30
edits
Changes
→Con
* Closing a tab that creates a new blank tab is arguably not closing a tab.
* Users on UNIX systems wanting mouse keyboard bindings may want a key binding that uses two keys rather than 3 to close the window (although Alt-F4 may do this?).
* There's already a keyboard shortcut for closing the tab, if not the last one (ctrl-F4). There is no other keyboard shortcut for what Ctrl-W currently does.
* Firefox supports multiwindow tabless browsing; ctrl-w not closing the window along with its directly contained document is inconsistent with IE6 and other tabless applications.
* The current document-centric ctrl-w behavior discards a window, as it does a tab, when the window no longer contains a document. The proposal makes the window widget "heavier" favoring it over the document concept; instead of the application getting out of the way when the user is done with the document, it demands that the user deal specifically with the window to close it with e.g. a different keybinding.
* Blanking a tab isn't an especially useful action.
* For people who usually use windows rather than tabs, it's nice to have an easy-to-press shortcut (Ctrl+W) to close the window.
* 1 for the price of 2: If I'm done with the current document, and don't want to open a new one, the proposal creates an additional step that I need to perform: either (a) determine whether multiple tabs are open, to decide whether to close a tab or window; or (b) after just closing a tab, if a blank useless window remains, close it.
==Should this be a preference?==
