Adam Gashlin (he/him) [:agashlin] (ex-moco) Reporter
	Description • 6 years ago

With the use of Windows RegisterApplicationRestart since 603903 (as because Windows now restarts those applications on every shutdown/restart), users who shut down with Firefox running will see their session restored when they log in, even if they don't have browser.startup.page set to 3. But this isn't a reliable feature; if the browser is started before the auto-restart kicks in (e.g. see bug 1498167), the session will be lost. Also, if the user exits the browser normally, there will be no session saving (though they will of course get the "do you want to close 500 tabs" dialog).

I'm concerned that users will come to rely on auto-restore when what they really want is "Restore previous session". Even though it is at the top of about:preferences it seems likely that many users who would want it will never think to look for it.

I don't know why session restore never became the default, but it seems reasonable to ask the user if they want it. One good opportunity for this is with auto-restore following auto-restart: we know that we're showing a session that would have been lost if they had shut down and restarted any other way.

	Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]
	Comment 1 • 6 years ago

(In reply to Adam Gashlin [:agashlin] from comment #0)
> I don't know why session restore never became the default, but it seems
> reasonable to ask the user if they want it. One good opportunity for this is
> with auto-restore following auto-restart: we know that we're showing a
> session that would have been lost if they had shut down and restarted any
> other way.

Excellent idea! I'd really like to be able to spend time on 're-'thinking the SessionStore startup flow, because the current model doesn't match OS idioms and general user expectations anymore.

I'm not gonna overload this bug with that and more context, so I'll finish with saying that I think this is a great idea and would be good improvement.

Aaron, if you can find a way to turn this into a neat UX, I'll implement it.

	Romain Testard [:RT]
	Comment 2 • 6 years ago

For info we're running a study aimed at understanding engagement/retention impact of session restore (we prompt users a heartbeat message suggesting they can enable session restore and want to measure user appetite for the feature as well as retention impact for the users who enable it)
If successful, this experiment will help prioritize promoting opt in for session restore (having session restore as default is apparently hard to consider since it opens-up privacy issues on shared computers) and I guess this could be done 
- When restoring tabs with Windows restart, notify users in an infobar "We have just restored tabs from your previous browsing session, this behavior can be always enabled" with a learn more link to let users enable the feature 
- Contextual feature recommender UI?

	Robert AB
	Comment 3 • 6 years ago

(In reply to Romain Testard [:RT] from comment #2)
> For info we're running a study aimed at understanding engagement/retention
> impact of session restore

Some information/discussion for planning the study:

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/9p2f2w/a_study_aimed_at_understanding_engagement/

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/9bswmn/estimation_of_the_number_of_waterfox_users_based/e56gqtb/
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/9bswmn/estimation_of_the_number_of_waterfox_users_based/e55p8sw/
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/9bswmn/estimation_of_the_number_of_waterfox_users_based/
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1427928#c57