Alert boxes now tab-modal in Firefox 4

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59314

by ab9 • 16 years ago

62 37 16 years ago

bugzilla.mozilla.org

cgranade5• 16 years ago

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

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• 16 years ago

it's not sarcasm

cgranade5• 16 years 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.

sid04• 16 years ago

To me, Firefox (4) with Panorama is the best UI a browser's ever had.

audeyisaacs• 16 years ago

I'm pretty sure opera has had this for a while.

gcr• 16 years ago

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

drivebyacct26• 16 years 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.

cgranade5• 16 years 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.

gabea2• 16 years ago

I use both and love both browsers but as a developer I still find it frustratingly hard to use chrome without having firebug or an exact clone of firebug. (I am hoping someone says there is a firebug equivalent for Chrome)

Xuzz• 16 years 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• 16 years 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.

makecheck2• 16 years 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• 16 years 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.

makecheck2• 16 years 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• 16 years ago

Tab Candy. I know that right now it's a Firefox feature, but it should be a window manager.

rincewind• 16 years ago

fluxbox had this 5 years ago

cookiecaper• 16 years 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.

sudont• 16 years ago

Right, there's this type of application:window divide in OS X which is really nice. There's two levels of window switching, between-applications and between-app-windows that beats the pants off of the "traditional" taskbar model seen in XP and most Linux distros. Mixing windows and applications in alt-tab generally just causes tons of problems in trying to guess which is on top of the stack, not to mention that application switching screws up window switching.

I hear Windows 7's taskbar is much more dock-like, which would be a serious benefit, I get actual headaches from working with XP at work 9 hours a day.

perssontm• 16 years 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.

Alert boxes now tab-modal in Firefox 4

Related Stories