Nautilus Ctrl+Q to close all windows instead of Ctrl+Shift+W

Users don't view file browser windows as belonging to an application as much as they view them as belonging to the computer itself. Using Ctrl+Q as you suggest is misleading because (1) Ctrl+W is used to close windows, is this is likely what the user intended to do (rather than quitting Nautilus) and (2) quitting semantics in this case would close all Nautilus windows, which certainly seems counterintuitive.

I don't think a user really cares whether it is an application or process or belonging to the "computer" itself as you word it. I think the user expects consistency in how they are able to close out windows/applications. It's logical that if Ctrl+Q is used to close out of other applications/windows, then it would do so consistently.

Maybe my use of the word "close" was confusing when "quitting" would have been better, but here's what I mean.

Open Firefox and look at the menu options for Ctrl+W, Ctrl+Shift+W, and Ctrl+Q. All those keyboard shortcuts do what the user expects. In Nautilus, they do not. Not only that, but Ctrl+Shift+W in Nautilus (actually labeled Shift+Ctrl+W) does what a user expects Ctrl+Q to. I think a user expects Shift+Ctrl+W in Nautilus to behave the same as Ctrl+Shift+W does in Firefox *and* there to be a Ctrl+Q option in Nautilus.

I'm so used to pressing Ctrl+Q to completely exit out of applications that I find myself doing the same in Nautilus. And I'm sure I'm not the only one to do so.

Using Ctrl+Q isn't misleading because I think you misunderstood my post. If a user can completely exit out of other applications by pressing Ctrl+Q, then it's only logical they would expect to be able to do the same in Nautilus.

You wouldn't make the close button behave differently, from a user's perspective, would you? I don't think so, so why do it with keyboard shortcuts for closing/quitting applications?

Also, I think you are misunderstanding what Ctrl+W does from a user's perspective.

Try this little experiment for yourself to see what I mean:

1. Open Nautilus
2. Press Ctrl+W

What happened? The Nautilus window went way. The same thing happens if you press Ctrl+W in Firefox, yet Firefox has a Ctrl+Q option as well.

Now try this:

1. Open Nautilus
2. Press Ctrl+T to open a new tab (same as Firefox)
3. Press Ctrl+W

What happened? It doesn't close the window as the menu suggests, it just closes the selected tab. It doesn't actually close the window unless there is only a single tab open. This is the same behavior as Firefox, yet Firefox has a Ctrl+Q option as well.

Now try this

1. Open several Nautilus windows
2. Press Shift+Ctrl+W

What happend? Every single Nautilus window closed, *not* just the one you were working with. How is that intuitive? Shift+Ctrl+W in Firefox, for example, will just close out the currently selected window, *not* all of them. To close out every Firefox window, you press Ctrl+Q which is what a user expects and should be able to expect in every application and Nautilus.

It's only logical.

Also, for clarification, I'm not suggesting that Ctrl+W be done away with in Nautilus. I think it is fine for it to close out individual tabs (although the language should say "Close Tab/Window") and the currently selected window when there is only one tab open.

However, I do believe:

1. Shift+Ctrl+W should only apply to the currently selected window just as it does in Firefox; and,
2. There needs to be a Ctrl+Q Quitting option that closes out all instances of Nautilus windows just as it does for other applications. User should be able to expect consistency in keyboard shortcut options for quitting applicatio...

I forgot to ask, if what I suggest is misleading and counterintuitive, then why aren't people having problems with Firefox since it behaves the way I suggest Nautilus should be made to behave?

TC, this would be a major design change, and it is not based on existing design. Thus, it is not a papercut, but you are welcome to bring it up on a mailing list. ( eg: GNOME's Nautilus list: http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/nautilus-list ).

Note that Ctrl+W is the shortcut for File›Close in Nautilus's main menu. You can see that by opening the File menu and looking to the right side. This is the same for every single File menu; great cares are taken to keep these shortcuts the same.
The idea is that people will probably learn the shortcuts by looking at the menus first, and it helps them that we consistently use the same key combinations for the same operations as they are visually described in the menus. By having some odd case where File›Close has Ctrl+Q, we are undermining that.

There may be a case for having Ctrl+Q as a hidden shortcut that does the same thing, but it could create false assumptions so should be discussed in the appropriate forums first.

