Open Bug 443396 Opened 16 years ago Updated 2 years ago

[Proposal] reorganize Save Session - Warn on Close/Quit system

Categories

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
Settings UI
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

Milestone:
Future

People

(Reporter: cjcypoi02, Unassigned)

References

(Blocks 2 open bugs)

Details

(Keywords: polish, uiwanted) 

Since much people are confused by the way Firefox manages session saving and close warnings, I want to suggest a new preferences system:

[x] Save Session on Firefox exit
    [x] Ask before saving
    [x] Save only if multiple tabs/windows are opened **

[x] Warn me when closing a Firefox window (not on Firefox exit)
    [x] Warn only if there's more than one tab opened **


** Optional suggestion for additional preferences.


If Firefox has these preferences all under Tab section, it should be more evident the preferences applies to different situations.

Furthermore Firefox should remove "Show my windows and tabs from last time" in Startup preferences (it will be no more necessary), and change that setting description to "When Firefox starts (new session): "
No longer blocks: 384907
Component: Session Restore → Preferences
QA Contact: session.restore → preferences
I have a suggestion related to but not exactly for this: give an option at start up to restore a previously stored session or start anew. One (of more than one) case when this is useful is when the session always leads to a crash, so being able to start a new session would be a good way out of the circle. Another is one when a session contains a lot of tabs, which takes a long time to reload, and the user needs to get on the web urgently.
(In reply to comment #0)
> [x] Warn me when closing a Firefox window (not on Firefox exit)
>     [x] Warn only if there's more than one tab opened **
> 

A little errata corrige: since warnOnClose is applied also if you perform "Close other tabs", I think the current preference is ok. But IMO it's better to specify this preference doesn't apply to Firefox exit:

[x] Warn me when closing multiple tabs (not on Firefox exit)

Other suggestions are still valid.
Flags: wanted-firefox3.1?
Flags: blocking-firefox3.1?
Regardless of how this is changed, this needs to change. It is completely non-intuitive. A check box for 'warn me when closing multiple tabs' should have nothing to do with whether or not firefox is set to open (and thus by implication save) the last session of the last open window or not (mind you this setting is on a completely different tab in options, and without graying out the 'warn me when closing multiple tabs' - because that functionality still works until you go to close the last window still open... talk about inconsistent UI...). 

It is also non-intuitive that the "warning" received sounds more like a dialog option to save your session than about warning you of closing the window. This led me to say 'quit' and 'don't ask me again' because I never want to be asked if I want to save the session before I quit, and that is what that dialog is asking me to do. And then firefox was just closing itself no matter how many tabs I had open or what options I had ticked. Terrible design.

I only want to be warned about closing the window, not offered something else. I don't want to accidentally ever save a session and restore it the next time I open firefox, ever. I want to either close the window, or not close the window. Completely uncouple the two.
Thank you, Bz Mz. I've argued for this too. The developers seem to try to optimize  their actions (or overengineer) using obscure reasoning, which leads to confusing UI and unmet users' expectations. 

Warning on quit and saving sessions should be completely unrelated. Let the users decide which combination of options suits them.
There are a bunch of other bugs here with Paul might be able to dig up references to. We're not going to block Firefox 3.1 on this, and I don't think that the degree of preferences suggested in comment 0 are required.

The key is to make it clear:

 - what will happen on shutdown
 - what will happen on startup

Tabs should always be restored on restart, except perhaps for restarts from crashes, but that's now already covered by about:sessionrestore

This doesn't block bug 404081 nor bug 419009, though it's related.
No longer blocks: 404081, 419009
Flags: wanted-firefox3.1?
Flags: wanted-firefox3.1-
Flags: blocking-firefox3.1?
Flags: blocking-firefox3.1-
Keywords: ue → polish
Target Milestone: --- → Future
This past summer when I interned, I was tasked to clean up some of this. I got sidetracked into some other projects, but I did a LOT of research into how Firefox quits.

So some of these problems come in because the quit code is a bit messy and accounts for varying combinations of prefs. Even more problematic is that the differentiation between closing the last window and quitting gets confusing because on Windows/Linux that is supposed to trigger quit. (I think this led to your problem Bz Mz). In the case of closing the last window, you're actually quitting the application, and so the quit/session restore dialog is shown.

