691015 - The Help > About > 'Check for update' doesn't warn me before restarting the browser

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 653721

(Toolkit :: Application Update, defect)

Description

[algotechie]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1
Build ID: 20110928134238

Steps to reproduce:

On reading on some website that the version 7.0.1 is available, I headed to the Help menu > About Firefox > Check for updates.


Actual results:

It downloaded the update and presented a button "Apply updates"; there's no mention of a browser restart. But thanks to previous bitter experiences (see below), I already knew Firefox will restart and therefore saved all my info before clicking the button. So this time Firefox failed to give me a data loss. Yay!


Expected results:

Firefox should warn before restart. Change that caption from "Apply updates" to "Restart browser to apply updates".

I have had a data loss previously (as I mentioned in bug number 653721). But that bug is obsolete due to three requests in one. So I copy the problem I faced here.

I was at that time downloading a file and the download was non-resumable. On seeing no warning, I thought the updates in this version probably do not require a restart. And therefore clicked the button "Apply Update". Bam! The download was gone!! That file was more important to my work than the browser update. And of course we have a slow connection at the work place. It had to be downloaded again. If a user is typing something in an online form (an email, comment, blog post, report, whatever), or is in the middle of uploading something, that data would also be gone. There must be a warning before restarting the browser, otherwise it's no different from a browser crash. The warning is what makes a planned restart different from a crash.