

Alert boxes now tab-modal in Firefox 4 - ab9
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59314

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makecheck
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
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.

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makecheck
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.

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

~~~
drivebyacct2
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.)

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philfreo
it's not sarcasm

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drivebyacct2
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).

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robin_reala
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>

~~~
drivebyacct2
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.

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Xuzz
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.

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perssontm
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.

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codefisher
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.

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

~~~
drivebyacct2
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
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.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Chrome Sync does everything that Firefox Sync does, but Zotero looks (really,
really cool, but sadly) unsupported. There always seem to be those few
extensions that haven't been ported over that a lot of people use. I
understand that. I'm just fortunate that the few extensions I use have
fantastic Chrome ports.

~~~
cgranade
There's been some talk of making Zotero stand-alone to deal with that kind of
issue, but that's enough of a project I think it will be a while still. In the
meantime, a Chrome port doesn't make much sense in some ways, as it'd wind up
duplicating effort with a stand-alone port. In the short term, an unfortunate
blow for data portability...

