Firefox 3 Doesn’t Prompt or Warn to Confirm When Closing Multiple Tabs As Warning Not Working
After upgrading from Firefox 2 and installing Firefox 3, many users may notice that Firefox 3 no longer prompt or warn user before closing or exiting Firefox window with multiple tabs opened in the window. The warning when closing multiple tabs not working ‘error’ happens despite that the “Warn me when closing multiple tabs” option in Tabs section of Firefox 3 Preferences has been checked and enabled.
With the “Warn me when closing multiple tabs” option selected, Firefox supposed to pop up a dialog box titled “Confirm Close” asking “You’re about to close x open tabs. Are you sure want to continue?”, as practiced in Firefox 2 shown in illustration below. In Firefox 3, this is not the case, and Firefox closes and quits without warning and confirmation even with more than one open tabs, even with “browser.warnOnQuit” preference set to true.
However, this new behavior looks like not going to be classified as a bug, according to replies from various developers in Bugzilla@Mozilla (see bug 422040, 434961, and 419009) . In fact, it’s a new intentional change so that if Firefox is configured to enable session restore by selecting “Show my windows and tabs from last time” startup option (browser.startup.page pref is equal to 3), where Firefox will re-open and restore all opened tabs automatically on next restart, Firefox does not warn or prompt for confirmation when user closes a Firefox window of a Firefox session with only single window with multiple tabs or quit the Firefox application with multiple Firefox windows and/or tabs opened, as long as Firefox deems that these tabs and/or windows can be saved and reopened automatically by Firefox on next start up.
In short, current FF3 behavior on closing window with tabs is that user no longer be warned every time when quitting Firefox, but warning or confirm close dialog will only be prompted if the window or tabs cannot be restored.
The exit without confirmation feature may be nice for some people, but not all people will love it, especially users who tend to accidentally click on the Close (X) button in the web browser window, and when there are tens, if not hundreds of tabs open in the window. Just image the time Firefox requires to reopen all those tabs again.
The workaround to set Firefox to warn or ask for confirmation before closing window with multiple open tabs, or quit Firefox application, is to disable session restore by setting Firefox to start up with home page or blank page. To do so, click on Tools menu and then Options. In the Main tab Startup section, select Show my home page or Show a blank page for “When Firefox starts” option (Note that “Show my windows and tabs from last time” means session restore, which mean you won’t get any close tabs confirm warning).
After configuring Firefox to load homepage or blank page on startup, Firefox will prompt a “Quit Firefox” titled dialog box, saying “Do you want Firefox to save your tabs for the next time it starts?”. User can select “Save and Quit” to override “When Firefox starts” setting in order to save and restore and reopen all opened tabs that are been closed on next Firefox session, “Quit” to start afresh on home page or blank page (depending on setting above), or “Cancel” to cancel the exit operating and stay in current window.
Note: If “Do not ask next time” is selected, clicking “Save and Quit” will set the “When Firefox starts” to “Show my windows and tabs from last time” (browser.startup.page = 3) automatically, while clicking “Quit” will uncheck the “Warn me when closing multiple tabs” option (browser.tabs.warnOnClose = false) in “Tabs” preference tab, which must be selected and ticked if you want any warning or confirmation dialog. So in order to always continuously receive a “Save and Quit” dialog, ensure that you never select or tick the check box for “Do not ask next time”.
The new “Quit Firefox” dialog in Firefox 3 no longer show the number of tabs opened as in the old dialog box from Firefox 2. In order to receive the “Confirm Close” dialog box as everybody familiar with in Firefox 2 as shown in figure on top of this article, the working workaround is to launch and open more than one (can be 2, 3 or more) windows of Firefox. Then close the window with multiple tabs (not exit Firefox application though which closes all windows), and the usual “You’re about to close x open tabs. Are you sure want to continue?” dialog will pop up with “Close tabs” or “Cancel” buttons. Make sure that “Warn me when I attempt to close multiple tabs” is always checked.
The ‘feature’ affects Firefox 3 in all operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
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Entries (RSS)
June 19th, 2008 01:53
[...] Beside, if user set the “When Firefox starts” preference under Tools -> Options to “Show my windows and tabs from last time”, the Firefox 3 will auto save tabs on close too without prompting user to choose a selection of action choices. This is significantly different from Firefox 2, where the change is explained on article about missing or not working warning when closing multiple tabs. [...]
June 21st, 2008 11:09
Thanks, now I know I’m not the only one: http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?forumId=1&comments_parentId=70395
June 23rd, 2008 02:42
Hello,
Having found the information very useful I still have been unable to find an answer to what I was looking. I hope you are able to help, closing and saving multiple aside I sorely miss the ‘restore session’ and ’start new session’ dialog box. Many times i have tabs saved from work or so which I hope to view later, but sometimes I don’t get to it and it gets redundant by the next day. the ’start new session’ is certainly messed, would you know anyway I can restore that dialog box in firefox 3?
June 23rd, 2008 09:17
It’s a feature in Firefox that automatically shown when Firefox crashes or closes unexpectedly. If you just want to ’session restore’, go to Preference and select Show tabs and windows from last session (read article above too).
June 23rd, 2008 18:17
Firefox 就是麻烦，还是Opera 9.5 好用
June 29th, 2008 20:57
[...] poniéndome a pensar en todo esto. también he visto otros comportamientos inconsistentes como el manejo de la restauración de sesión con el mensaje de confirmación al cerrar múltiples pestañas… Ok, tal vez ese no sea un bug pero estoy convencido que al menos debería haber un texto [...]
June 30th, 2008 22:30
[...] Firefox 3 Doesn’t Prompt or Warn to Confirm When Closing Multiple Tabs As Warning Not Working » M… The workaround to set Firefox to warn or ask for confirmation before closing window with multiple open tabs, or quit FF application, is to disable session restore by setting Firefox to start up with home page or blank page. There myst be a better way.. (tags: Firefox 3 Tweaks) [...]
July 4th, 2008 13:41
This suggestion does not work and I am very pissed. The decision to remove this as a feature on Firefox 3 was thoroughly stupid. Whoever would not like to be notified of multiple tab closing could just check the darn “Do not ask me again” box. Somebody, please hit the lamer(s) who helped make our lives more stressful by authorizing this change.
July 8th, 2008 14:14
as i use tab mix plus which makes uing LOTS of tab very comfortable
i REALLY miss the confirmation dialog because sometimes i close 100+ tabs and it takes ages to reload them
but i must admit that ff3 reloads even such big ammount pretty quickly compared to ff2 with fasterfox!
the accidental closing sometime happens when you have the ff3 window maximized and another which is about maximum but not really maximized
when you just put your mouse in the upper right corner and klick yo actually hit the x of the window behind which sometimes is firefox…
would be nice to have that option again
aa extension for this schould be pissible?
July 15th, 2008 06:42
In about:config, try setting browser.tabs.warnOnClose = true. This seems to have done the trick for me.
July 15th, 2008 07:04
I already had my “browser.tabs.warnOnClose” set on True. Nevertheless, I double clicked it to set it to false and then double clicked it to set it to true again. AND YES IT DID WORK!!! Thank you. I hope it continues to work without me having to do this same thing again. Damn computer logic! They don’t even follow their own rules as specified in their configuration files.
July 19th, 2008 02:37
I love both Linux and OSS…
But this looks like the last crap’n s**t developer’s choice.
No way to consider that as a feature, since just today I closed three times my Firefox session because of a simple keyboard mistake (look how close are the W and Q keys).
Sad, once again, sad.
S.