For those of you that don't know, I run multiple operating systems (I know, shocker). My main development machine at work is a laptop running Linux (Kenny does not approve), and at home I generally use Winders.
There are times when I have to kill Firefox--a machine reboot (Windows), hanging flash plugin (Linux), etc.--and restart it. Firefox (versions >= 2) is wonderful in that it saves what tabs and pages were open in the event of an unexpected shutdown. There is even a dialog that shows up when you start back up, asking if you'd like to restore your session or, in the event a page you were viewing caused a crash, to start a new session. My mild annoyance can be seen in these screen grabs:
Windows:
Linux
I cannot count, using available appendages, the number of times I've started a new session because the buttons were backwards from what I had been expecting. It would be really nice if they were in the same order.
Bonus points if you can explain to me why they aren't. Sorry Kenny, you already know the answer and thus are ineligible for bonus points.
the number of people who expect it to behave like all of their other apps on their particular operating system dwarfs the number of people who use multiple operating systems and want consistent behavior across those operating systems. it's a constant battle between doing what's right by the particular OS and doing what's right for a cross platform app. mostly OS conventions win out.
What if I am unsatisfied with the answer?
@asa I mostly agree with your analysis, which is why it's only mildly annoying. I also understand the reuse of code, but in this particular case it is not obvious to the user that "Start New Session" == "OK" and "Restore Session" == "Cancel" and it would be ok to break tradition.
I will deal with it since I know how kludgey code can get with exceptions written all over it, but it doesn't mean I'll like it.
@kenny I think the answer to your question about the answer is, "too bad."