683892 - Firefox : respect the user's flow in tabs

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Nicolas Barbulesco]

Hello,

Firefox 6.0. Mac OS X 10.6.8.
See screen film :
http://screencast.com/t/EU1NyOJZT
In my Firefox window, I have tabs A and C. I am in tab A : www.vijayjoshi.org/2009/07/07/faqjavascript-user-confirmation-on-close-button-of-browser .
I Apple-click on the link "here". That creates tab B in the background between tabs A and C.
I click on the cross to close tab B. That brings me to tab B. Tab B asks me whether I really want to close it. I reply yes. Tab B closes. I am back in tab A.
So far, so good.
Now, I Apple-click on the link "Misc". That creates tab M in the background between tabs A and C.
I Apple-click on the link "here". That creates tab B in the background between tabs M and C.
I click on the cross to close tab B. That brings me to tab B. Tab B asks me whether I really want to close it. I reply yes. Tab B closes.

Expected behaviour :

I am back in tab A : Firefox respects my tab navigation flow.

Actual behaviour :

Inconsistent behaviour. I land in tab C : Firefox does not respect my tab navigation flow.

Please correct that.

Thanks.

Nicolas

Comment 1

[Vlad [QA]]

Reproducible for me on Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:9.0a1) Gecko/20110912 Firefox/9.0a1

Setting resolution to NEW.

Comment 2

[Nicolas Barbulesco]

Hello,

Firefox 6.0 on Mac OS X 10.6.8.
Respect the navigation order across tabs.
IE 8 on Windows now manages that perfectly. Firefox is becoming better at it.

I have a window in Firefox. It contains 1 tab : A.
I Apple-click on the link B, and then on the link C. They open as background tabs.
Now the window has tabs A, B, C, and I am still in tab A.
I click on tab C. I read it. I close it.

Expected results :

I am back in tab A. I continue doing what I was doing where I was.

Actual results :

I land in tab B. My flow is disturbed. I cannot right now continue doing what I was doing where I was.

Comment 3

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Vlad, unless the UI team has decided to fundamentally alter how Firefox handles tabs, I'd let them confirm this or not. This is not the way any other browser handles tab order, except maybe IE 8 (which I haven't used, so I can't confirm that this is how it works).

Comment 4

[Vlad [QA]]

ok
(In reply to Chris Lawson from comment #3)
> Vlad, unless the UI team has decided to fundamentally alter how Firefox
> handles tabs, I'd let them confirm this or not. This is not the way any
> other browser handles tab order, except maybe IE 8 (which I haven't used, so
> I can't confirm that this is how it works).

Comment 5

[Nicolas Barbulesco]

(In reply to Chris Lawson from comment #3)

I assume we speak about comment 2.

> Vlad, unless the UI team has decided to fundamentally alter how Firefox
> handles tabs, I'd let them confirm this or not. This is not the way any
> other browser handles tab order, except maybe IE 8 (which I haven't used, so
> I can't confirm that this is how it works).

Except also my Opera 11.50 Mac. Whether I click-then-close tab B or tab C.

Comment 6

[Nicolas Barbulesco]

(In reply to Chris Lawson (gone) from comment #3)

> Vlad, unless the UI team has decided to fundamentally alter how Firefox
> handles tabs, I'd let them confirm this or not. This is not the way any
> other browser handles tab order, except maybe IE 8 (which I haven't used, so
> I can't confirm that this is how it works).

(In reply to Nicolas Barbulesco from comment #5)

> Except also my Opera 11.50 Mac. Whether I click-then-close tab B or tab C.

IE 11 Win also has the behaviour I expect.

Let's extend the scope of this request to all platforms.

And let's sum up the expected behaviour clearly : 

When closing a tab that is not the only one in the window, return to the tab which was previously active. So that the user can continue what s/he was doing.

Thank you.