+avi for oldspice
+mark for desktop UI misc.

When you talk about being "stopped for unsent form data", I'm supposing you mean that the page enables a beforeunload handler when it sees form data that wasn't submitted. (Getting stopped for unsent form data isn't a feature of Chrome.)

That makes this feature request a tough one. Because this is a feature of the web page, and not of Chrome, this would mean adding in options to the beforeunload dialog. That would involve spec changes to a feature that we're trying to remove (see the page lifecycle peeps for more info). In addition, the beforeunload dialog is a highly abused feature, which means that any change to it involves consideration as to how it would affect its abusability.

Oh, I didn't realize that was not a Chrome feature. E.g., the dialog on this bug if I try to navigate away is provided by beforeunload? If that's the case, I see how this would be unfixable without extending the API (which itself is metered by abuse).

Thanks for the explanation and feel free to WF.

> E.g., the dialog on this bug if I try to navigate away is provided by beforeunload?

Indeed it is. If you do a view-source, on line 3752:

window.onbeforeunload = function() {
 if (TKR_isDirty()) {
 // This message is ignored in recent versions of Chrome and Firefox.
 return "You have unsaved changes. Leave this page and discard them?";
 }
 };

And TKR_isDirty is defined in tracker-editing.js as

/**
 * This function returns true if the user has made any edits to fields of
 * interest.
 */
function TKR_isDirty() {
  return TKR_initialFormValues != TKR_currentFormValues();
}

so yeah, sorry. 😢