From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 22:53 on 15 Mar 2007 Subject: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" Alternative title: How to turn what Works As Expected into an aggravation So we all know that Firefox brought tabbing to the masses, right? And users love it, or so we're told. Well, it's not a lie; for the most part, I don't hate it. Or at least until a few months ago, I found no reason to. Then came Firefox 2. You see, I like to enable the setting "Always show the tab bar", because I use both tabs and multiple windows a lot (a window is a thematic group of tabs), and I don't like the jumpiness caused by the tab bar appearing or disappearing. I like things to stay in place. And that works fine and dandy. Except that in Firefox 2, "Always show the tab bar" apparently means "even if you have to rescue the browser window from destruction to ensure that the tab bar can continue to shine in all its glory." That is, the Ctrl-W shortcut now has the same demented behaviour that the close-tab button always had: when there's only one tab left, Ctrl-W closes the tab AND THEN OPENS A NEW ONE WITH THE HOMEPAGE!! RAAAAHHH! DIE!! Die, dammit, and get outta my face! Really, it's very hard to excite me past my usual "grumpy crank" level of annoyance, but the past couple of months, even though I only used Firefox 2 lightly (my main machine is still at 1.5.x), the frustration caused by this deranged behaviour has driven me batty. You might say it could be justified on the grounds that it aligns the behaviour of Ctrl-W with the close-tab button. And I agree that making similar gestures behave similarly is a good UI principle, who DOESN'T want closing the last tab to go away?? Who ever preferred the close-tab button's behaviour? If there really is such a clientele, this NEEDS to be configurable. Yes I know preferences are costly. I don't advocate their willy- nilly addition either. But turning off the "Always show the tab bar" setting CAUSES CTRL-W TO ALSO CLOSE THE WINDOW WHEN YOU CLOSE THE LAST TAB. !!@)@*#&&!^!&!&!!!!!!! What dimwit ever thought that conflating these options in a single preference in this manner was a sane thing to do!? It took me AGES to realise why the damn Ctrl-W shortcut no longer worked as I expected it to. Googling for close to two hours or so in total turned up no solution, but did turn up the hint that A COMPLETELY UNRELATED-SEEMING OPTION controlled this behaviour. So I finally caved and turned off the "Always show the tab bar" option in order to regain my sanity, even though now I have to live with jumpy window content that keeps jarring me out. Good grief, Mozilla people. Way to completely arbitrarily make a nuisance out of something dead simple AFTER YOU HAD ALREADY GOTTEN IT RIGHT. Thanks a whole steaming heap,
From: Jeremy Weathers Date: 23:50 on 15 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" >That is, the Ctrl-W shortcut now has the same demented behaviour >that the close-tab button always had: when there's only one tab >left, Ctrl-W closes the tab AND THEN OPENS A NEW ONE WITH THE >HOMEPAGE!! RAAAAHHH! DIE!! Die, dammit, and get outta my face! >Really, it's very hard to excite me past my usual "grumpy crank" >level of annoyance, but the past couple of months, even though I >only used Firefox 2 lightly (my main machine is still at 1.5.x), >the frustration caused by this deranged behaviour has driven me >batty. It doesn't help you, but the OS X version handles this correctly. --=20 Jeremy Weathers Sony-Ericsson: We put the "slow" in "Damn, this crappy phone is slow!" - Wil Shipley
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 00:19 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" Jeremy Weathers wrote: >> That is, the Ctrl-W shortcut now has the same demented behaviour >> that the close-tab button always had: when there's only one tab >> left, Ctrl-W closes the tab AND THEN OPENS A NEW ONE WITH THE >> HOMEPAGE!! RAAAAHHH! DIE!! Die, dammit, and get outta my face! >> Really, it's very hard to excite me past my usual "grumpy crank" >> level of annoyance, but the past couple of months, even though I >> only used Firefox 2 lightly (my main machine is still at 1.5.x), >> the frustration caused by this deranged behaviour has driven me >> batty. > > > It doesn't help you, but the OS X version handles this correctly. I thought that too, but its actually Tab Mix Plus. In the TMP Preferences -> Events -> Tab Closing you'll find "Do not close window when closing last tab by hotkey" unchecked. Speaking of tabs, can I say what a horribly bad idea putting a tiny little "close" button on a tiny little tab is? X-Chat Aqua used to do this but they sensible took it out. Firefox used to do this but they unsensibly put it back in! Fortunately Tab Mix Plus can take it back out again (and configure it in all sorts of interesting ways). Yay extensible UI! Boo dangerous defaults! Its like putting a "self destruct" button on the right hand side of all the tables in your house. Carelessly put a cup down in the wrong spot and *boop*! Your table and cup disappear! And the best part is, there's no undo! (something else Tab Mix Plus fixes) BAHAHAHAA, silly user!