I tried to clean up the preferences to make things just a bit more obvious in bug 384658, but when working on that, came to the realization that it wasn't as easy as shuffling and exposing existing preferences. We really need to reevaluate the whole path. With some of the other changes that have gone into 3.1, I think we can begin to do this, look more into the expected behaviors, and have a good solution for v.next.

Some other bugs to look at: bug 384907, bug 422040, bug 433123
I appreciate the fact that the team rolled a lot of fixes and new features into the 3.1 plan, but the fact is that I (and it sounds like others as well) would rather have this fairly straightforward (from a user perspective) usability issue handled than pretty much any of the new features.

If 3.1 weren't already in beta, I would (and frankly, should have months ago) nominate this both for inclusion and as a release blocker. This is the only usability issue I have with the 3.0.x line, but it's one that drives me crazy.

The comments above from Bz Mz and Roman R. are dead on - whether or not a session is saved has nothing to do with warning about closing multiple tabs. For my workflow, and I suspect many many others, session saving isn't even useful, but the tab warning is exceptionally handy.

I guess this is a long way of saying that I'd really like to see this included in the 3.1.1 release at the latest.
I think there should be a menu option or shortcut to Quit & Save Session even when all warnings are turned off.
Normally, I just want to quit without saving. But sometimes I want to save the session when there is pending stuff, but of course I don’t want to change the configuration every time.
(In reply to Beltzner, comment #6)
> I don't think that the degree of preferences suggested in comment 0 are 
> required.

Indeed only 3 of the prefs I suggested are essential IMO. the two prefs with ** at the end are not so important. But they can be added in a future as hidden prefs, true by default.

> This doesn't block bug 404081 nor bug 419009, though it's related.

Well... but if this bug will be fixed, also Bug 404081 is fixed. Furthermore  Bug 419009 is caused by user's misunderstandings of "auto save session" feature, that fixing this bug can avoid. And I think also bug 384658 and bug 384907 block this bug.

@Lönngren: see Bug 426018
Blocks: 503564
Yes this bug is severely needed to avoid user misunderstanding.

I have quite a lot of tabs, closing and reopening them all takes a lo-o-ong time, and I would not want to do it by mistake — not only Ctrl+Q and Ctrl+W are quite close to each other on QWERTY and QWERTZ and also on AZERTY, but it has happened to me to click the [X] on the titlebar when what I meant was the [X] on the tabbar. Maybe it's the onset of senility, as I'm approaching my 60th birthday, who knows?

So I want Firefox to restart with my tabs from last time *and* warn at quit. How do I get that?
- Lie to Firefox by telling it that I don't want my latest session to be reloaded at startup.
- At closedown Firefox will then ask me "Do you want your tabs to be saved, and reloaded at next startup?"

"Confusing" to say the least. A change in how the prefs are stored and used may be avoided, but a change in the preferences UI, similar to what is asked for in comment #0, would have a lot of impact in clearing user confusion at very little cost. If I knew XUL just a little, I would ASSIGN this bug to myself and propose a patch.
Adding bug 505548 as being blocked by this - since it covers the fact that the current UI doesn't make it clear that "save tabs on exit" is overridden by "clear history on exit". This has been the cause of many false bugs reports similar to bug 398817 and as such bug 398817 has now been duped over 30 times.

Please could something to alleviate this be incorporated into any proposal here - thanks!
Blocks: 505548
invalid due to Bug 592822?
Paul, I don't think I've ever seen this bug proposal before but its interesting to say the least to reorg the UI for session store with the dialogs/prefs being broken out.
(In reply to Dennis "Dale" Y. [:cuz84d] from comment #14)
> Paul, I don't think I've ever seen this bug proposal before but its
> interesting to say the least to reorg the UI for session store with the
> dialogs/prefs being broken out.

Yea, I think we could stand to do _something_ here, especially with the addition of exposing restore_on_demand. Bug 720154 mentions moving that to the tabs panel, so maybe doing it all at once makes the most sense. Though ideally, we'd have less prefs, especially about dialogs.
Severity: normal → S3
You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.