Purpose of "File" > "Exit"

jonasj · Post by **jonasj** » November 9th, 2002, 2:32 pm

asa wrote:It certainly is useful. If I have 7 or 8 browser windows full of porn and my mom walks in on me then I have about 3 choices. I can hit ctrl+w a bunch of times, closing all of the windows as they gain focus, including my non-browsing windows which respond to ctrl+w. I can power my computer down completely and try to make some excuse about why I happen to be shutting down at that moment. Or I can hit File|Exit and know that all of the porn will be instantly gone and none of my other application windows will be affected.

The problem with File|Exit is that it is application-centric rather than window-centric. A browser window, like any other window, is something you open to perform a task. That task could be to find information, to read the mozillazine forums, to look at pr0n, or whatever. Once you've completed the task, you close the window. Easy and simple.

It's the same way a word processor works: You open the window to read/edit/write a document, you close it when you're done.

To the computer, the various browser windows are related as they are part of the same application.

To the user however, they are as separate as a browser window and a word processor window. Why would I care whether they run in the same process. They're *windows*.

And windows are traditionally closed by choosing the Close/Exit/Quit item usually located at the bottom of the File menu. Oops.

If you need to have <quote>7 or 8 browser windows full of porn</quote> open while your mom is in the house, just lock the door.

Faux Pass · Post by **Faux Pass** » November 9th, 2002, 2:34 pm

Stefan wrote:As far as unambigous goes "Exit Phoenix" seems the most straight forward to me.

...except that it clearly isn't straightforward: it confused netsabes and me, and therefore probably many others.

seb · Post by **seb** » November 9th, 2002, 2:41 pm

No, "Exit" confused me, but I don't think I could be confused by "Exit Phoenix", because it clearly says what it closes.

Faux Pass · Post by **Faux Pass** » November 9th, 2002, 2:42 pm

Netsabes wrote:No, "Exit" confused me, but I don't think I could be confused by "Exit Phoenix", because it clearly says what it closes.

Ah... no, you're right, that does make more sense. Sorry, Stefan.

Stefan · Post by **Stefan** » November 9th, 2002, 2:43 pm

Faux Pass wrote:
Netsabes wrote:No, "Exit" confused me, but I don't think I could be confused by "Exit Phoenix", because it clearly says what it closes.

Ah... no, you're right, that does make more sense. Sorry, Stefan.

NP

../frank · Post by **../frank** » November 9th, 2002, 2:49 pm

asa wrote:It certainly is useful. If I have 7 or 8 browser windows full of porn and my mom walks in on me

The solution to your problem is simple. Open the Phoenix Forum in your first tab, then open the pr0n in new tabs. Then if mom walks in, click on the Phoenix forum tab. :twisted:

Stefan · Post by **Stefan** » November 9th, 2002, 3:15 pm

../frank wrote:
asa wrote:It certainly is useful. If I have 7 or 8 browser windows full of porn and my mom walks in on me

The solution to your problem is simple. Open the Phoenix Forum in your first tab, then open the pr0n in new tabs. Then if mom walks in, click on the Phoenix forum tab.

I'm not sure that's an ultimate solution actually.

If my mother would walk in on me (highly unlikely since she lives 1500km from me) and catch me "in action" I think she would be a lot more worried about me if I was looking at a webforum for a browser then pics of nude girls

Thumper · Post by **Thumper** » November 9th, 2002, 3:15 pm

I'm yet to be convinced. If people want to be able to shut all windows at once, they can keep things in tabs. Having a button that exits all instances of the program only confuses people, because a button in one window should never be expected to adversely affect another window. MacOS is the exception, but Phoenix isn't designed for use on MacOS.

File -> Close Tab should shut the current tab, File -> Close should shut the entire window and there shouldn't be a File -> Exit at all. People who insist on running lots of separate windows instead of tabs can learn to use tabbing more, and people that have eight windows with eight tabs each of pr0n can learn just to cliks 'show desktop' in the quick launch bar when their parents walk in.

- Chris

asa · Post by **asa** » November 9th, 2002, 3:20 pm

../frank wrote:
asa wrote:It certainly is useful. If I have 7 or 8 browser windows full of porn and my mom walks in on me

The solution to your problem is simple. Open the Phoenix Forum in your first tab, then open the pr0n in new tabs. Then if mom walks in, click on the Phoenix forum tab.

Actually I have a dozen windows open with different catagories of porn. Inside each window I have maybe 20 tabs of different images within that catagory. I like having my porn neatly catagorized. Switching to the window or tab that doesn't have porn in it does nothing for all the other windows which do and since none of my windows are maximized you can see bits of porn peeking through from behind the window with focus or in the page titles in the taskbar. Your solution is less than ideal for this and possibly many other scenarios.