Also, Firefox doesn't behave that way. Pressing Ctrl+Q tells Firefox to quit, closing all windows. Pressing Ctrl+W closes the current window, and the Firefox process may decide to stop as well if it is no longer being useful. Ctrl+W should always be equivalent, for casual end users, to pressing Alt+F4.

Sorry, misleading error there:

Pressing Ctrl+W consistently closes the current document (eg: tabs in Firefox and Nautilus). Ctrl+Q consistently quits the application if there is a user-visible application to quit. Alt+F4 very consistently closes the current window :)

Sorry about the multiple comments. I just triaged your issue with Nautilus upstream. Ctrl+Shift+W is implemented as you describe in other applications (including Firefox and Gedit) but definitely not the same way in Nautilus.
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=615808

Ok, I thought you meant that Ctrl+W should be *replaced* with Ctrl+Q.
If the following is your proposal, it seems reasonable:

Ctrl+W: Close current tab (and close the window when the last tab closes)
Shift+Ctrl+W: Close current window (this is a terrible keyboard
shortcut, but that's another bug!)
Ctrl+Q: Close all open Nautilus windows

Indeed, rereading this (hah, sleeping helped) I understand you better, too. Sorry about my initial "stifle all disagreement!" reaction, in which I think I forgot a lot of what you said. It was no doubt painful to read, as it's full of strange ideas...

Come to think of it, a quick Close All Windows makes a lot of sense for spatial Nautilus, and that's probably where the unusual Ctrl Shift W (in File>Close all Windows) came from. Just changing that to Ctrl Q and shifting the option's position in the File menu could do it, (I don't think we need to expect anyone to have many tabs open usually), but it wouldn't hurt to see what upstream thinks about changing keyboard shortcuts.

The thing that got me was designing around Firefox, since it tends to not be well integrated. Patching GNOME to fit Firefox means a lot more work (and a lot more ugly, painful, risky divergence) than patching Firefox to fit GNOME. In this case, though, it appears Nautilus is the single exception.

I'm going to edit your bug title to clarify, just in case any other maniacs like me dive on it in an inbox-cleaning frenzy. Hope that's okay!

Fun trivia: MacOS's Finder, until the latest version, used to have a Quit option that, when pressed, would actually stop the entire application (including your desktop). As long as we don't do that, everything's cool :)

Yeah, I figured from the comments that I didn't do a very good job of explaining what I meant. In my initial post, I was hoping to avoid a long rambling post.

I only used Firefox as the example because a lot of people have experience with that application. I was looking for a common link to use as an analogy. In hindsight, that wasn't such a good idea.

I appreciate both of you following through and deciphering my explanation to get at my intended meaning.

I'll learn from this to make better reports in the future should I ever need to file one again.

Thanks for your work.

Please do! Thank you for being so reasonable, patient, and polite.

This bug is an upstream one and it would be quite helpful if somebody experiencing it could send the bug the to the people writing the software. You can learn more about how to do this for various upstreams at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream.
Once submitted upstream , do report back here with the upstream bug number.
Thanks in advance!

Thanks for sending upstream

Keep in mind that Q and W are dangerously close on the keyboard.
I find myself accidentally pressing CTRL-Q instead of CTRL-W in Firefox, which closes whole Firefox instead of just one tab, which obviously is not what I intended.
SO maybe consider using CTRL-SHIFT-Q instead of just CTRL-Q? Or add a confirmation dialog to CTRL-Q?

@Dylan McCall : not having the bug watch made me miss the fact you had already sent it ! ;p

I think this bug report is invalid. Regardless of your opinion on whether applications should have Quit commands, Ctrl Q is now well-known enough that if it does anything in an application, it should be Quit. And just closing all Nautilus's windows does not quit Nautilus. This is a fundamental difference with Firefox.

(Fun trivia correction: The Mac OS Finder has never had a Quit command. Even in the "Force Quit" dialog, the "Force Quit" button has always changed to "Relaunch" whenever the Finder is selected.)

The developers just copied the shortcuts from Mac OS X, replacing Command with Control.

In Mac OS X Command + Q quits an application and Command W closes a window. In Mac OS X this is logical, because clicking the red dot (the close button) only closes the window while the application itself stays active.

So, closing Firefox by clicking the close button only closes the window. The application itself keeps running. Clicking the close button is the same as using the keyboard combination Command + W.

