1454651 - Restart browser support

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1344786

(WebExtensions :: General, enhancement)

Description

[larabe]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0
Build ID: 20180412172954

Steps to reproduce:

Would it be possible to add to firefox or give the tools to the developers to create addon that restarts the browser without the need of an external program?


Actual results:

No way to restart the browser


Expected results:

There should be a way to do it.

Comment 1

[Gingerbread Man]

(In reply to larabe from comment #0)
> No way to restart the browser

There are two:

On the about:profiles page, click the "Restart normally…" button. If you use the feature often, you could keep the tab pinned for easier access.

1. Press Shift+F2 to bring up the command line.
2. Type restart then press Enter.


You can also use a userChrome script. These aren't officially supported. They may stop working when required features are removed from Firefox, but the following works in the current Nightly. So it's likely to work up to Firefox 61 at the very least.
https://luke-baker.github.io

Comment 2

[larabe]

The methods you are stating to restart the browser are way out of the normal user hands and require multiple steps. Whats wrong about allowing an extension to put a button that on click restarts the browser?

Comment 3

[Gingerbread Man]

(In reply to larabe from comment #2)
> Whats wrong about allowing an extension to put a button that on click restarts the browser?

Read bug 1344786, comment 8.

Comment 4

[larabe]

AFAI understood Andy Mckay point is it's not worth the time. That's all subjective. He clearly says that there are no security risks. And our point is that we need it and that we are asking for it because of that. 

Here are some listed things that make having a restart button at hand worth it.

- Free up memory (RAM)
- Clear your browser cache if that option is set
- Remove cookies if that option is set
- Bugs (in Nightly) might require a restart to investigate properly (especially with the "tabs" API)
- Reload things that have changed on disk (configuration files)

At the end he also says 

"Finally, if people want a button in the menu that does a restart, I would suggest that we file a bug asking for Firefox to implement one."

Which is what I'm asking for


"Would it be possible to ADD TO FIREFOX [...] (a button/menu item) that restarts the browser without the need of an external program?"

So why was this closed if he clearly said that we should open one?

Comment 5

[Gingerbread Man]

(In reply to larabe from comment #4)
> So why was this closed if he clearly said that we should open one?

This report conflates two separate requests, one of which is vague. Therefore I marked it as a duplicate of the one that isn't.

(In reply to larabe from comment #0)
> Would it be possible to add to firefox

Bug 1001747
Bug 1156944
Bug 1366009

> or give the tools to the developers to create addon that restarts the browser

Bug 1344786

Comment 6

[larabe]

I don't understand if it has been decided to not do it for the foreseeable future or if it's still undecided.

If it has been decided against it and the argument is that is not needed by most people and that the effort even though it's small individually requires many people to make it like QA and translators etc. how many votes or other form of showing that people want this would be required for it to be added or at least re considered formally?

Comment 7

[Gingerbread Man]

(In reply to larabe from comment #6)
> I don't understand if it has been decided to not do it for the foreseeable
> future or if it's still undecided.

Restart from add-ons: rejected for the foreseeable future.
Restart button available in Firefox: undecided.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/BMO/UserGuide/BugStatuses

> how many votes or other form of showing that people want this
> would be required for it to be added or at least re considered formally?

In my experience, there's little correlation between a feature request being popular and the likelihood of it being implemented. You can try asking a developer either on IRC or a newsgroup.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/IRC
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/forums/