scrap Reporter
	Description • 11 years ago

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:25.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/25.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20131030131730

Steps to reproduce:

1. Ctrl+Shift+H
2. Selected multiple websites


Actual results:

"Forget About This Site" context menu entry not available


Expected results:

"Forget About This Site" context menu entry available

I find removing pages from History by "Delete this page" completely useless as it only removes the History and Awesome Bar entries, leaving all the junk (cookies etc.). I reported the bug because "Forget About This Site" seemed like THE solution but it's not available for multiple selections.

This bug opts for a completely opposite approach
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=485773
but I don't know if it's still valid.

	scrap Reporter
	Comment 1 • 11 years ago

By "valid" I meant whether the reasoning has been revisited. "we don't actually handle this command for multiple nodes" so they removed the menu entry? Has handling the command for multiple nodes been considered? Has History "Delete this page" and "Forget about this site" refactoring been considered?

	Drew Willcoxon :adw
	Comment 2 • 11 years ago

Thanks for filing.  I've CC'ed the people involved with the original design.  However, design questions like this are better discussed on the firefox-dev mailing list:

https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/firefox-dev
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/firefox-dev

If you would like, please post your proposal to reconsider bug 485773 there and link to your post here.  Otherwise, or if your proposal ends up not getting much traction, this bug will probably be wontfixed.

	(no longer active)
	Comment 3 • 11 years ago

FWIW bug 485773 comment 3 contains the rationale for the current behavior.

	scrap Reporter
	Comment 4 • 11 years ago

(In reply to :Ehsan Akhgari (lagging on bugmail, needinfo? me!) from comment #3)
> FWIW bug 485773 comment 3 contains the rationale for the current behavior.

I don't have the time right now so I'll just drop it as a note here in case I find the time to actually post this to the mailing list.

Considering 485773 comment 3, this has to be the bleakest 'rationale' possible:

1. "This may be error prone, as the user may have selected a site and scrolled away so that the selection is no longer visible, and may end up deleting unwanted history items."
Invalid. This could be extended to any functionality involving selections on a list no fitting the current viewport so you may as well opt for disabling the possibility to delete multiple files in any file browser if the selection can't be covered by one viewport.

2. "If a user actively wants to clear multiple sites, it would be awkward to search through the list(...)"
It's not awkward at all. Both a) sorting by location and b) sorting by most recent visit (e.g. for deleting entries from a certain timeframe) are quick and viable ways to hunt down sites that are unwanted in history.

3. What it all boils down to is this:
The current implementation:
I. forces user to keep what is essentially junk (cache, history clutter etc.)
II. does not give user the ability to efficiently ('one by one' proposed in the comment 3 is simply cumbersome) selectively remove history entries
III. Poses usability problem forcing an unintuitive behavior of disabling a function for multiple selection (user have the right to expect the feature to be available based on vast majority of cases in and outside of Firefox). So not only it's based on dodgy rationale but also fails to communicate to the user.

I've reported the bug because I think making the "forget" option available for multiple selections would be the easiest, most robust way to address issues 3.I-III. I'd happily back a proposal that addresses 3.I-II using a different function/workflow.

	BMO Automation
	Comment 5 • 6 years ago

Per policy at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bug_Triage/Projects/Bug_Handling/Bug_Husbandry#Inactive_Bugs. If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.