1403128 - Make "Restore Previous Session" easier to discover now that it's gone from about:home

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1400942

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect, P2)

Description

[JVD]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
Build ID: 20170921191414

Steps to reproduce:

Open new browser tab - 'about:home' is shown (my default homepage) .



Actual results:

No "Restore Previous Session" button / link is shown ;
 this is the main issue I am raising this bug about  - also 
 some other niggles:
  o the 'Search the Web' entry no longer lets you choose which search
     engine  to use

  o there is no longer any "Tips & Tricks" tip shown - this was nice for
     developer edition, which I thought was meant to showcase new features.

  o previews of most frequently visited web-pages show no graphics , 
     because I have selected to 'Always' use a foreground:white 
     background:black color scheme, so background images are not displayed.
     FireFox should detect the case where it is unable to display background
     images, and display only the text URLs & page titles in this case.





Expected results:

There should be a "Restore Previous Session" button / link shown .

This is the killer for me - I am trying to find out how to revert to
version 56 because of this (which does not appear to be possble
using Aurora update channel) .

The 'Search the Web' field on the 'about:home' page should allow
user to choose which search engine to use, like the 'Search' toolbar
entry does. 

Since my colorscheme is always applied, FireFox should detect the case where it is unable to display background  images, and display only the text
URLs & page titles in this case.

I am on the Aurora developer edition update channel , giving me access
to latest developer edition FireFox - this has been great so far, until 
FF has started messing around with default 'about:home' page - is 
there any way to get version 57 to use the version 56 'about:home' page?
 
Is there any way to revert to using version 56 if version 57 was installed via
update channel ?

Comment 1

[Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]]

I understand that it breaks the workflow you found superior to what we offer you after this upgrade. Please be aware, though, that you can still restore your previous session by going to 'History > Restore Previous Session'. This will always be accessible.
We are also looking into improving this, though, because I think this feature is important enough to be more easily discoverable in primary UI.

Also, we used to have a feature that showed a button next to your tabs when you start firefox and a previous session is available.
Erica, is that still there? And if so, does it still work?

Comment 2

[Erica Wright [:ewright]]

(In reply to Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer] from comment #1)
> I understand that it breaks the workflow you found superior to what we offer
> you after this upgrade. Please be aware, though, that you can still restore
> your previous session by going to 'History > Restore Previous Session'. This
> will always be accessible.
> We are also looking into improving this, though, because I think this
> feature is important enough to be more easily discoverable in primary UI.
> 
> Also, we used to have a feature that showed a button next to your tabs when
> you start firefox and a previous session is available.
> Erica, is that still there? And if so, does it still work?

Mike, that is just now going through testing, and results are beginning to come in.

Comment 3

[Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]]

I will dupe this bug to the relevant bug in that case, so that JVD is able to follow along!