnClick - this is VBA, sorry 'bout that).
The Close Tab buttons in Firefox don't give that chance; moving the mouse away
won't keep the tab.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Select a tab
2. Click the close button (X) and keep the mouse button pressed.
3. Move the mouse away.

Actual Results:  
The tab closes.

Expected Results:  
The tab should stay open.

It happens even in safe-mode.

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3pre) Gecko/20090804 Shiretoko/3.5.3pre

I can't reproduce this.

Comment 2

[aravindm]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.2pre) Gecko/20100308 Namoroka/3.6.2pre
Unable to reproduce. Reporter, please test with Firefox 3.6. If you are still able to see such a behavior, start Firefox in Safe Mode (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode) to  check if an extension is the cause of the mentioned issue.

Comment 3

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1] (away from Feb 12th - Feb 22nd)]

No feedback from the reporter. Feel free to reopen the bug when you are still able to reproduce it with the most recent version of Firefox.

Comment 4

[Arun Das]

Can we reopen this bug? Almost filed a duplicate.

I'm using Firefox 30.0 which is the latest stable release. This issue still persists. I would like to update the reproduction steps provided which appear to have missed out some key elements.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Select a tab.
2. Click *and hold the mouse button on* the Close button (X) *that appeared on the tab* (not the main window's X button).
3. Move the mouse pointer away from the said Close button while still holding the mouse button down.
4. Release the mouse button.

Expected Results:
The selected tab should stay open.

Actual Results:
The selected tab closes.

I have tried other tabbed applications such as Toad, Notepad++ and even Chrome. When I click and hold down on the X button of a tab, if I find it a mistake and want to keep the tab open, I can drag the mouse pointer away from the X button, and then release it. The tab will remain open.

But in Firefox, the tab will close anyway regardless of the fact that I have dragged the mouse pointer away before releasing the mouse button. This is very strange and does not follow the normal standards followed by other applications.

Also, the OP is right that most buttons give you the chance to "cancel" or "undo" the action of clicking on it, and return it to a state as though it was never clicked at all. When a button doesn't give this chance, it's very frustrating to the user who *almost* made a mistake, but thinks he didn't... only to discover that the mistake has been made anyway despite him signalling his intention to avoid it.

I can presently use "Undo Close Tab" as a workaround, but this is not very useful if the tab contents have filled form data (assume badly designed forms) or some other session-based data which cannot be recovered immediately by re-opening the closed tab.

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Arun Das from comment #4)
> Can we reopen this bug? Almost filed a duplicate.
> 
> I'm using Firefox 30.0 which is the latest stable release. This issue still
> persists.

This is likely caused by an add-on. Can you reproduce this with your add-ons disabled?

Comment 7

[Arun Das]

(In reply to Dão Gottwald [:dao] from comment #5)
> This is likely caused by an add-on. Can you reproduce this with your add-ons
> disabled?

My sincerest apologies. You are right, it is caused by an add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multiple-tab-handler

With this add-on disabled, the issue is no longer present.

Which brings me to another topic [I would like a quick answer before I go and file a feature request or so.]:

Are there plans to introduce multiple tab selection in Firefox natively? The only reason I installed that old add-on is so that I can Ctrl-click multiple tabs or Shift-click a range of tabs (then drag them out to a separate window or rearrange them as a moving group among other tabs). But the add-on is old, ugly, broken and creating issue like the above.

Comment 8

[Martijn Smit]

Take a look at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Projects/Tab_Multi-Selection/Design.

Comment 9

[Arun Das]

Thank you. I am now using the patch add-on that I found through the page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bug-566510/

Although it's not feature-rich enough, it at least serves the basic use case I need - moving a selection of tabs into a new window - without breaking Firefox UI (the Close Tab button).

Thanks again!