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Comment by darkpuma | Hacker News Reader

>Firefox will now warn you when closing a window (regardless of whether you have automatic session restore enabled for restart).

To whoever is responsible for pushing this change through: Thank you.

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Yes, it is much appreciated.

Can't tell you how many times my finger has slipped and hit Ctrl+Q instead of Ctrl+W.

Oh well! I didn't need all that work...

So you can't get it back? I usually use Chrome, I never lose my session no matter what I slip up to do.

Thanks for the downvote, whomever. I always consider switching to Firefox, as I think Chrome needs competition, but Firefox has just never been up to par in usability (especially developer usability) whenever I've tried to switch. Things like "losing your work" for no good reason (don't Firefox have "Re-open closed Window"?) is just another thing I would add to the list of reasons not to switch, so feel free to clarify.

To quote from the initial comment:

> (regardless of whether you have automatic session restore enabled for restart).

It also already has an optional check if you want to close a window ("you're closing a window with 10 tabs. sure?"), and a list of recently closed windows to restore.

I interpreted the change as if it would always show the quit warning regardless of any settings, since the warning popup is not exactly a new feature. Some more context helped clarify.

Well, if I were, say, typing up a forum post, that would be lost. More often, however, I simply lose all my tabs. Which are not impossible to restore, given Firefox's "Restore Previous Session" button. But since I have the Cookie AutoDelete extension[0], all my sites get logged out. So I have to re-authenticate with my password manager, log back into all the sites, half of which require me to pull out my 2FA token...

It only takes about a minute total to get back up and running on everything. It's just a nuisance when it happens.

[0]https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...

Did they remove ctrl + shift + t to reopen a closed tab?

C-q closes the window, not the tab.

There's also a shortcut for re-opening the last closed window(s). Though I don't recall if it works in a Private Browsing window.

No, C-shift-w closes the window. C-q Quits the application, meaning it would close all of your Windows. And if the entire application closes, a hotkey to bring the window back won't work. That's why it's so frustrating when I click it by accident.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-perf...

Note that it still won't warn you if you have the "Warn you when closing multiple tabs" options unchecked.

Source: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=502908#c68

> We don't intend to add a third, separate pref/warning for people who do want to have a quit warning, don't turn on session restore, and don't want warnings when closing windows / multiple tabs (ie making browser.tabs.warnOnClose = false + no automatic session restore + browser.warnOnQuit = true show a dialog is not something we're interested in doing.

FWIW I don't get any warning when closing multiple tabs (through tree style tabs), have session restore turned on, and do get a warning when closing the window.

It's because you have session restore enabled. In my case, I don't want session restore or a warning when closing multiple tabs. I only want a warning when closing the browser. But that is not what they fixed here.

Will this halt shutdown as well? If so, I hope this is configurable...

For context: Firefox 64 removed `browser.showQuitWarning`, which would show a dialog asking "cancel"/"save session"/"discard session" when you quit.

Hopefully this is easy to disable

It is, there is an option for it in the Preferences pane right under "Restore previous session".

Chrome's "hold cmd-Q to quit" popup is just about perfect in that regard.

I'm hearing about this feature for the first time - and I frequent HN and other tech sites!

For pop ups, automatic or it doesn't exist.

I hate that thing! Is there a way to switch it off? (I get it, it can be useful. It's my personal preference, and showing it is a sane default. Less intrusive than a (modal) pop-up for sure. But I like software which I can set up to my liking.)

It's in the 'Chrome' menu. 'Warn before quitting'.

Ah, thanks. I use firefox as my daily driver, but go to chrome for some web pages anyway.

I really wish this was standard across all apps on macOS. It's beautiful UX, and easily discoverable.

It's not accessible. Applications that are meant to be used by the general public should avoid making assumptions about how the user presses keys. Specifically some users with motor impairment may find this kind of "long-press UX" to be troublesome.

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