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It would be very nice if Ctrl+W while writing a comment would trigger the same confirmation dialog as it does for questions & answers:

This page is asking you to confirm that you want to leave - data you have entered may not be saved.

Very often, in the middle of writing a long comment I press CtrlW, thinking I'm in vim or the shell or somewhere and attempting to delete the last word; but in Firefox, this closes the current tab instead, and everything I've written so far is lost without any prompt which would have been shown if I were writing a post.

Using "Undo close tab" is also ineffective, since the comment box does not exist in page's HTML and is only added after clicking the "Add comment" link; meaning, Firefox doesn't have anywhere to restore my text to.

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    I actually do this myself quite often. The end result is "Oops... oh well, I don't feel like typing that again." – animuson♦ Mar 26 '12 at 21:08
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    I disagrRead from remote host sixlettervariables: Connection reset by peer. – user7116 Mar 26 '12 at 21:08
  • Comments are too minor for such thing to matter. If you really care so much just type this in the answer editor then when done cut and paste into the comment box. – Shadow The Princess Wizard Mar 26 '12 at 21:23
  • You should switch to Windows and use Notepad++ instead. Exit minitech – Ry- Mar 26 '12 at 22:55
  • Use vimperator. – Kevin Mar 27 '12 at 0:16
  • Ugh, the way to solve usability problems is not to put up more confirmation dialogs. Besides, I very much like being able to close the page, effectively "canceling" my comment. It's not really the web site's problem if your fingers are trained to using a program that breaks all standard platform conventions. – Cody Gray Mar 27 '12 at 2:10
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    @TheEstablishment you can still close the page, just click the button that says you intended to close the tab and lose your changes. – The Unhandled Exception Mar 27 '12 at 3:14
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    @TheEstablishment: I am on Linux. Ctrl-W to delete last word has been a "platform convention" on Unixes for some eighteen years. – grawity Mar 27 '12 at 4:18
  • Ah, I see. So it's Firefox that has the bug. Start here. – Cody Gray Mar 27 '12 at 4:19
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I've done this too. I've also accidentally navigated away from the page where I'm typing and lost the comment. It's an occasional frustration...

At the same time, I must agree with Sha Dow Wiz Ard: comments are too trivial for this sort of heavyweight UI. A more friendly experience could be had by simply saving what you'd typed and restoring it if you returned to the page - indeed, some browsers will do this for you for text fields that are always on the page - since the comment entry from isn't, it would make more sense to replicate that experience.

But really, if you're putting something into a comment that you can't easily and quickly re-type if lost, you should probably consider putting it somewhere else... Like an answer... Or an edit.

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