747633 - Back button behaviour should be consistent regardless of tabs open

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect, P5)

Description

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

If I open fennec, I get the new tab page. If I then launch a link from another application, or open a link inside fennec, it results in a new tab. If I press back, the tab closes and I'm at the home-page again. If I press back again, the app closes. This is what I expect.

If I open fennec, open a new tab/launch a link, close the new tab page, then go back; when I relaunch fennec, the tab I opened is still there and there's no new tab page. I would expect that tab to have closed.

If I launch fennec from a link, I get fennec with that link open. If I then press back and relaunch fennec with a new link, the first link is still open. Again, I would expect the first link to have closed.


Pressing back when there's no history should always close the tab, regardless of other tabs open, and if it's the last tab, the browser should close (or background itself, whatever).

There seem to be several situations where this isn't the case and I end up with old tabs hanging around. This is quite confusing, as I'm never quite sure what's going to happen when I press back, and what state the browser is going to be in when I launch it. Either the tab should always be closed or it should always be left open, it shouldn't be dependent on other tabs being open.

Comment 1

[Brad Lassey [:blassey] (use needinfo?)]

the described behavior sounds correct to the triage group. Assigning to Ian to see if he agrees or disagrees.

Comment 2

[Brad Lassey [:blassey] (use needinfo?)]

Ian, can you please comment?

Comment 3

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Yes, I generally agree that pressing back when there is no history should close your current tab and drop you into the next tab in line.

The one exception here though is that if I open a link from twitter, I expect the back button to close the tab and take me back to twitter, not close the tab and keep me in the browser. Which, at least in my Nightly build, is the current behaviour.

Comment 4

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

(In reply to Ian Barlow (:ibarlow) from comment #3)
> Yes, I generally agree that pressing back when there is no history should
> close your current tab and drop you into the next tab in line.
> 
> The one exception here though is that if I open a link from twitter, I
> expect the back button to close the tab and take me back to twitter, not
> close the tab and keep me in the browser. Which, at least in my Nightly
> build, is the current behaviour.

This isn't quite right - if you open a link in Twitter in the browser now, and the browser wasn't previously open, then press back - opening another link gives you a browser with two tabs - the new link, and the one you previously opened and closed. It's this behaviour that I think is bad (back button should *always* close the selected tab).

Comment 5

[Matt Brubeck (:mbrubeck)]

(In reply to Chris Lord [:cwiiis] from comment #4)
> This isn't quite right - if you open a link in Twitter in the browser now,
> and the browser wasn't previously open, then press back - opening another
> link gives you a browser with two tabs - the new link, and the one you
> previously opened and closed. It's this behaviour that I think is bad (back
> button should *always* close the selected tab).

Right- currently we close the externally-opened tab, *unless* it's the only tab.  Chris's desired behavior (and I tend to agree) is that we should close the tab even if it's the only open tab.

We don't really support having zero tabs open (in either the UX or the code), so we would probably want to do something like open an about:home tab when you return to Fennec.

Note: I don't think this should block 1.0, because the current behavior matches XUL Fennec.  (That doesn't mean we can't improve it, just that it shouldn't prevent us from releasing.)

Comment 6

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Thanks for clarifying guys. That basically builds on what I was saying, I just didn't realize that wasn't happening for all cases yet. 

I agree with Chris and Matt, the back button should always close the tab you just opened (when there is no history left), even in the case of only having one tab open that was launched from an external app. And furthermore that if you close that tab with the back button, it should clear that page from your tab list and the next time you launch Fennec you should go to about:home.

Comment 7

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

Not looking to take this for Native 1.0 release because of risk.

Comment 8

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

(In reply to Kevin Brosnan [:kbrosnan] from comment #7)
> Not looking to take this for Native 1.0 release because of risk.

I don't think this would be that risky, we just need to handle having an empty session (earlier versions handled this, so this may already be ok?) - Perhaps this should be soft rather than -?

Comment 9

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

I think this was WONTFIX'd by mistake - we decided not to fix it for release, but not in a subsequent release.

This is still an annoyance, I was just asked about it after doing a talk on Firefox Mobile, so given that it ought to be relatively trivial to fix, I think we should go for it.

Apologies if this ended up being a design decision that I was unaware of (though comment #6 suggests otherwise).

Comment 10

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

I don't remember why this bug was WONTFIX'ed and we were even looking for it a week ago, so reopening is a good idea.

Comment 11

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

My only change in the design stated in comment 6 is this: Fennec can't ever have zero tabs, so we need to open the about:home page right away (as we are leaving the app) and not wait for the user to return to Fennec.

Comment 12

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

+1 for reopening, we still want this behaviour.

Comment 13

[Paul Rouget [:paul]]

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #11)
> My only change in the design stated in comment 6 is this: Fennec can't ever
> have zero tabs, so we need to open the about:home page right away (as we are
> leaving the app) and not wait for the user to return to Fennec.

Pressing back would do that. Could we then allow the user to close the last tab (with the close button)? It would then unload the last tab and load about:home.

Comment 14

[[e-mail]]

I just wanted to add a +1 for this change.

The thing that drives me nuts about FF on Android is that following links from external apps (such as Google Reader) causes FF to accrue tabs.

What I expect to happen:

1. In Google Reader (GR), click on a link which opens FF with a single tab.
2. Read the page, click the back button. FF closes the tab and returns to GR.
3. Go to the next item in GR, click on a link which opens FF with a single tab.
4. Read the page, click the back button. FF closes the tab and returns to GR.

What actually happens:

1. In Google Reader (GR), click on a link which opens FF with a single tab.
2. Read the page, click the back button. FF leaves the tab open and returns to GR.
3. Go to the next item in GR, click on a link which opens FF with *two* tabs.
4. Read the page, click the back button. FF closes the the second tab but not the first and returns to GR.

Comment 15

[Brad Lassey [:blassey] (use needinfo?)]

Ian, we need a solid specification for what behavior you want changed here

Comment 16

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

We just need some rules here for how the back button works in all situations.

Comment 17

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

Is comment #6 not enough?

- Pressing back when there's no history always closes the tab. No exceptions.
- Starting the browser with zero tabs in the session should load about:home.

Comment 18

[Brad Lassey [:blassey] (use needinfo?)]

filter on [mass-p5]

Comment 19

[NotDot]

Well, this is still a problem:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1036321

Comment 20

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

That's perhaps not this bug.

The back button does two things:

* If since starting the activity you added to the history list, it moves back along it.
* When there's no new history since starting the activity, it leaves Fennec and goes back to the previous activity.

As far as I can tell, that's exactly what's supposed to happen, and exactly what does happen -- see Comment 17.


I think that some users expect various other things to happen, such as:

* If I open a new tab, and hit back, I expect the tab to close and to go back to *the last tab I was on*. What Fennec actually does: once the new tab's history is exhausted, it goes back to the previous activity.

* If I hit back such that the current tab is closed, I expect to go back to about:home, not to leave Fennec.

As far as I can tell, Fennec currently behaves as expected in all situations, so this bug should be closed. mfinkle or blassey might have other ideas.

Comment 21

[NotDot]

Well, then I think we need an option to change this. But thanks for your explanation!

Comment 22

[BMO Automation]

We have completed our launch of our new Firefox on Android. The development of the new versions use GitHub for issue tracking. If the bug report still reproduces in a current version of [Firefox on Android nightly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix) an issue can be reported at the [Fenix GitHub project](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/). If you want to discuss your report please use [Mozilla's chat](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix#Connect_to_Matrix) server https://chat.mozilla.org and join the [#fenix](https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#fenix:mozilla.org) channel.