A few weeks ago, my mouse started to slowly conk out: It kept double-clicking unintentionally, so it frequently happened that, when I closed a program by clicking on the “X”, it would also close the window behind it. That was very annoying – especially because it very often hit my Firefox with 20 pages open, and it always feels like an eternity until it you’ve restarted it and reloaded all tabs.

So I decided, until I would get me a new mouse, to activate the option “Warn me when closing multiple tabs“. So I could at least prevent the accidental closing in time with a click. Well, “warn me” my ass – my Firefox still kept closing without asking!

The solution

After a quick search, I found two different reasons for this problem. In my case, the second one was the culprit:

• In the settings under “Privacy” in the drop-down menu for creating a history, the option “Never remember history” is selected. Although a closing tabs warning would be particularly useful when no history is saved at all, Firefox obviously considers it unnecessary as long as this option is enabled. So you have to choose one of the other two options here.:”Firefox warnt nicht beim Schliessen mehrerer Tabs”:http://www.pctipp.ch/praxishilfe/kummerkasten/internet/54071/firefox_warnt_nicht_beim_schliessen_mehrerer_tabs.html
• In the settings under “General” in the drop-down menu under “Startup“, the option “Show my windows and tabs from last time” is selected. This, too, leads Firefox to the assumption that there is no need to warn when closing, as all tabs will be restored at the next start anyway. So you have to choose one of the other two options here, too.:”Firefox: Warnen, wenn mehrere Tabs geschlossen werden – funktioniert nicht”:http://basskarre.de/1179/firefox-warnen-wenn-mehrere-tabs-geschlossen-werden-funktioniert-nicht

A useful addon

However, both solutions are somewhat imperfect – maybe you want to be warned when closing multiple tabs and also show the tabs from your last session or choose not to remember the history. To make both options possible at the same time, someone wrote the addon “Always Ask“.:”How To Fix The "Warn Me When Closing Multiple Tabs" Problem In Firefox 3”:http://warnmewhenclosingmultipletabs.blogspot.de/ I didn’t test it myself though, since I now own a new mouse and thus my problem has already resolved itself. ;)