To completely quit Firefox, you need to go to the menu bar, click on "Firefox" and then choose "Quit" or you can use Command + Q.

Ubuntu works completely different. Closing Firefox by clicking the close button completely quits firefox (unless you've got more than one open window). After clicking the close button the Firefox process is completely terminated and there's no sign of any activity of Firefox in the window switcher. In Mac OS X it's completely different. After clicking the close button, you can see the Firefox process is still running, as there's a little dot underneath the Firefox icon in the Dock.

If the user closes Nautilus by clicking the close button, there's no sign of any activity in the window switcher. For the user it doesn't matter if the process is still running. The user looks at the window switcher at the botom of the screen and sees no activity of Nautilus. So, for the user clicking the close button is the same as quiting the application. It's just like in Windows. The process explorer.exe is always running, but for the user there's no sign of this process being active (except when looking in the Task Manager). In Mac OS X this is completely different. In Mac OS X there's always a little dot underneath the Finder icon in the Dock. It's clear to the user this application is always running. When clicking on "Finder" in the menu bar, there's no option to Quit the Finder. It's logical for Finder not to use the keyboard shortcut Command + Q.

Ubuntu isn't Mac OS X. In Ubuntu the default is to completely terminate an application, while in Mac OS X the default is to keep the application active. In Ubuntu there's ni sign for the user of Nautilus still being active, while on Mac OS X the Finder icon is ALWAYS in the Dock and ALWAYS has a little dot underneath the icon.

That's why Nautilus shouldn't copy the shortcuts from Mac OS X. Nautilus should close using Control + Q, just like Firefox.

This has now been fixed upstream

This bug was fixed in the package nautilus - 1:2.30.1-1ubuntu2

---------------
nautilus (1:2.30.1-1ubuntu2) maverick; urgency=low

  * Backport upstream changes
  * debian/patches/git_correct_delay_logic.patch:
    - git change to fix a logic error in the directory loading code which
      create a delay to have some shortcut actions to work after loading
      directory (lp: #390662)
  * debian/patches/git_correct_display_name.patch:
    - correctly display the applications names
  * debian/patches/git_correctly_set_default.patch:
    - correctly set the new default software when this one is changed
      (lp: #550004)
  * debian/patches/git_default_thumbnails.patch:
    - set default thumbnails to 64 for better layouting (lp: #497728)
  * debian/patches/git_browser_title_cleaning.patch:
    - clean the title of the file browser dialogs (lp: #439227)
  * debian/patches/git_clean_by_name_rename.patch:
    - 'Change "Clean Up by Name" to "Organize Desktop by Name"' (lp: #388949)
  * debian/patches/git_double_click_launcher.patch
    - 'Ignore > 2 clicks in the icon container' (lp: #389663)
  * debian/patches/git_ctrlq_close.patch:
    - 'Change 'Close all Windows' shortcut to Ctrl+Q.' (lp: #563226)
  * debian/patches/git_store_session_passwords.patch:
    - store the mounts passwords for the session (lp: #392589)
  * debian/patches/git_no_double_browse_entry.patch:
    - don't list a "browser" menu items in browser mode it's the default
      (lp: #388091)
 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Wed, 07 Jul 2010 11:11:29 +0200

Fixed in Maverick

Hi,

Given the Q and W are close to each other, wouldn't it be possible to have a confirmation dialog before closing all nautilus windows. Hitting CTRL+Q instead of W is just a bad surprise when you work with lots of nautilus windows (one workaround is to 'pkill nautilus' to restore nautilus windows session state, except that gnome-session can register the windows state only on logout).

Having a confirmation dialog for CTRL+Q would follow the logic of firefox. Or an option to disable CTRL+Q would be good as well.

cheers,
Sylvain

Hi,

There is actually a way to change it, however, I didn't find this information easily.
Adding this info to the bug:
1. check /desktop/gnome/interface/can_change_accels
2. highlight menu item File > Close All Windows
3. Hit CTRL+SHIFT+Q (or W)

The new shortcut shows in the menu!

shinji2001xyz, a confirmation alert is generally the last resort if there is no other way of solving a design problem. A simpler way, of practically eliminating the possibility of hitting Ctrl Q by mistake, would be to change it from a two-key combo to a three-key one.