Re: Close dillo with multiple tabs open

On Sun, 18 Sep 2011 13:05:31 -0400, Roger <[email protected]> wrote:

> You answered this one yourself.  The default option for VIM on quit, is  
> to only
> ask if it should quit when the file in the buffer has been modified.   
> Other
> then this, if the file buffer is unmodified, no prompt before quitting is
> issued.
>
> As such, should a browser do the same; only when forms or HTML  
> composer/editor
> has a current editing session, or associated email composition has been  
> edited,
> should a browser ask when to quit?  The only thing likely editable  
> within Dillo
> are bookmarks and some forms.
>
> When you think about it, all data being viewed within the browser is  
> static to
> it's original location.  The only information lost is the original  
> entered URL,
> which usually can be found via Google, hence, no information is at  
> threat of
> being lost.

I beg to differ; it's no longer 1994, and a good bit of the web -- in  
fact, I'd dare say most of it -- is no longer static content.  In the  
absence of anything to indicate otherwise, it's better to assume *all*  
information displayed in a browser could potentially be lost.

A couple weeks ago, one of my professors had to take an online exam for  
certification.  Her printer was out, so she had to send it through the  
department printer.  Long story short, somehow the print job got lost in  
transmission.  She'd already closed the browser, and it didn't save her  
session, so she had to take the entire 4+ hour exam again.

Bear in mind, the page she was trying to print -- and subsequently closed  
out of -- didn't have any HTML forms.  Basically it was just an image and  
some text to say she had successfully completed the exam.  Granted, it was  
*generated* from form data, but it was not itself a "current editing  
session".

Even if you're just viewing static HTML pages, a browser session is not  
*itself* a static thing: it is the unique result of a long chain of user  
interactions.  If you close a text editor, all you lose is a single file,  
which is very easy to re-open.  If you close a browser, you lose not only  
the open pages, but also their history, and for dynamic pages, the  
interactions and form posts that generated them -- in short, the pages'  
context.  And that's much more difficult to recover, even in the most  
sophisticated modern browsers.

In short, the *data* may be static, but the larger browser session is  
not.  Don't confuse the two.

~Benjamin