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 00:36 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" * Michael G Schwern <schwern@xxxxx.xxx> [2007-03-16 01:20]: > Speaking of tabs, can I say what a horribly bad idea putting a > tiny little "close" button on a tiny little tab is? It's actually a preferrable UI style for casual users. The two styles have very different affordances. That said, I made a beeline for the config setting to turn them off again. > Fortunately Tab Mix Plus can take it back out again (and > configure it in all sorts of interesting ways). Yay extensible > UI! Boo dangerous defaults! You can control that using `browser.tabs.closeButtons` -- no need for an extension. > And the best part is, there's no undo! You can retrieve them from History -> Recently Closed Tabs though. I think there even was an unclose-tab function somewhere, but it's well hidden; I only stumbled onto it accidentally and now I can't remember or rediscover what obscure gesture invokes it. Or maybe I hallucinated it -- I'm sufficiently sleep-deprived lately that this may have happened. Regards,
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 04:57 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" A. Pagaltzis wrote: > * Michael G Schwern <schwern@xxxxx.xxx> [2007-03-16 01:20]: >> Speaking of tabs, can I say what a horribly bad idea putting a >> tiny little "close" button on a tiny little tab is? > > It's actually a preferrable UI style for casual users. The two > styles have very different affordances. Casual users don't click to bring a tab to the front and accidentally hit the close button that's taking up 1/4 of the tab they're clicking on? Casual users have better aim? Is that because us advanced users are so shaking with hate that we can't control the mouse any more? I know what you're talking about, though. Many people who use Firefox on my computer without the close boxes on the tabs ask "how do I close a tab" not knowing that they can use (ctrl|apple)-w for that.
From: Peter da Silva Date: 13:51 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" On Mar 15, 2007, at 11:57 PM, Michael G Schwern wrote: > Casual users don't click to bring a tab to the front and accidentally > hit the > close button that's taking up 1/4 of the tab they're clicking on? I'm not a "casual user", I don't think, and I use Camino - I haven't tried out the new Firefox. Camino has a close button on the tab, but it doesn't in any sense use up "1/4 of the tab". If Firefox's tabs are so poorly designed, then that's what you ought to be hating. That's one of the things I prefer about Camino. I like being able to close a tab other than the one I'm viewing with a single click. And of course it doesn't have that hateful CPU-snorting skinnable UI. I'm down with Makali and JWZ on the desirability of skinnable UIs, but y'all know this... I've endorsed Makali's audio-cock technology on hates-software before.
From: Phil Pennock Date: 06:39 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" On 2007-03-16 at 01:36 +0100, A. Pagaltzis wrote: > * Michael G Schwern <schwern@xxxxx.xxx> [2007-03-16 01:20]: > > Speaking of tabs, can I say what a horribly bad idea putting a > > tiny little "close" button on a tiny little tab is? Firefox is not always the most responsive of applications. Sometimes I don't know if a keystroke was missed for focus reasons (gaah!) or if I mis-clicked first time on the close-tab button on the right of the tab-bar. So I switched on having a close-button on each tab; now, if I tried <Ctrl/Apple>-W and it didn't work, I don't try again -- I go and click, very explicitly, on the one tab I want closed. > You can control that using `browser.tabs.closeButtons` -- no need > for an extension. Tab Mix Plus makes it possible to find out that the option is even present and to explore various other options. > > And the best part is, there's no undo! > > You can retrieve them from History -> Recently Closed Tabs though. > > I think there even was an unclose-tab function somewhere, but > it's well hidden; I only stumbled onto it accidentally and now > I can't remember or rediscover what obscure gesture invokes it. > Or maybe I hallucinated it -- I'm sufficiently sleep-deprived > lately that this may have happened. Right-click(/Ctrl-click) on tab-bar, Undo Close Tab. Apple-F12 too. Not sure if it's enabled by default, but TabMixPlus puts it under Events-->Tab Features, "Enable undo close tabs". Camino's nice. Having tab (the key) take you to buttons (not just text* input fields), as Firefox does on every other platform, is pretty essential for keeping my frustration levels down as all my keyboard navigation habits get blown away. Safari's nice, but I avoided it for not having tabs; fortunately, I was just being blind. Safari might be my new standard Mac browser, now that I've noticed that there's an option to enable use of tabbed browsing. Even nicer after you get a bunch of tools for things like DOM browsing by turning on the Debug menu. My only remaining gripe is that by default http: doesn't support IPv4; they short-circuit a bunch of the lookup functionality which is present in https: handling. If you turn off the http: (Simple Loader) support via Debug->Supported Protocols then http: still works, but gains IPv6 too. It seems as though it falls back to the CFNetwork Loader (whatever that is) used by https. <URL:http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030110063041629> % defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1 -Phil
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 06:58 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" Phil Pennock wrote: > Camino's nice. Having tab (the key) take you to buttons (not just text* > input fields), as Firefox does on every other platform, is pretty > essential for keeping my frustration levels down as all my keyboard > navigation habits get blown away. That's a Mac thing, Firefox is just behaving like a native app. You can change this behavior system wide. I discovered that there's an option hidden in System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts for "In windows and dialogs, press Tab to move the keyboard focus between... [Text boxes and lists], [All controls]". Change it to "All controls" and you'll have the behavior you desire. I'm not sure yet if I like it. Why they hid this in "Keyboard Shortcuts" I have no idea.
