Tom Lowenthal Reporter
	Description • 13 years ago

Expected behavior:

Use Firefox with keyboard shortcuts, occasionally selecting everything with ctrl+a, or closing a tab with ctrl+w. Sometimes, you accidentally hit ctrl+q. Not to worry, Firefox prompts you that you are about to close multiple tabs, and you reply that you made a mistake, thereby avoiding a nightmare scenario of tab closure.

Actual behavior:

Ctrl+q causes Firefox to quit without prompting! Oh no, my beautiful tabs, where have they gone?

	Peter Ford
	Comment 1 • 12 years ago

I have Ubuntu ("Lucid Lynx"): fully up-to-date.  The web browser is Ubuntu's version of Firefox 12.  I was investigating this issue recently, with a new Firefox user profile.  I can confirm this bug affects me too.

Just for the record, I DO get the warning if I invoke the 'Close Window' operation - even if there is only 1 window open.  But I do NOT get the warning if I do File > Quit or Ctrl-Q.

Therefore, one theoretical solution to this bug would be to rename the relevant setting from ...
"Warn me when closing multiple tabs"
... to ...
"Warn me when carrying out the 'Close Window' operation (i.e. alt-f4 OR ctrl-shift-w OR alt-f + d OR clicking the X in the top right/left corner OR clicking File > Close Window) or when carrying out the 'Close Other Tabs' operation - if doing so would result in the closure of multiple tabs".

However, there probably isn't enough space on the screen for a sentence like that!  (And if *this* solution was implemented, I would immediately raise a feature request for an additional "Warn me before Firefox quits" setting.)  I much prefer for there to be a single setting, as there is now, and for this bug to be fixed 'properly'.


I can also confirm that this bug affects Firefox on Windows XP as well.  But instead of "File > Quit", it is "File > Exit".  There doesn't seem to be a keyboard shortcut corresponding to Ctrl-Q, which I actually think is a significant mitigation.  Perhaps someone should mark this bug as blocking bug 420688 ?

On Windows XP I also was NOT warned before a Firefox restart.  (You get a "restart" button after installing extensions.)  I haven't yet tested a Firefox restart on Ubuntu.



There is a workaround.  In about:config, set browser.showQuitWarning to true.  And for the restarting issue, I presume setting browser.warnOnRestart to true would work.  


If you don't like the workaround, you can mitigate the effects of the bug by training yourself to be very careful near the "Quit" option in the File menu, and, (assuming you've got large hands) to use Ctrl-F4 instead of Ctrl-W to close tabs.


Bug 419009 is the one I found first when I started investigating this.  But I don't think that bug distinguishes between Ctrl-Q and Alt-F4 (well, not until I added a comment to that end on Saturday).  So I doubt the original code defect reported in that bug is still with us.  Most of the comments are well out-of-date, written before Firefox started automatically remembering people's sessions, for example.  And the workarounds don't work.  I strongly suggest closing 419009 and keeping 702478.

	saint.snit
	Comment 2 • 12 years ago

This bug is filed in the Keyboard Navigation component, which is inaccurate, as the bug is triggered whether you use the mouse or the keyboard to select the "File > Quit" menu item  (Comment 1 documents this, and I can confirm it).  It's a problem with the behavior of that menu item, not just with its keyboard shortcut.  The component should probably be Menus.

	Matthias Versen [:Matti]
	Comment 3 • 11 years ago

via bug 683521