1404256 - Restore multiple windows

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Session Restore, enhancement)

Description

[Ulrich Windl]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0
Build ID: 20170807000000

Steps to reproduce:

Exited Firefox to upgrade it. At that time I had multiple windows with multiple tabs in each open.


Actual results:

When restarting Firefox, not all windows were re-opened, and the "Restore previous session" is grayed out.


Expected results:

There should be a reliable method to exit Firefox with multiple Windows so that they can be restored. It seems when you close one windows after the other, the last one closed sets the "previous session". So a way to close all windows at once would be nice, and in addition if you were unaware that you had open multiple windows, it should be possible to restore the window that was not the last one being closed.
Ironically restoring multiple windows works best if Firefox had crashed. Then all windows are restored at their previous positions. However If I close Firefox, restoring all the windows I had open does not work most of the time: Sometimes a few of the last windows open, sometimes only one,...

Comment 1

[YF (Yang)]

Use Alt key - File menu - Exit to exit Firefox for save multiple windows.

Comment 2

[Ulrich Windl]

(In reply to YF (Yang) from comment #1)
> Use Alt key - File menu - Exit to exit Firefox for save multiple windows.

If you restart MS-Windows, it seems Firefox does not exit like that. So the above is a work-around at best.

Comment 3

[Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]]

The feature request to restore the session on a regular restart - even though there might be an update waiting to get applied on the next startup - it'd be unwanted behavior to others, because we can't read your mind and guess you restarted to upgrade.

You can however choose to always restore your previous session upon startup by checking "Preferences > General > When Firefox starts > Show your windows and tabs from last time".

Comment 4

[Ulrich Windl]

Actually my problem was that "Restore previous session" has no history (as the name suggests). So when you start Firefox without restoring your previous session, and the exit it, you cannot restore the session you had before.
A similar situation occurs when you exit Firefox by closing one window after the other (as opposed to using "Exit Firefox" in the menu).
In 52.8 there is a history for recently closed tabs and windows, so it seems not too difficult to extend that to recently closed sessions...

Comment 5

[Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]]

(In reply to Ulrich Windl from comment #4)
> Actually my problem was that "Restore previous session" has no history (as
> the name suggests). So when you start Firefox without restoring your
> previous session, and the exit it, you cannot restore the session you had
> before.

Yeah, so to get back to previous sessions, you'll need something like bug 1298912 to be implemented.