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Undo/Command-Z should reopen last closed window or tab Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Quote:
Originally Posted by Len Case
Seriously tho, it is a bit tricky since there is also the text-field undo and after closing one window, the new window might be in the process of being edited.
What if undo just works as expected and undoes the last user action? That is: Edit text field, close tab. Undo -> tab comes back. Undo again -> text field restored.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by zottel
What if undo just works as expected and undoes the last user action? That is: Edit text field, close tab. Undo -> tab comes back. Undo again -> text field restored.
What about: user types in a text field. Then opens new window, surfs, creates new tabs, new windows, surfs. Then closes those windows, goes back to the text box and hits undo to undo the typing there... do they really need to undo everything they did in the other windows to go back with the text?
 
How about a command (or section) in the History menu something like "Recently Closed Tabs", which has as a submenu a list of the last x tabs that were closed? I don't think there's a good way to integrate windows into this without introducing some confusion as to whether a tab should be located under its window or on its own, but even without windows, the user can still get what they needed - which I would guess is usually just one or two tabs in any case.

If you wanted to get a little more fancy, you could make a separate window that lists the tabs, perhaps even with graphical previews.

In any case, doing it this way makes restoration a part of OW's historical browsing record, thus avoiding altogether confusion over in the Undo realm. And restoration, IMHO, fits as well or better into History than Undo. Even if not, it'll make perfect sense to someone the first time they notice it. There's also the benefit that you can let the user control the tab cache via the existing History pane in the prefs.
 
I like the idea of a Recently Closed item in the History menu. Usually when I close a window I didn't mean to close, I go look in history to restore it. If we listed items by the last time I looked at them instead of the last time I fetched them--I would find that closed window even easier.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Len Case
I like the idea of a Recently Closed item in the History menu. Usually when I close a window I didn't mean to close, I go look in history to restore it. If we listed items by the last time I looked at them instead of the last time I fetched them--I would find that closed window even easier.
This sounds about right.

I do the same thing (dig in the History window) and the problem does seem to be that I might have opened that mistakenly-closed tab half an hour ago, browsed around for awhile, then accidentally closed it before I could get to it.

Even if "Undo" was used for this, I don't think it would affect text fields, because those already seem to have their own, independent undo states. When you remove focus from a textarea, undo/redo no longer affect it. Refocusing it makes undo/redo active for that text area again. Text fields (single input lines) don't seem to retain their undo/redo states when you blur/refocus them, but textareas do. My point being that the program already has separate lists of undo/redo depending on what's in focus, so it shouldn't really cause a problem.
 
The problem is, that undo states are generally window specific so closing one window (and thus focusing on another) puts you into an unpredicatable undo state--if the window you ended up on did have a text field focused, suddenly your undo wouldn't work to bring the window back whereas normally it could.

I have a phone where the scroll down a page button is also the accept call button (T-Mobile Sidekick)--sometimes while browsing a web page, I end up answering a phone call unexpectedly. Similarly, the switch to another call button shares functionality with the end call button. I've had someone on the line, get another phone call--go to switch after explaining to the first call--and when I go to switch, the other call has disappeared and I end up hanging up on the first person instead of putting them on hold.

This is the same reason the stop and reload buttons in OmniWeb are not the same button--you go to press on the stop and just before you get there, it turns into a reload. You don't want an unpredictable interface.
 
So...

The nice thing about the history menu containing recently closed windows is:
  1. it is predictable--no guessing about what the user meant and
  2. it is discoverable--the history menu is where you probably go already

I have considered adding undo to the workspaces window, but it lacks the discoverability--unless you were really paying close attention to the edit menu while clicking on the workspaces window, you wouldn't notice that Undo was suddenly enabled and the title had changed to "Undo Close Window" or "Undo Close Tab".
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Len Case
This is the same reason the stop and reload buttons in OmniWeb are not the same button--you go to press on the stop and just before you get there, it turns into a reload. You don't want an unpredictable interface
Agreed. The combined stop/reload button in Safari can be a real pain sometimes.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Len Case
The nice thing about the history menu containing recently closed windows is:
  1. it is predictable--no guessing about what the user meant and
  2. it is discoverable--the history menu is where you probably go already
That seems like the best way to solve this problem. I think it would be confusing for most users if undo behaves differently depending on whether you've got a text field focused or not. (I'm not sure what other factors there are, but I notice that you can only undo/redo changes in a text field while it's focused -- which is how it should be IMO.) It actually would never have occured to me to use undo to restore a closed tab. After all, the undo command is in the Edit menu, and closing and opening tabs is not editing (not that I want to crack open the topic of menu semantics, cause that's a can of worms).

So, I can imagine a couple different ways the History menu approach could work.
  1. Add items to the history as soon as you open them, but when closing a tab, move its history item to the top.
  2. Only add items to the history when the tab is closed.

Also, by "closed", I mean: You either closed the tab, or a new URL was loaded into it. I realize you could just use the back button to go back to a page if you didn't actually close the tab, but my thought is that pages should be added to the history in a consistent manner, so that whenever you "leave a page" (by closing the tab or going to a new URL), that's when it gets added to (or moved to the top of) the history. Otherwise, URLs would get moved to the top if the tab was closed, but not when replacing the tab content with a new URL, and from a user's point of view, that's just two different ways to get rid of a page.
 
I would be tempted to move urls based on when you last focused on them (brought that window or tab to the front) as well--thus making recovery from a crash easier (if you aren't using auto-saving workspaces).
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by dbyler
Opera's implementation, btw, is very nice -- with a "trash can" of unused tabs (plus command-Z to un-close).
The best out there, better than Firefox, wich requires to go to the history meny first. I sent a mail on this request and got a positive feedback. Of course, the more people ask for it, the better :-)
 
 


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