From: Phil Pennock Date: 07:06 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" On 2007-03-15 at 23:58 -0700, Michael G Schwern wrote: > That's a Mac thing, Firefox is just behaving like a native app. You can > change this behavior system wide. I discovered that there's an option hidden > in System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts for "In > windows and dialogs, press Tab to move the keyboard focus between... [Text > boxes and lists], [All controls]". Change it to "All controls" and you'll > have the behavior you desire. I'm not sure yet if I like it. Oh. Thank you. So Camino's not really "Mozilla/Firefox family which behaves more like a Mac app", but "Mozilla/Firefox family which uses the Mac for many services, but where the developers have their heads screwed on enough to cheerfully ignore the more stupid Apple settings". My respect for the Camino devs has just gone up. More than one notch. -Phil
From: Peter da Silva Date: 14:04 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" On Mar 16, 2007, at 1:58 AM, Michael G Schwern wrote: > That's a Mac thing, Firefox is just behaving like a native app. You > can > change this behavior system wide. I discovered that there's an option > hidden > in System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts for "In > windows and dialogs, press Tab to move the keyboard focus between... > [Text > boxes and lists], [All controls]". Change it to "All controls" and > you'll > have the behavior you desire. I'm not sure yet if I like it. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes flamage to get the Mozilla people to notice this option and to actually honor it. > Why they hid this in "Keyboard Shortcuts" I have no idea. Every release of OS X has hidden more stuff in really fucked up places in Preferences. The one that pissed me off most was apparently losing my list of default applications to run when I log in. I discovered they'd moved that, for some utterly bizarre reason, into the account settings. Apparently because the list of apps you always run is something you set on a per account basis. The fact that just about everything ELSE in Preferences is ALSO set on a per account basis and therefor ALSO should be hidden in account settings has thankfully escaped their notice... but I'm still half-expecting that one day I'll install a new version of Mac OS and find there's only one icon left in Preferences - "Accounts and Settings".
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 21:39 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" Peter da Silva wrote: >> Why they hid this in "Keyboard Shortcuts" I have no idea. > > Every release of OS X has hidden more stuff in really fucked up places > in Preferences. Speaking of hiding stuff, whomever decided in 10.3 that it would be a great idea to turn the simple "Keyboard Viewer" and "Character Palette" applications into a piece of a library component which is a CLIENT of a keyboard viewer SERVER... I mean my GOD it shows you a keyboard, its not a freakin database! And make it accessable only via the International Preferences menu with the actual app hidden in, are you ready? /System/Library/Components/KeyboardViewer.component/Contents/SharedSupport/KeyboardViewerServer.app needs to be smacked with a dvorak keyboard. The answer to "How do I type a euro symbol?" on an American keyboard used to be easily answerable by opening up the "Key Caps" or "Keyboard Viewer" application which lived with all the others. Now its... * Go to your System Preferences * Go to "International" (what? not Keyboard and Mouse?) * Go to "Input Menu" * Turn on "Keyboard Viewer" * Turn on "Show input menu in menu bar" * Find the little flag on your already cluttered menu bar * Click on it. * Choose "Show Keyboard Viewer" * Done using it? Now go back into the preferences and shut off the input menu. What a mess. Fortunately the recently maligned Applescript offers a way out. http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20051022020253863&query=keyboard%2Bviewer
From: Peter da Silva Date: 01:44 on 17 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" On Mar 16, 2007, at 4:39 PM, Michael G Schwern wrote: > And make it accessable only via the International Preferences menu > with the > actual app hidden in, are you ready? > /System/Library/Components/KeyboardViewer.component/Contents/ > SharedSupport/KeyboardViewerServer.app Ah, so if you make an alias to this it'll Just Work? So it will. No need to invoke Applescript, hateful thing that it is.
From: Ricardo SIGNES Date: 22:24 on 19 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" * Michael G Schwern <schwern@xxxxx.xxx> [2007-03-16T17:39:36] > be easily answerable by opening up the "Key Caps" or "Keyboard Viewer" > application which lived with all the others. Now its... > > * [ many hateful steps ] > > What a mess. Fortunately the recently maligned Applescript offers a way out. > http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20051022020253863&query=keyboard%2Bviewer In my shell config, I have: function keyview() {open /System/Library/Components/KeyboardViewer.component/Contents/SharedSupport/KeyboardViewerServer.app/} function charpal() {open /System/Library/Components/CharacterPalette.component/Contents/SharedSupport/CharPaletteServer.app/} I haven't tried the AppleScript solution, but surely this is faster, since it avoids AppleScript.
