1088815 - Add a 'Restart' command to the Help menu

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Menus, defect)

Description

[Botond Ballo [:botond]]

The Help menu has a "Restart with Add-ons Disabled" command. I think it should also have a regular "Restart" command.

Use cases for restarting:
  1. You restarted with add-ons disabled to diagnose a problem, 
     and now want to get your add-ons back.
  2. Memory usage climbs too high, restarting brings it back down. (*)
  3. Scrolling sometimes becomes laggy after running for a while,
     restarting restores it to normal. (*)

(*) I know the proper fix here is to fix these problems so that a restart isn't needed, but in the meantime restarting is a very practical solution.

Use cases for having a command rather than just exiting and starting again manually:
  1. It's one command for the user to give instead of two.
  2. Often shutdown takes a while (10-20 seconds). If you try to
     start Firefox again too soon, you get the "Firefox is already
     running or not responding" message.
  3. Sometimes, a shortcut/icon for launching the Firefox version
     you're using is not close by (e.g. you're testing a nightly
     or aurora build). (This is less applicable to end-users.)

Comment 1

[Sunny [:darkowlzz]]

Hi,

I would love to fix this bug but I need someone to help me do it right.

Here is what I found after some research:
The app could be restarted using nsIAppStartup's `quit()` function. Something like this
`appStartup.quit(Ci.nsIAppStartup.eAttemptQuit | Ci.nsIAppStartup.eRestart);`

I tried the above code in scratchpad and it worked.

Would be great if someone could tell me if this is how we should be doing it.

Thanks.

Comment 2

[Sunny [:darkowlzz]]

Attachment: Added 'Restart' in Help menu

I went a little further and created a patch which works as expected.
Looking for someone to review the patch and suggest improvements.

Comment 3

[Botond Ballo [:botond]]

Comment on attachment 8528730 [details] [diff] [review]
Added 'Restart' in Help menu

Thanks for working on this, Sunny!

I'm flagging Mike Conley for review; Mike, please feel free to redirect the review if someone else is more appropriate.

Comment 4

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Hrm... we should probably discuss with UX if this is a thing that we want in our menus before we add it. I wish we'd done that before a patch was started. :/

I'm actually inclined to believe that this is better suited for an add-on myself, but I'll needinfo phlsa to get his input.

Comment 5

[Botond Ballo [:botond]]

(In reply to Mike Conley (:mconley) - Needinfo me! from comment #4)
> Hrm... we should probably discuss with UX if this is a thing that we want in
> our menus before we add it. I wish we'd done that before a patch was
> started. :/

That's my bad, I should have flagged the bug for UX evaluation after filing it.

Comment 6

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Comment on attachment 8528730 [details] [diff] [review]
Added 'Restart' in Help menu

No worries, botand - but I'm going to clear this review request until we hear back from UX.

Comment 7

[(Currently slow to respond) Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo]

I don't think we should add another item to the help menu. As botond already noted, the same behavior can be achieved by closing and re-opening Firefox.

While restarting would be only one command, that command is significantly more buried than quit, so the complexity of both operations doesn't differ that much.
There are several bugs on file about improving on the »already running in another process« problem, both from the performance and from the UI perspective.

So overall, the utility here doesn't seem to justify the added complexity of another menu item.

Comment 8

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

I agree.