This is just an example. I don't browse (porn) like this and I don't have to worry about my mom walking in on me but I'm sure you see my point.

--Asa

Ted Mielczarek · Post by **Ted Mielczarek** » November 9th, 2002, 3:24 pm

asa wrote:This is just an example. I don't browse (porn) like this and I don't have to worry about my mom walking in on me but I'm sure you see my point.

--Asa

Honestly, I think you're stretching to prove your point here. This is a pretty silly border case, and you shouldn't inconvenience the rest of the phoenix users just because one strange person needs one thing. If they need it that badly, they can make an extension to have it.

asa · Post by **asa** » November 9th, 2002, 3:30 pm

Ted Mielczarek wrote:Honestly, I think you're stretching to prove your point here. This is a pretty silly border case, and you shouldn't inconvenience the rest of the phoenix users just because one strange person needs one thing. If they need it that badly, they can make an extension to have it.

It's _a_ border case. There are plenty of other border cases and some not so border. There are plenty of people that use multiple windows and don't use tabs and want a way to close them all at once.

You're trying to change the existing behavior so the burden is on you to demonstrate that the current behavior's usability problems outweigh its usability wins. If you need to remove this functionality so badly then how about you go make an extension to remove it.

--Asa

Thumper · Post by **Thumper** » November 9th, 2002, 3:43 pm

There are plenty -more- cases of people killing all their windows by mistake though. Is there a single non-pr0n example which necessitates shutting every open browser window quickly / at once?

- Chris

Thumper · Post by **Thumper** » November 9th, 2002, 3:52 pm

Also, I though the point of extensions was to EXTEND functionality. Having stuff in the default build which needs an extension to disable it smacks of poor judgement.

I think the problem with data loss for people who can't tell the difference between Exit and Close (or who, having been trained on IE, don't expect the behaviour at all) far outweighs the benefit of being able to kill all windows in a few seconds less than would be possible otherwise. I fail to see how this could not be the case, because as I've said above, it seems the only time this is of critical importance is when the browsing in question is being done when / where it shouldn't.

- Chris

seb · Post by **seb** » November 9th, 2002, 3:57 pm

Asa, any chance for "Exit" to be renamed to something like "Exit Phoenix", or "Close all windows"? That wouldn't change/remove any functionality, but that would make this one much more clear, IMHO.

asa · Post by **asa** » November 9th, 2002, 4:18 pm

thumperward wrote:There are plenty -more- cases of people killing all their windows by mistake though. Is there a single non-pr0n example which necessitates shutting every open browser window quickly / at once?

- Chris

Yes, wanting to exit the application without having to chase down all your windows is a completely reasonable desire from a user standpoint. Most users don't use tabs. Most normal users that I've ever watched end up with a trail of windows as they abandon one surfing path to follow another especially with the help of sites that launch external links in new windows. When you're done surfing it's nice to be able to hit a menuitem that exits the application.

Why should I have to chase down all the windows and all the pop-ups and pop-unders when I just want to quit the darn thing?

It's also nice when I run out of CPU cycles or Memory because I've got some massive PhotoShop filter running and I want to kill other applications. Sometimes it takes literally tens of seconds to get to the next window to kill it when the CPU is being pegged by Photoshop. For people on lower end equipment or with a lot of other apps running, closing a bunch of windows one at a time can be a real pita.

It's also nice when I'm getting ready to shut down the computer at the end of the day to be able to exit the app and not wonder if I had some other window open and minimized on some other desktop.

Some of the same arguments being made against File->Exit have been made about not allowing a window to be closed when there are still open tabs in the window. I'll fight that one too because I think it's completely reasonable to be able to close a window even though there are a dozen tabs in that window that will be lost if you close it. There are plenty of situations where I explicitely want to close all those tabs withough having to close each one individually.

There are lots of cases where this functionality is useful to me and others. I've listed a few of my examples. Some of you have listed the cases where your inexperience with the app or habits from other apps makes it detrimental to your browsing. I'm unlikely to convince you that the value outweighs the detriment and you're unlikely to convince me that the detriment outweighs the value.

There are a few things that could happen. Things could stay as they are with a File->Exit menu item. The Quit/Exit item could be removed. A preference could be added. An extension (for) modifying the current menu could be developed. I'm in support of that first possibility - things stay as they are. I'm not in support of the second option because I think that trusting MicroSoft's usability testing and just doing what IE does when the IE windowing functionality is fundamentally different than Phoenix' doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I think that prefs for this kind of thing are rediculous so I don't support that. I think that an extension that allows complete customization of the menus or provides a drop-in replacement for the menus is a reasonable option but I'm not about to put any effort behind that since I think that the current behavior is optimal.

--Asa