From: Phil Pennock Date: 03:31 on 20 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" On 2007-03-15 at 23:39 -0700, Phil Pennock wrote: > Safari's nice, but I avoided it for not having tabs; fortunately, I was > just being blind. Safari might be my new standard Mac browser, now that > I've noticed that there's an option to enable use of tabbed browsing. > Even nicer after you get a bunch of tools for things like DOM browsing > by turning on the Debug menu. My only remaining gripe is that by > default http: doesn't support IPv4; they short-circuit a bunch of the > lookup functionality which is present in https: handling. If you turn Clearly I meant "IPv6". *cough* Clearly. What's curious is that my Kerberised web pages (WWW-Authenticate: negotiate) which are all IPv6-based (since I only have one public IPv4 address) do all appear to work. So Safari doesn't use IPv6 for http: _unless_ you do "something fancy", with the cut-over being somewhere along the authentication line (does Basic cut it? I don't know). I'd hate this confusion far more if it didn't mean that Safari is the first browser to support Kerberised HTTP out of the box with no tinkering of config options. Firefox can be made to work with some about:config tinkering, now confirmed on MacOSX as well as Windows. Camino plain does not work. The Mozila framework's trace logging confirms that it's not tried. But it's not a matter of a concerted effort by Apple to make their tools "work" with Kerberos. Otherwise they wouldn't have gone and built curl(1) with --negotiate disabled. *sigh* Ah well, I once more can browse my subversion repository's web interfaces with SSO. -Phil
From: Patrick Quinn-Graham Date: 08:07 on 20 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" On 19-Mar-07, at 8:31 PM, Phil Pennock wrote: > So Safari doesn't use IPv6 for http: _unless_ you do "something > fancy", > with the cut-over being somewhere along the authentication line (does > Basic cut it? I don't know). My (admittedly limited) tasting tends to imply that this is not true. I can hit http://patrick.geek.nz/, or indeed any of my public web stuff from home and have it go over IPv6 with no additional configuration or effort involved. Assuming the tunnel is working, if it's not it falls back to IPv4 nicely (not like Mail.app, which if it can talk to it's IPv6 default route will not fall back to IPv4 if your mail server has AAAA records, this is in itself hate worthy). I can also hit http://noc.sixxs.net/home/ and have it show me as coming via IPv6. (Pleasingly even with a little Canadian flag.) For example, I just typed in http://patrick.geek.nz/ in to my browser and got in my web server logs: 2001:4830:1226:1:217:f2ff:fe4c:9c0b patrick.geek.nz - [20/Mar/ 2007:01:02:54 -0700] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 2883 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/419 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/419.3" Which if you feel like ping6'ing it, is indeed my laptop. Back in... some time in the past, maybe 10.3, you had to disable http: (Simple Loader) from Debug -> Supported Protocols, as this doesn't do IPv6, and for some reason it had a higher priority than CFNetwork Loader. 10.4 seems to have fixed that. Not sure why it wouldn't be working for you to be honest.
From: Phil Pennock Date: 01:03 on 21 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" On 2007-03-20 at 01:07 -0700, Patrick Quinn-Graham wrote: > > On 19-Mar-07, at 8:31 PM, Phil Pennock wrote: > >So Safari doesn't use IPv6 for http: _unless_ you do "something > >fancy", > >with the cut-over being somewhere along the authentication line (does > >Basic cut it? I don't know). > > My (admittedly limited) tasting tends to imply that this is not true. Of course it's not true. The authentication happens inside the TCP connection, so IPv6 must already be being used. I'm an idiot and my hypothesis is so incredibly flawed that it beggars belief. I have a sneaking suspicion that my original complaint was unadulterated bullshit. The only difference is whether IPv6 is preferred to IPv4 or not. Bleh. Long onduty shifts, babysitting hateful software, are killing my brain. Ask me some other week. -Phil
From: Smylers Date: 09:41 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" A. Pagaltzis writes: > I think there even was an unclose-tab function somewhere, but it's > well hidden; I only stumbled onto it accidentally and now I can't > remember or rediscover what obscure gesture invokes it. Ctrl+Shift+T opens the most recently closed tab (and you can do it a few times to open several recently closed tabs in reverse order). I'd guess the keystroke was chosen to be similar to Ctrl+T, which opens a new tab. Smylers
From: Joe Mahoney Date: 00:37 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" On 3/16/07, Michael G Schwern <schwern@xxxxx.xxx> wrote: > Its like putting a "self destruct" button on the right hand side of all the > tables in your house. Carelessly put a cup down in the wrong spot and *boop*! > Your table and cup disappear! And the best part is, there's no undo! > (something else Tab Mix Plus fixes) BAHAHAHAA, silly user! There is an undo, but it's not in the edit menu. The history menu (at leas in Firefox 2.x on OS X) has a "Recently Closed Tabs" submenu where you can opt to reopen one or all the recently closed tabs. I much prefer the "button on the tab" implementation. Now you don't have to click on the tab, then move your mouse over to the close button. I rarely accidentally close the wrong tab in Firefox 2, but I did it much more often in 1.x Joe
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 04:54 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" Joe Mahoney wrote: > I much prefer the "button on the tab" implementation. Now you don't > have to click on the tab, then move your mouse over to the close > button. I rarely accidentally close the wrong tab in Firefox 2, but I > did it much more often in 1.x Hit (ctrl|apple)-w. We don't need no stinking rodents!
