Add our own "Are you sure you want to leave this page?" message when possible

[iseulde]

We could do that by listening for clicks on the page that would unload it. Unfortunately it's not possible to display our own dialog when navigating away with the browser, but I think having our own dialog half of the time is better than nothing.

I quite like how FaceBook has done something similar. For the editor, we could have an extra button to save the post.

See also the usability test @designsimply has done for the front-end editor.
​http://make.wordpress.org/ui/2014/03/05/front-end-editor-usability-test-2/#comment-24315

[helen]

<3

[ryan]

All of our AYS type dialogs need improvement. +1

[swissspidy]

All of our AYS type dialogs need improvement. +1

Related: #34816, where we discussed creating generic functionality for such dialogs.

[danieliser]

Another option here, maybe even an enhancement would be to use the new navigator.sendBeacon function in chrome to auto save. IE user can enable an auto save function in chrome that will auto save upon leaving the page. Similar to onBeforeUnload but non blocking.

​https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/sendBeacon

Although it is currently a Chrome webkit only enhancement, this has already been proposed in Mozilla and MS Cortana. Thus making it a good option to consider now.

Here is an example how it can be used when supported or fallback to AJAX non blocking request if not.

​http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36291337/allowing-an-ajax-request-to-finish-after-the-page-is-closed