925874 - Tabs are too fragile under OSX for average users

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[Jan-Ivar Bruaroey [:jib] (needinfo? me)]

TL;DR: On OSX, if the user closes the only Firefox window and re-opens it, I think we should restore their pinned tabs as well as regular tabs if they chose the "Show my windows and tabs from last time" option, much like we do on Windows, even though Firefox didn't restart (a technicality). meaning: don't warn them about closing multiple tabs (if they have multiple tabs), and bring back their stuff in the next opened window, much as if the user had hit Ctrl+H and restarted Firefox instead.

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I'm going to file two mutually exclusive bugs in the hopes that one of them will be fixed. This is one of them, the other is Bug 925872.

I'm a recent Mac convert with a history of Windows use, and I understand the OSX logic of why closing the Firefox window with the red round (x) is distinct from closing the application process (Cmd+H or right-click+Quit).

Unfortunately, this means that the "close window" user action gets none of the cushy love historically attached to closing of the application, such as the explicit and optional (paraphrasing) "continue where I left off" or the implicit "preserve pinned tabs, because, you know, I pinned them". While logically defensible (Google Chrome does it too), I think it is wrong of us to do this, because most users don't grasp or care whether the application is there or not (an abstraction the OSX interface wins on incidentally, and one that has been proven on mobile). Thus, in the abstract, the difference between a window gone and an application gone is marginal: the user left, and may come back soon. Inferring that they wish their (pinned) tabs saved in one case and not the other is UX fail IMHO.

I know it's been like this for a while, but dropping tabs less often seems like a win we could implement with little downside.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S3. However, the bug has 14 votes.
:dao, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 2

[BugBot (nomail) [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The last needinfo from me was triggered in error by recent activity on the bug. I'm clearing the needinfo since this is a very old bug and I don't know if it's still relevant.