From: Martin Ebourne Date: 08:29 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" On Thu, 2007-03-15 at 17:19 -0700, Michael G Schwern wrote: > Speaking of tabs, can I say what a horribly bad idea putting a tiny little > "close" button on a tiny little tab is? X-Chat Aqua used to do this but they > sensible took it out. Firefox used to do this but they unsensibly put it back > in! You're wrong. Well, you're right for you I presume, but definitely not right for everyone. I find browsers where there isn't a close icon on every tab unusable and hateful. You know, every window on the desktop has its own close icon and I didn't hear you complain about that. Or maybe you've only got one close icon on the whole desktop which only closes the active window, perhaps that's something mac os does with its one menu bar for the whole desktop (yuck). My style of browsing frequently involves closing of tabs which are not currently active. It is intensely annoying to have to select each tab before closing it, 10 times more efficient to hit a load of close icons. I'm no casual user either. Cheers, Martin.
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 08:58 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" Martin Ebourne wrote: > On Thu, 2007-03-15 at 17:19 -0700, Michael G Schwern wrote: >> Speaking of tabs, can I say what a horribly bad idea putting a tiny little >> "close" button on a tiny little tab is? X-Chat Aqua used to do this but they >> sensible took it out. Firefox used to do this but they unsensibly put it back >> in! > > You're wrong. > > Well, you're right for you I presume, but definitely not right for > everyone. Can't we all just hate everyone? > I find browsers where there isn't a close icon on every tab unusable and > hateful. You know, every window on the desktop has its own close icon > and I didn't hear you complain about that. Windows on the desktop tend to be more than half an inch wide. Big long window bar, teeny little close button. Makes it hard to hit the wrong spot. Though I notice Firefox got a few things right. The close button disappears on inactive windows when the tab goes below a certain width, that's good. Tab Mix Plus also provides the option to only have the close button on the active tab which avoids the mistake of accidentally clicking the close button when selecting a tab. That's good, too. > Or maybe you've only got one > close icon on the whole desktop which only closes the active window I do, except its on my keyboard and it has the letter "w" on it. > My style of browsing frequently involves closing of tabs which are not > currently active. It is intensely annoying to have to select each tab > before closing it, 10 times more efficient to hit a load of close icons. > I'm no casual user either. We're at the point of splitting efficiency hairs, but mousing around to hit a small button ten times... oh, and they move and change width every time you close a tab, seems more annoying then selecting one, hitting apple-w to close it, sliding to the next with ctrl-apple-arrow, apple-w to close, slide, close, slide, close. Or if they're in sequence you select the first one and then hit apple-w 10 times. 10 tabs rapidly closed, no careful mousing required, hands on the keyboard. But hey, do it your way. That's why we have configurable UIs.
From: Martin Ebourne Date: 12:24 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" Michael G Schwern <schwern@xxxxx.xxx> wrote: > Martin Ebourne wrote: >> Well, you're right for you I presume, but definitely not right for >> everyone. > > Can't we all just hate everyone? Hey, this list is for hating software, not people. Maybe a =20 hates-people list would be too scary. > Windows on the desktop tend to be more than half an inch wide. Big long > window bar, teeny little close button. Makes it hard to hit the wrong spo= t. Ironically I think you're completely wrong on that one too. :) Most windowing systems these days put the tiny little maximise button =20 right next to the tiny little close button in what has to be one of =20 the most stupid UI design decisions ever. I hit the wrong one far too =20 often. Fortunately on sensible systems I can configure the window close =20 button on the left where I never hit it accidentally. > Though I notice Firefox got a few things right. The close button disappea= rs > on inactive windows when the tab goes below a certain width, that's > good. Ah, I think I see the problem now. I also hate the browser when it =20 squashes the tabs up so small that you can't tell which is which from =20 the title, or if the close button takes up too much of the title. Fortunately one of the hateful firefox extensions lets you set a =20 minimum tab width(*) which means I can always see which tab is which =20 and there's plenty of width for me to click without hitting the close =20 button. With sensible scroll buttons on the tab bar, grouping of =20 opened pages together (so hate the default of always putting new tabs =20 on the far right), and the ability to drag them around I find working =20 with 20 tabs quite fine. (And I don't close tabs by accidentally =20 hitting the button, but do sometimes hit the wrong close button by =20 stupidity or just change my mind as I press it, so undo is nice too.) > But hey, do it your way. That's why we have configurable UIs. I do agree with you on that point. :) (*) I actually set a fixed tab width which means that tab's don't =20 randomly resize on me and makes things a lot more predictable. To =20 close a bunch of tabs together I just click close on the one on the =20 left of the group a lot and they all collapse in nicely, no mouse =20 movement at all. :) Cheers, Martin.
