544880 - Tab saving does not work when closing Firefox using the red X in Mac OSX

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[Aleksander R. Rødner]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20091221 Firefox/3.5.7 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0

My girlfriend recently got herself a shiny new MacBook Pro, and installed Firefox, as that’s her browser of preference. She kept having a problem that her tabs would not be saved when she closed Firefox, and asked me to look into it.
 
All the settings under Preferences were OK, so the problem was not with the settings. Likewise, the relevant settings under about:config were set correctly. We tried deleting prefs.js, but that didn’t help either.
 
Then, as a last-ditch attempt, I tried closing Firefox using the option on the menu bar. I then got the beloved question “Do you want Firefox to save your tabs”. I clicked yes, then restarted Firefox. All the tabs were reloaded. I then used the red X in the upper right-hand corner, the opened Firefox, and the tabs were not reloaded.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Open Firefox
2.Open several tabs
3.Use the red "X" to close Firefox
Actual Results:  
Tabs are not saved, dialog box asking whether to save tabs is not displayed

Expected Results:  
Dialog box asking to save the tabs should appear, Firefox should save the tabs

I'm not reporting the problem from her computer, will return with full build info.

Bug found and confirmed in versions 3.5.7 and 3.6

Comment 1

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away Apr 25 - May 5)]

this has nothing to do with bookmarks. Moving to session restore.

Comment 2

[Aleksander R. Rødner]

Version information:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6

Error has also been confirmed seen on the same computer on Firefox 3.5.7

Comment 3

[Simon Bünzli]

(In reply to comment #0)
> 3.Use the red "X" to close Firefox

This doesn't do what you mean: Under Mac OS X, the red "X" never closes Firefox (even if you close the last window) but always only that one specific window. Firefox keeps running in the background even with no windows open, unless you quit it through the menu or with Cmd+Q.

So, if your tabs aren't restored as expected, you might want to try History -> Recently Closed Windows to recover them from the list of windows closed while Firefox was running.

This bug is thus likely WONTFIX as the current behavior is consistent with how Mac OS X applications are supposed to work.

Comment 4

[Aleksander R. Rødner]

Sounds like a likely cause.

In my opinion though, it would be a good idea to have it handled the same way as in Windows and all Linux distros I've tried; to end the process when the last window is closed.

Comment 5

[Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (not bugmail, email directly)]

I'm going to go ahead and WONTFIX this. We're going to stick OS-specific behavior.