5 ms·

Alert boxes now tab-modal in Firefox 4

62 points by ab9 16y ago

cgranade 16y ago
Sometimes 10-year-old problems do get fixed. Glad to see that Mozilla is continuing to take browser making seriously.
- drivebyacct2 16y ago
  I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. (Why the downvotes? It's an honest question. Firefox has stagnated and is falling behind in features and performance. Simple but major UX frustrations like this seem bewildering when I load up Firefox for a casual surf instead of Chrome.)
  - philfreo 16y ago
    it's not sarcasm
    - drivebyacct2 16y ago
      It should be. Every other browser gets this problem correct and has. My other comment here is more verbose, but Firefox has become something of a monolithic joke. Every time I fire it up, I'm truly hopeful that it will have improved. Then 30 seconds later when it has finally opened, I see the same tired Firefox2/3.x interface and slow page rendering on top of the (well, now fixed) modal problems, etc. It's nice to see that the JS speedups have some effect, but it's still behind Chrome technically. (though there do seem to be a (very, imo) few Firefox extensions that don't have Chrome equivalents, so I do understand).
      - robin_reala 16y ago
        I say this every time someone comments with very slow Fx startups, and I know this isn’t the elegant way to fix the problem, but 30 secs to start a browser is broken behaviour. Have you tried creating a new Firefox profile? http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles
        drivebyacct2 16y ago
        hehe, It's a fresh install of Firefox 4. It clears my cache, cookies, history, etc on close. No extensions, personas, or themes. It's as clean as it gets, and it is still that broken. 30 seconds is an exaggeration but it's easily 5 times as slow as Chrome is to start up.
  - cgranade 16y ago
    Far from it. I think it's great that they don't simply forget problems from 10 years ago, but that they're able to return to and fix them. It'd be better if they didn't take 10 years to do so, but then again, I'm not complaining, either.
  - sid0 16y ago
    To me, Firefox (4) with Panorama is the best UI a browser's ever had.
- audeyisaacs 16y ago
  I'm pretty sure opera has had this for a while.
gcr 16y ago
Ahh, Firefox is finally catching up to Opera. ;)
- drivebyacct2 16y ago
  This is a cheap, troll comment but it summarizes my views on Firefox. For a browser that started out in Linux, the lack of decent start times, page render times, and the same old tired Firefox 3.x interface in Firefox 4 is a huge slap in the face. Now that Chrome will only load Flash on demand (and performance and stability of Linux Flash in Chrome is hugely improved as a result)... there is literally no reason for me to use Firefox 4.
  - cgranade 16y ago
    For me, Firefox Sync and Zotero are the two must-haves that Chrome doesn't match at all. Firefox Sync goes so far beyond any other sync tool I've ever seen, it's incredible. Likewise, Zotero's browser-level integration is immensely helpful in research. There are, of course, other reasons why I like Firefox, but those two are what render Firefox essential.
    - alanh 16y ago
      Chrome’s sync does more and more all the time. What does Firefox Sync do for you? Genuinely curious.
      - cgranade 16y ago
        The big one is syncing of passwords and preferences in an encrypted manner. It means that I can nearly transparently switch computers while still using secure randomly-generated passwords for each site. Last I checked that was not supported by Chrome Sync, but if I'm out of date with that, I'd love to know.
        alanh 16y ago
        Yes, it does password and autofill sync now.
Xuzz 16y ago
This issue was actually central to my switch to Chrome. I'm glad it's finally fixed, but when something this important to UI takes over 10 years to get resolved, perhaps the Firefox team needs to just choose a fix (such as the ones suggested in that thread from 2002-2005) and fix any issues it causes in further releases.
codefisher 16y ago
It would be nice if they made it easier to disable all alerts (it is possible, but takes a bit of reading to work out). In general I hate their use. 10 years is too long though for a simple thing like this.
makecheck 16y ago
I think this is one of many problems that would go away if window managers simply provided tabs as first-class objects. I am tired of every app having to "support" tabs, and inevitably see quirky behavior. Not only would this fix alert problems, but we'd gain a lot of other capabilities. The biggest one for me would be, inter-application tabs: why shouldn't my tab stack be able to alternate between mail, terminals, editors and web browsers, for instance?
- TheNewAndy 16y ago
  Are you aware of the window managers that do provide this? I've tried them, and I never really liked it. But I don't think you need to be complaining, because what you are asking for already exists, and switching over shouldn't be hard.
  - makecheck 16y ago
    I know that some window managers are capable of it. Though I use Macs primarily, so I want Apple to fix it. :) Realistically though, cross-platform products like Firefox would need Windows and all Unix/Linux window managers to handle this too, in order to completely avoid home-grown code to mimic tabs.
  - derefr 16y ago
    Tab Candy. I know that right now it's a Firefox feature, but it should be a window manager.
  - rincewind 16y ago
    fluxbox had this 5 years ago
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  Isn't that essentially the same thing as the taskbar? I think people appreciate tabs because they can still get to their separate programs easily from the taskbar, but inside the application itself we can also easily switch between contexts (spreadsheets, web pages, etc.) Windows 7's new taskbar has some features that go in the direction of exposing those application-level contexts to the system-wide taskbar. Try Fx4 on Win7 and each tab acts like a new Firefox window, and Win7's new stacking mechanism makes it so you can easily switch to other apps even if you have 100 tabs open.
perssontm 16y ago
Really annoying when it happens, although I've always found it possible to click ok in the alert box, and hammer ctrl+w(to close the tab) and it usually works. Sometimes it takes a bunch of ok->ctrl+w combinations before it takes, but it works. Good with a real fix for it though. I just hope it will make the basic auth username/password-boxes tab-modal as well.
yuvadm 16y ago
Wonderful. Now on to the next 10-year-epic-bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=90268 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=90268