From: Smylers Date: 09:48 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" Martin Ebourne writes: > On Thu, 2007-03-15 at 17:19 -0700, Michael G Schwern wrote: > > > Speaking of tabs, can I say what a horribly bad idea putting a tiny > > little "close" button on a tiny little tab is? X-Chat Aqua used to > > do this but they sensible took it out. Firefox used to do this but > > they unsensibly put it back in! And Gnome Terminal used not to have tab close buttons at all, but now has one on each tab. Several times I've closed one tab (which takes a while), then clicked to change to a different tab -- only by the time the click has registered the closing tab has finally managed to close, the tabs have all shuffled along, and my click has been registered on the close button of a completely different tab. And Gnome Terminal doesn't have an 'undo close tab' feature. And Gnome Terminal doesn't have a preference for turning this off. Hateful. > Well, you're right for you I presume, but definitely not right for > everyone. > > My style of browsing frequently involves closing of tabs which are not > currently active. Being configurable either way is fine, since different people obviously have different preferences (and different dexterity with aiming mouse clicks, differently responsive computers, etc). But _not_ having a close button on each tab only causes a slight delay in your way of working; having one causes data loss to those of us who accidentally click on them -- which is much more hateful. > It is intensely annoying to have to select each tab before closing it, I generally go for right-clicking on the tab in question and choosing close from the context menu. I also have some extension installed which adds tab-context-menu options for 'Close Right Tabs', 'Close Left Tabs', and 'Close Similar Tabs' -- so you can sometimes close a bunch of other tabs in one go. Smylers
From: Phil Pennock Date: 06:58 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" On 2007-03-15 at 18:50 -0500, Jeremy Weathers wrote: > It doesn't help you, but the OS X version handles this correctly. Are you sure? Uncheck "Hide tab bar when only one tab is open". Watch as closing the last tab causes a flicker as it reopens "(Untitled)", the blank URL. The "Prevent last tab from closing" option is not ticked. Ticking it means that the tab won't close, so the last page stays up. Unticking, and it closes to be replaced by Untitled. Apple-Q still works. Small mercies. Take 'em. [Firefox 2.0.0.2, MacOS 10.4.x]
From: jrodman Date: 00:04 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 11:53:31PM +0100, A. Pagaltzis wrote: > That is, the Ctrl-W shortcut now has the same demented behaviour > that the close-tab button always had I'm not sure if you want CTRL-W to do this. I don't. That is, to my mind CTRL-W is close window, not close tab. If that somehow avoids this dementia for you, you can set this up with the Keyconfig extension. Personally, I find this extension worth the price of admission to prevent Backspace (the erase-previous-charachter key) from changing to the previously accessed web page. " Hey man, behaving the same way as Inernet Explorer does on some other platform you haven't used in 10 years is more important thatn not sucking." Bets on whether the bug you identified will be the languish-forever-in-bugzilla kind? -josh
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 00:23 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" * jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx <jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx> [2007-03-16 01:10]: > On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 11:53:31PM +0100, A. Pagaltzis wrote: > > That is, the Ctrl-W shortcut now has the same demented > > behaviour that the close-tab button always had > > I'm not sure if you want CTRL-W to do this. I don't. That is, > to my mind CTRL-W is close window, not close tab. Hmm, I'm not sure I follow. What behaviour are you referring to? What I want is simply what Ctrl-W did prior to 2.x: it closes the current tab, and if that tab happens to be the last tab in the window, it closes the window. End of story. Doesn't get simpler than this. With 2.x, I have to use either Ctrl-W or Alt-F4, depending on whether I'm looking at a window with several tabs or just one -- as long as I enable "Always show the tab bar." If I turn it off, then Ctrl-W does what I want. (So after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I did turn it off.) > If that somehow avoids this dementia for you, you can set this > up with the Keyconfig extension. My complaint is not with the choice of shortcut. My complaint is that they took the perfectly simple and rational behaviour of a simple gesture and added a nice big fat stumbling block to it. > Personally, I find this extension worth the price of admission > to prevent Backspace (the erase-previous-charachter key) from > changing to the previously accessed web page. " Hey man, > behaving the same way as Inernet Explorer does on some other > platform you haven't used in 10 years is more important thatn > not sucking." I don't hate that, actually, though I prefer Alt-Arrowkeys for paging through the history. > Bets on whether the bug you identified will be the > languish-forever-in-bugzilla kind? Seems more like an intentional change to me -- so more probably the RESOLVED WONTFIX kind (or REJECTED? not sure of their full nomenclature). Regards,
