on android the back button should close the tab

[Sbernecchia]

On android each time I click on a link from bookmark it is opened in a new tab.

After I have done reading the tab I push the back button, and I'm moved to the home page, but the tab I have just read isn't closed! After a while I have lots of old tabs that I don't need anymore, and I have to close them. It's so annoying!

Previous version of Firefox (fennec) used to close the tab after I pushed the back button. Please restore the old functionality.

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[KMFi]

An idea could be to long press (hold) the back button to close tab. Then you won't close the tab accidentally.

[Sbernecchia]

@KMFi  I like your idea of long press

[pras92]

Well, isn't this annoying?

If this is how Mozilla is going to wear it's Open Source cape, I don't see how it's going to come out of the downward spiral it's already in.

Gathering traction for an idea before considering it is one thing. OP is barely an idea. Stripping out a feature and playing hide-n-seek with the community, making the userbase (or whatever is left of it) go desperate for basic features is the secret recipe for a product implosion.

@SbernecchiaAny idea of the version number which still had this feature?

[Josefovo]

yes please. back goes away from the page, but it stays open. it should either stay on the open page (and require long press) or (better) close the page when leaving. it could be an option in settings.

[VioR]

I see that there are several requests on this topic, but they are not taken into account.
The world complains about Microsoft that it is not responsive to what the users ask for, but look at how Mozilla ignores it.

[brien]

Inconceivable that this isn't even an option. I feel it should be default (like every other Android browser I've used since 2009), but at the very least it should be in the settings. I desperately want to abandon Chrome on Android for a variety of reasons but having to take a few extra steps to ensure I don't have many tabs open is a deal breaker for me, it must be for others.

[floydheld2]

All the tabs mounting up every day...
When I go back please close the tab. PLEASE

[mf2112]

please add an option for the back button to close the tab

[volatile1]

This is the single most annoying thing about Firefox on Android, please fix!

My preference would be to close the current tab when the back button is used to return to the homepage. I would think this should be the default option, as on other browsers.

[papijo]

I agree with the others that that would be a really nice option!

[Kerim]

It absolutely has to be.

[Biizer]

This could be considered a bug. I don't see any reasonable use case for going BACKwards through a tab's history to end up in the home screen where anything you do opens a new tab and leaves the one you backed out from still open. I just pressed a BACK button so why didn't the tab go back its previous state of not existing at all? Is the suggested use for this to open a bunch of bookmarks in tabs in a row by clicking one, then back, then a new one, back and so on?

Only possible fixes for this bug:

1. Last back press closes the tab, shows home and the regular notification if you want to undo the closing.

2. Back up to the home screen. The next bookmark, history, search, address input etc reuses the tab you came from. 

If Firefox tracks usage statistics like this, I bet a vast majority of users just manually close the tabs they backed out from and never view them again. If I'm wrong, at least add an option to IF (historyState = 0) THEN {closeTab()};