GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 346459
NE: Epiphany does not warn when closing a window with multiple tabs
Last modified: 2013-05-27 16:12:38 UTC
It would be nice if Epiphany would display a warning dialog if/when a user tries to close a windows with multiple open tabs in it. Related report for Ubuntu: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/epiphany-browser/+bug/51658
Epiphany warns when there is unsaved form data. IMO that is enough, a confirmation dialog when I'm closing the window would be very workflow-disturbing.
Both Firefox and Opera have it, and while that in and of itself is not a good reason to include the feature, it is handy to have a warning so that you don't accidentally close a window with several open tabs. Another option may be to support (automatic) session saving.
A session saver extension prototype is attached to bug 316245. Such a feature may prevent accidentally closing windows with many open tabs, but it also breaks the workflow when a user does mean to close a window with a few open tabs. Given that Epiphany does give a warning when there is unsaved form data, and that pages that were on the accidentally closed tabs can easiliy be recalled from the History window, what is the added value to make such behaviour default?
I think the biggest issue with needing to use the history window is that I don't think the most recent items in the history window are always the last windows open - I could have 5 tabs sitting unviewed for 20 mintues while go through other pages, leaving those 5 tabs/history entries much more difficult to dig up. Personally, I find the occasional loss of information more disruptive than the extra click/keystroke required when closing a window containing several tabs. Not all pages worth viewing have forms, so the form data warning only covers a portion of the potential problem cases.
So the real problem, I understand, is the way the History window works? I filed a bug about that some time ago: bug 306725. Let's try to fix that instead of fighting the symptom. :)
Created attachment 68326 [details] Epiphany extension "Confirm Window Close" file 1 of 2 This Python extension implements a simple warning dialog like the one in Firefox, for closing of windows with multiple tabs. In order to install the extension, you have to download confirmwindowclose.py (this attachment) and confirmwindowclose.ephy-extension (the next attachment) and move/copy them to ~/.gnome2/epiphany/extensions/ :)
Created attachment 68327 [details] Epiphany extension "Confirm Window Close" file 2 of 2 File 2 of 2 for the extension in comment #6.
Thank you very much for the plugin Stefan. The others on your site look quite nice! It would be nice to have this bundled with the rest of the Epiphany extensions if the license allows :-)
OK, so I'm moving this to epiphany-extensions. To get extensions included in the official tarball, a patch against cvs HEAD would be appreciated, and you need to ask for review (on irc or mailing list).
What about the extension included in this attachment: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=93745&action=edit
Stefan, would you will to maintain your extension if we get it in?
(In reply to comment #12) > Stefan, would you will to maintain your extension if we get it in? I'm sorry, but I really don't have the commitment for something like that. Also, I am not really using Epiphany these days (Firefox 3 has superior session support, implements bookmark tags, ui looks good with some tweaking, not about to switch to webkit and hence making one nervous about future website/webtechnology support). It's a very small, very simple extension, so if anyone is up to maintaining it (and making the one string translateable, probably), I wouldn't have a problem with that.
This bug is so irritating. First because of what was said in comment #4. Second, because popup windows appear almost (but not entirely) maximized, so when trying to close one you might close the window under that, without any confirmation. I think there should at least be an option to warn before closing a window with multiple tabs. If someone feels that single extra click is too much of a hassle, then they will simply disable it. The extension, unfortunately, is no longer working.
According to its developer, epiphany-extensions is not under active development anymore. (For reference: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-i18n/2013-May/msg00035.html and bug 700924.) It is unlikely that there will be any further active development. Closing this report as WONTFIX as part of Bugzilla Housekeeping - Please feel free to reopen this bug report in the future if anyone takes the responsibility for active development again.