From: Abigail Date: 00:49 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" --GLp9dJVi+aaipsRk Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Fri, Mar 16, 2007 at 01:23:31AM +0100, A. Pagaltzis wrote: > * jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx <jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx> [2007-03-16 0= 1:10]: > > On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 11:53:31PM +0100, A. Pagaltzis wrote: > > > That is, the Ctrl-W shortcut now has the same demented > > > behaviour that the close-tab button always had > >=20 > > I'm not sure if you want CTRL-W to do this. I don't. That is, > > to my mind CTRL-W is close window, not close tab. >=20 > Hmm, I'm not sure I follow. What behaviour are you referring to? >=20 > What I want is simply what Ctrl-W did prior to 2.x: it closes the > current tab, and if that tab happens to be the last tab in the > window, it closes the window. End of story. Doesn't get simpler > than this. What I want is what Ctrl-W did prior to Firefox: if the focus is in the 'Go To field', act like you're the shell, and Ctrl-W erases from the cursor to the beginning of the word (which mean, erase the entire URL if the cursor is at the end). If the focus isn't there, close the current tab, and if it's the last tab, close the window. No longer being context sensitive is one of the reasons (and each reason is enough by itself) I prefer Mozilla over Firefox. On the boxes I do use Firefox, I have it disappear under me so many times after using Ctrl-W just trying to erase the current URL. Abigail --GLp9dJVi+aaipsRk Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFF+emtBOh7Ggo6rasRAlX8AJ9owEceJ3SjLQaRGo+5vylxeOc/AwCgg1GA UoUWCD4OflZMZpQ2BeECNSE= =oMNC -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --GLp9dJVi+aaipsRk--
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 01:02 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" * Abigail <abigail@xxxxxxx.xx> [2007-03-16 01:55]: > On the boxes I do use Firefox, I have it disappear under me so > many times after using Ctrl-W just trying to erase the current > URL. Funnily enough, that happens to me with Gaim chat windows, but never with Firefox. (I also keep hitting Ctrl-Z to undo my last text change in Gaim chats, which instead minimises the window. Very funny ha ha.) Regards,
From: Smylers Date: 09:58 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" A. Pagaltzis writes: > * Abigail <abigail@xxxxxxx.xx> [2007-03-16 01:55]: > > > On the boxes I do use Firefox, I have it disappear under me so many > > times after using Ctrl-W just trying to erase the current URL. > > Funnily enough, that happens to me with Gaim chat windows, I've somehow managed to get both Firefox and Gaim behaving themselves in this respect: Ctrl+W erases words when in a textbox (or URL bar or whatever). I _think_ this is because I have GTK configured to use Emacs-like key bindings -- but obviously this thing is so hateful it's hard to be sure, and I'm not about to risk losing the current state by experimenting. Some details here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Emacs_Keybindings_(Firefox) Smylers
From: Smylers Date: 09:51 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" A. Pagaltzis writes: > With 2.x, I have to use either Ctrl-W or Alt-F4, depending on whether > I'm looking at a window with several tabs or just one -- as long as I > enable "Always show the tab bar." If I turn it off, then Ctrl-W does > what I want. (So after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I did turn > it off.) There's also Ctrl+Shift+W, which always closes the current window no matter how many tabs are open. It at least has the advantage that when you've been irritated by Ctrl+W not closing the window with the last tab in it all you have to do is hold down Shift and try again. Smylers
From: Abigail Date: 13:56 on 20 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" --1yeeQ81UyVL57Vl7 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Fri, Mar 16, 2007 at 09:51:57AM +0000, Smylers wrote: > A. Pagaltzis writes: >=20 > > With 2.x, I have to use either Ctrl-W or Alt-F4, depending on whether > > I'm looking at a window with several tabs or just one -- as long as I > > enable "Always show the tab bar." If I turn it off, then Ctrl-W does > > what I want. (So after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I did turn > > it off.) >=20 > There's also Ctrl+Shift+W, which always closes the current window no > matter how many tabs are open. It at least has the advantage that when > you've been irritated by Ctrl+W not closing the window with the last tab > in it all you have to do is hold down Shift and try again. I have F6 for closing the current window, and shift-F6 to really kill it. But that's my window manager. The advantage is that it works with every application. ;-) Abigail --1yeeQ81UyVL57Vl7 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFF/+gMBOh7Ggo6rasRAkRBAJ93fdy9gsx5Wd4MxEbPih4PgmWGrQCglWC+ 3yZZvuyuz8Fh5cKrNUmXxcI= =YuXe -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --1yeeQ81UyVL57Vl7--
From: peter f miller Date: 03:01 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" On 3/15/07, jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx <jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > Personally, I find this extension worth the price of admission to > prevent Backspace (the erase-previous-charachter key) from changing to > the previously accessed web page. " Ahh, the memories! Searching for a way to disable that Backspace key misery is how I stumbled up this nurturing cradle of rancor that is the hates-software mailing list. In my googling I found this <http://hex.hates-software.com/2004/12/19/066ebd41.html> thread which led me to the invaluable Keyconfig extension. I guess even the most hateful of software can lead to good ends at times. Yet, I hate it just the same.
