Open
Bug 1507451
Opened 6 years ago
Updated 2 years ago
Add feature to restore session on a case by case basis
Categories
(Firefox :: Session Restore, enhancement, P4)
Tracking
()
UNCONFIRMED
People
(Reporter: mozilla, Unassigned)
References
(Blocks 1 open bug)
Details
This is a request for a small but very useful feature. Observation ----------- There are two common working scenarios when closing Firefox: 1. You have finished your work, want to close all tabs and windows and want to start with a fresh window the next time. 2. You have to interrupt your work and want to continue the next time, with all current tabs and windows open again. This means it would be useful to have an option to decide whether to restore this session at the next start or not, at the point of time when Firefox is closed. When Firefox comes up with some open tabs or windows the next time, you are automatically reminded that you have to continue some prior work. Of course you can open the last session manually at the next start. But this means you have to remember that you still have some more work to do. So if there are several days between closing Firefox and re-starting it again, e.g. a week-end or even longer, then you may have forgotten what you did last time. So you may lose some valuable tabs if you do not re-open the last session manually. But the time when this should be decided, is not the time, when Firefox is opened. It is the time when Firefox is closed. So contrary to the option "Always restore last session" at start (auto-sessionrestore), which only allows to re-open the session always or never, this would be on a case by case basis. Implementation -------------- My suggestion would be to add a button "Restore session at next start" or similar to the dialog of browser.warnOnQuit. This means that people who have activated "Always restore last session" are not bothered by this question, because this warning does not show up then. This dialog also does not appear if a single Firefox window with a single tab is closed. Even if a user may also want to continue the session the next time in this case, this is nonetheless acceptable, because restoring sessions is mainly important for large sessions with many tabs and/or windows open. Benefit ------- - The user is reminded to continue previous work if a non-empty session shows up at start. - The user can decide whether to restore the session or not at that point of time when he still knows what he did, i.e. when closing Firefox. - The setting is completely intuitive. Everybody knows what will happen. - Existing infrastructure is used, no new dialog must be introduced. Negative impact --------------- None. All current scenarios continue to work. - Manually restoring a session will work as before. - Workflow with "Always restore last session" activated will work as before. - Workflow with "Always restore last session" de-activated will work as before if the user does not click on the new "Restore next time" button of the browser.warnOnQuit dialog. Why not use "Always restore last session"? ------------------------------------------ The option "Always restore last session" at start can not handle this workflow equally good. If you do *not* activate it, the reminding effect at the next start is lost and you have to remember yourself that you need to continue your work and open the last session manually. If you *do* activate it, there is no possibility to close and restart Firefox for a clean desktop anymore and you may need to close many unwanted tabs and windows manually. There is also no simple way to close all tabs. Opening a new tab and then hitting "Close all other tabs" in the context menu is counter-intuitive. When you want to close tabs, opening a new one is maybe not the first thing you think of. So closing and restarting Firefox may be a valid solution for many people to achieve this. But this won't work if you have "Always restore last session" activated. Does this replace browser.showQuitWarning? ------------------------------------------ browser.showQuitWarning is gone since Firefox 63. But the workflow above shows that people need such an option. I used it all the time. Actually I never understood why this option was removed from the UI in the first place. At least it was still available in about:config until Firefox 62. But now it is completely removed and I see lots of people complaining in the internet. Here are some links: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/9rfmc0/tab_saving_on_quit_is_nonfunctional_even_within/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/9rosj6/lost_my_session_after_upgrading_to_firefox_63/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/9rt1kn/how_to_get_a_warning_when_closing_firefox_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/9e9nbk/what_happened_to_save_quit_button/ And this is just reddit, there are lots of more cases all around the world. browser.showQuitWarning was heavily used! But I want to be constructive. Because Firefox always autosaves the session, the old "Save and Quit" dialog of showQuitWarning was misleading anyway. The question is not whether to save the session or not, but instead whether to show the session at the next start or not. So maybe we can handle this better in warnOnQuit now. As an alternative, simply bring back browser.showQuitWarning. It perfectly reflected the above workflow. Hartmut
Updated•5 years ago
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Blocks: ss-feature
Priority: -- → P4
Updated•2 years ago
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Severity: normal → S3
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Description
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