Comment 16 for bug 563226

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.