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 00:48 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" * Michael G Schwern <schwern@xxxxx.xxx> [2007-03-16 00:15]: > I'd never noticed this behavior before, and I tried it out and > it wasn't how my Firefox works. Turns out to be a side-effect > of the wonderful Tab Mix Plus add-on which has many wonderful > benefits. > > While on the subject of tabs, I'd also recommend the "No Tab > Close Button" add-on which eliminates the oh-so easy to > accidentally click "close tab" button Firefox decided to put on > their tabs after everyone else had removed them. Sort of like > putting a pile of jagged glass on the right hand side of every > seat in the house. Getting rid of the per-tab close buttons can be done with just `about:config`, as I mentioned in the other mail, without the need for an extension. The problem is I already have 16 extensions in the Firefox on my main machine, and that's not counting the DOM Inspector and Talkback that come pre-installed. And 5 of them are unbreak-me extensions. I really try not to add even more to the mix because Firefox is slow and memory hungry enough as it is. I used an extension to make tabs draggable back when they weren't (pre-1.0 I think? I don't remember), but when that capability was added to stock Firefox, I dropped the extension like a hot potato. The various tabbing enhancement extensions used to be the worst offenders in terms of drag, noticably slowing down the browser, although that was a long time ago and I don't know what things are like now. Since then, the basic Firefox tabbing has always worked well enough for me. Guess that's no longer true. *snarl* Regards,
From: Phil Pennock Date: 06:47 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" On 2007-03-16 at 01:48 +0100, A. Pagaltzis wrote: > Since then, the basic Firefox tabbing has always worked well > enough for me. > > Guess that's no longer true. *snarl* Copy your prefs.js from the profile directory. Install Tab Mix Plus. Tinker to get things working. Copy the new prefs.js Uninstall Tab Mix Plus. Use the diff between the old and the new prefs.js to learn just which settings can be adjusted through about:config and what the frigging names are. If it turns out that some feature needs extra XUL/JS stuff provided by Tab Mix Plus (if there is any), then you get to decide whether they're worth the cost of the extra extension. Software judo. -Phil, the extension whore
From: Robert Rothenberg Date: 15:59 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" On 15/03/07 22:53 A. Pagaltzis wrote: > What dimwit ever thought that conflating these options in a > single preference in this manner was a sane thing to do!? It took > me AGES to realise why the damn Ctrl-W shortcut no longer worked > as I expected it to. Googling for close to two hours or so in > total turned up no solution, but did turn up the hint that A > COMPLETELY UNRELATED-SEEMING OPTION controlled this behaviour. Alt-F4 works in Xfce. Probably in Windows too.
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 18:21 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" * Robert Rothenberg <robrwo@xxxxx.xxx> [2007-03-16 17:00]: > On 15/03/07 22:53 A. Pagaltzis wrote: > > What dimwit ever thought that conflating these options in a > > single preference in this manner was a sane thing to do!? It > > took me AGES to realise why the damn Ctrl-W shortcut no > > longer worked as I expected it to. Googling for close to two > > hours or so in total turned up no solution, but did turn up > > the hint that A COMPLETELY UNRELATED-SEEMING OPTION > > controlled this behaviour. > > Alt-F4 works in Xfce. Probably in Windows too. I *don't* want to close the window -- except when I'm closing the last tab. And I *never* want to keep a window after closing the last tab in it. I am well aware of the gestures for closing the window. (Ctrl-Shift-W is another, and it works on all systems.) Ctrl-W used to do exactly what I want: close the current tab, and if it was the last, then close the window also. The new behaviour turns the last tab into a special case that requires a different gesture. That's what's driving me to rage (or was, anyway, before I reluctantly changed my prefs to avoid madness). Regards,
From: Robert Rothenberg Date: 23:34 on 16 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" I found this in the Mozilla Wiki on the change: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Ctrl_W_not_close_app > Proposed change > > Ctrl+w should behave as the tab bar's close button already does, and as > Ctrl+F4 already does, and as right click on tab -> "Close tab" already > does. Ctrl+W and File->Close Tab should be consistent with every other > tab-closing method, and close the tab, but not the window. >
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 00:44 on 17 Mar 2007 Subject: Re: Where "always" means "come hell or high water" * Robert Rothenberg <robrwo@xxxxx.xxx> [2007-03-17 00:35]: > I found this in the Mozilla Wiki on the change: > > http://wiki.mozilla.org/Ctrl_W_not_close_app > > > Proposed change > > > > Ctrl+w should behave as the tab bar's close button already > > does, and as Ctrl+F4 already does, and as right click on tab > > -> "Close tab" already does. Ctrl+W and File->Close Tab > > should be consistent with every other tab-closing method, and > > close the tab, but not the window. Good find! If you read the thing, you'll find a section called "Behavior dependent on tab bar visibility", proposed by "zeniko" and supported by "Tuukka". Thanks, zeniko and Tuukka! You enriched my life so much. Regards,
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