warn user about losing unsaved changes

[dmlee@…]

Users not used to using web apps get frustrated if they click a link while editing a Ticket or a Wiki, which of course causes them to lose their changes. If the link would either open a new window, or prompt a warning box, that would be sufficient to mitigate frustration.

[Matthew Good]

I should note that this is not a problem with Firefox (and possibly other non-IE browsers) since it will preserve the content of forms in your history, so if you click a link, then click the back button, the previous page will still have your changes in the form fields. Yet another reason people should stop using IE, or start complaining to Microsoft about bringing their browser into the 21st century. </ anti-MS rant>

We certainly don't want to start opening all links in a new window if a user is on a form page, since this would be quite irritating if the user really did want to just navigate away from the form.

I could however see adding a Javascript warning if they were about to leave a form without saving their changes. This would need to be set only to occur if the user had actually modified the form content, since we don't want users getting spurious warnings about unsaved content when simply browsing tickets (since every ticket page has a form on it).

[Christopher Lenz]

While I'm not in general a fan of popup windows, I think they actually make sense for the help system. I believe it's a convention people are used to, and is also used in many web applications. And it's IMHO a less obtrusive solution than popping up a warning dialog.

Note that I'd do this only for the help links (those that get the help mouse cursor) and the you may use WikiFormatting here hints. Certainly not for every attempt to leave the page without using the cancel or save button.

[Christopher Lenz]

And to add to that… I certainly don't want a warning dialog when implicitly cancelling a form by leaving the page. Chances are I know what I'm doing, thank you very much :-)

Now if we had a way to make "Don't alert me about this again" alerts from JavaScript…

[Emmanuel Blot]

(reverting anonymous changes)

[anonymous]

I would vote for this too; even Firefox won't cache the fields if you are running Trac on an SSL site. I just lost a large amount of work due to accidently clicking on a link when trying to return foreground window focus. Also it hasn't affected me yet, but #2618 bothers me even more. At least #1437 can be solved by being a "perfect user", but even if you as careful as you can be there's no way around #2618 except selecting all text and copying it before submitting. Actually I've found myself doing that on sites where I've typed a lot, so I guess I have to start doing it with Trac now, too.

[Matthew Good]

You should also considering filing a Firefox bug (if one doesn't exist) regarding warning before leaving an unsubmitted form. I use ​Epiphany which warns you before closing a tab with unsubmitted changes, so to have Trac try to warn me again would get pretty annoying. Epiphany does not warn you if you click on link without submitting the form, since your changes will still be there if you hit "Back".

[Matthew Good]

Oops.

[Matthew Good]

Well, I was hoping there might be a way to avoid the normal JavaScript "confirm()"-style popup dialog and do something in HTML that would give some nicer options. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be possible, since the "onbeforeunload" event doesn't follow the normal event-handler behavior of returning a boolean whether the event should continue. Instead you return a string which is displayed in a "confirm()"-style popup :(

I guess it is possible to check the browser used (so I don't get the message on Epiphany), or add a cookie or session setting to enable this behavior. However I think a better solution would be for browsers to support this natively (Epiphany) or an extension that adds this for all sites. Not that I'm proposing that we write one, but if we can document some available solutions that may be sufficient.

[anonymous]

The normal confirm()-style popup is indeed the convention used by many popular web apps (e.g., GMail). I know that our team loses several hours of work a month due to this failure to warn. By far the no. 1 flaw of Trac. If you accidentally click on the back button on your mouse, even in Firefox 2, you are hosed as clicking forward does not restore it for HTTPS.

This shouldn't be severity "trivial" — it's the user losing their work, for crying out loud. If that isn't severe, what is? And while I appreciate mgood's concern for various browsers, the simple popup warning should be implemented ASAP for all browsers.

[Emmanuel Blot]

Maybe the introduction of ​Jquery may help here.

[Christian Boos]

There are a few things that can be done for this issue:

1. show help pages in popup windows (see cmlenz' comment:2); as eblot suggested, JavaScript could be used to modify those links into ones triggering a XHR for an embedded help window (e.g. ​Interface).
2. identify the situations where editing work will be lost, and trigger a warning on leave when all the conditions are met
   • the https: connection used
   • the browser used won't warn by itself
   • a textarea have been edited

[bcl@…]

Confirm leaving the Ticket page after clicking in a text field

[bcl@…]

I just added a patch called trac-confirm.patch, it is against v 0.10.3 and add a confirmation box if any text box is clicked in. preview and submit do not trigger the confirmation of course.

[anonymous]

I get this warning everytime I close a tab. It's a drag but I use epiphany because it uses less system resources than firefox.

Linux 2.6.27.24-170.2.68.fc10.i686 #1 SMP Wed May 20 23:10:16 EDT 2009 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

Web Browser 2.24.3

[Christian Boos]

Milestone 1.0 deleted

[uros@…]

It happens to me and my colleagues that they loose content when clicking on some link by accident, and if writing something for some longer time it is a pitty to loose it.

My firefox doesn't preserve the content, the latest fc22 up to date.

So making an alert for some existent and not sent content would be of help.

[Ryan J Ollos]

​DataSaverPlugin may be of interest.

[CharlesB]

I just accidentally lost my draft… Firefox doesn't recover it after browser exit. It would be nice if Trac warns before closing (like most other systems, if not all) the page containing unedited content.

[Ryan J Ollos]

Replying to Matthew Good:

I should note that this is not a problem with Firefox (and possibly other non-IE browsers) since it will preserve the content of forms in your history, so if you click a link, then click the back button, the previous page will still have your changes in the form fields.

This seems to be the case with all browsers I've used recently (Chrome, Firefox, Safari).

There is also a plugin to address the issue, and I doubt we will take any further action on it.

[anonymous]

Even in recent browsers, when you click "New Ticket" the form contents are lost irretrievably:

• Click "New ticket"
• Enter some text in the description field
• Click "New ticket" again
• Click the back button → the text you entered is lost.

[figaro]

And this issue occurs with or without the plugin suggested in #comment:22 ?