62 points by ab9 16y ago

cgranade 16y ago

Sometimes 10-year-old problems do get fixed. Glad to see that Mozilla is continuing to take browser making seriously.

drivebyacct2 16y ago
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. (Why the downvotes? It's an honest question. Firefox has stagnated and is falling behind in features and performance. Simple but major UX frustrations like this seem bewildering when I load up Firefox for a casual surf instead of Chrome.)
- philfreo 16y ago
  it's not sarcasm
  - drivebyacct2 16y ago
    It should be. Every other browser gets this problem correct and has. My other comment here is more verbose, but Firefox has become something of a monolithic joke. Every time I fire it up, I'm truly hopeful that it will have improved. Then 30 seconds later when it has finally opened, I see the same tired Firefox2/3.x interface and slow page rendering on top of the (well, now fixed) modal problems, etc. It's nice to see that the JS speedups have some effect, but it's still behind Chrome technically. (though there do seem to be a (very, imo) few Firefox extensions that don't have Chrome equivalents, so I do understand).
    - robin_reala 16y ago
      I say this every time someone comments with very slow Fx startups, and I know this isn’t the elegant way to fix the problem, but 30 secs to start a browser is broken behaviour. Have you tried creating a new Firefox profile? http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles
      - drivebyacct2 16y ago
        hehe, It's a fresh install of Firefox 4. It clears my cache, cookies, history, etc on close. No extensions, personas, or themes. It's as clean as it gets, and it is still that broken. 30 seconds is an exaggeration but it's easily 5 times as slow as Chrome is to start up.
- cgranade 16y ago
  Far from it. I think it's great that they don't simply forget problems from 10 years ago, but that they're able to return to and fix them. It'd be better if they didn't take 10 years to do so, but then again, I'm not complaining, either.
- sid0 16y ago
  To me, Firefox (4) with Panorama is the best UI a browser's ever had.
audeyisaacs 16y ago
I'm pretty sure opera has had this for a while.

gcr 16y ago

Ahh, Firefox is finally catching up to Opera. ;)

drivebyacct2 16y ago
This is a cheap, troll comment but it summarizes my views on Firefox. For a browser that started out in Linux, the lack of decent start times, page render times, and the same old tired Firefox 3.x interface in Firefox 4 is a huge slap in the face. Now that Chrome will only load Flash on demand (and performance and stability of Linux Flash in Chrome is hugely improved as a result)... there is literally no reason for me to use Firefox 4.
- cgranade 16y ago
  For me, Firefox Sync and Zotero are the two must-haves that Chrome doesn't match at all. Firefox Sync goes so far beyond any other sync tool I've ever seen, it's incredible. Likewise, Zotero's browser-level integration is immensely helpful in research. There are, of course, other reasons why I like Firefox, but those two are what render Firefox essential.
  - alanh 16y ago
    Chrome’s sync does more and more all the time. What does Firefox Sync do for you? Genuinely curious.
    - cgranade 16y ago
      The big one is syncing of passwords and preferences in an encrypted manner. It means that I can nearly transparently switch computers while still using secure randomly-generated passwords for each site. Last I checked that was not supported by Chrome Sync, but if I'm out of date with that, I'd love to know.
      - alanh 16y ago
        Yes, it does password and autofill sync now.

Xuzz 16y ago

This issue was actually central to my switch to Chrome. I'm glad it's finally fixed, but when something this important to UI takes over 10 years to get resolved, perhaps the Firefox team needs to just choose a fix (such as the ones suggested in that thread from 2002-2005) and fix any issues it causes in further releases.

codefisher 16y ago

It would be nice if they made it easier to disable all alerts (it is possible, but takes a bit of reading to work out). In general I hate their use. 10 years is too long though for a simple thing like this.

makecheck 16y ago

I think this is one of many problems that would go away if window managers simply provided tabs as first-class objects. I am tired of every app having to "support" tabs, and inevitably see quirky behavior. Not only would this fix alert problems, but we'd gain a lot of other capabilities. The biggest one for me would be, inter-application tabs: why shouldn't my tab stack be able to alternate between mail, terminals, editors and web browsers, for instance?

TheNewAndy 16y ago
Are you aware of the window managers that do provide this? I've tried them, and I never really liked it. But I don't think you need to be complaining, because what you are asking for already exists, and switching over shouldn't be hard.
- makecheck 16y ago
  I know that some window managers are capable of it. Though I use Macs primarily, so I want Apple to fix it. :) Realistically though, cross-platform products like Firefox would need Windows and all Unix/Linux window managers to handle this too, in order to completely avoid home-grown code to mimic tabs.
- derefr 16y ago
  Tab Candy. I know that right now it's a Firefox feature, but it should be a window manager.
- rincewind 16y ago
  fluxbox had this 5 years ago
cookiecaper 16y ago
Isn't that essentially the same thing as the taskbar? I think people appreciate tabs because they can still get to their separate programs easily from the taskbar, but inside the application itself we can also easily switch between contexts (spreadsheets, web pages, etc.) Windows 7's new taskbar has some features that go in the direction of exposing those application-level contexts to the system-wide taskbar. Try Fx4 on Win7 and each tab acts like a new Firefox window, and Win7's new stacking mechanism makes it so you can easily switch to other apps even if you have 100 tabs open.

perssontm 16y ago

Really annoying when it happens, although I've always found it possible to click ok in the alert box, and hammer ctrl+w(to close the tab) and it usually works. Sometimes it takes a bunch of ok->ctrl+w combinations before it takes, but it works. Good with a real fix for it though. I just hope it will make the basic auth username/password-boxes tab-modal as well.

yuvadm 16y ago

Wonderful. Now on to the next 10-year-epic-bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=90268 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=90268