Closed Bug 1487547 Opened 6 years ago Closed 6 years ago

Config browser.showQuitWarning stopped working - it won't show "Save and quit" dialog

Categories

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
Session Restore
Version:
63 Branch
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED INVALID

People

(Reporter: juraj.masiar, Unassigned)

References

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:63.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/63.0
Build ID: 20180824192747

Steps to reproduce:

1) go to about:config
2) enable "browser.showQuitWarning"
3) have several tabs opened
4) click the hamburger menu and select Exit


Actual results:

The pop-up with "Close tabs" and "Cancel" buttons is displayed.


Expected results:

There should be a button "Save and close" - that would save the session and then restore it on the next Firefox start.

I've been using this feature for several years so I would be very sad to see it go away for nothing.
(In reply to juraj.masiar from comment #0)
> 2) enable "browser.showQuitWarning"

That preference no longer exists.

> The pop-up with "Close tabs" and "Cancel" buttons is displayed.

Bug 1438499, comment 46. You can either click the Menu button and choose "Restore Previous Session", or you can click Options, then check "Restore previous session" so that this happens automatically.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Has STR: --- → yes
Closed: 6 years ago
Component: Untriaged → Session Restore
OS: Unspecified → All
Hardware: Unspecified → All
Resolution: --- → INVALID
Hello, i´ve run the last update to 63.0 a few minutes ago and now the function "browser.showQuitWarning" isn´t running? I hope for it in the next update.
Status Resolved?
It still doesn't work.
Resolved invalid :)

So it's not coming back.
HOWEVER the suggested workaround - enabling "Restore previous session" option in Firefox Options page works well.

Firefox won't warn you about closing multiple windows / tabs BUT it will save the session and restore it automatically on next start. I've been "testing" this for past 6 weeks and it's working fine (I was quite upset at first, but it actually saves time).
Not the same thing ... that option always remember all your tabs. With my option (browser.showQuitWarning) it ask if you want to save your open tabs (when you close FireFox). That is why I loved that option.
One time out of two I want to close all my tabs, the other time I want it to remember .. I don't see my self changing the option every time , that is a big waste of time(no time saved there!).
agree with jfvenne, it's not the same.  I also want to save my tabs sometimes, not every time.
I don't want to have to remember to choose the restore option, the whole purpose of saving my tabs SOMETIMES is beacuse I want it to automatically restore ONLY THOSE TIME, nt every time, not only if I remember to do it.

the workaround IS NOT A SOLUTION, it's making it way less friendly.

how hard is it to put it back?  Why was effort wasted to arbitrarily remove a valuable feature just because some programmer decided he didn't use it himself.  THINK OF THE COMMUNITY, not yourself.
Hi, I miss this feature, too. I know that since FF63 the session before is automatically saved and can be restored using Restore Last Session in the menu. But: When I open Firefox I don’t know anymore if I wanted to reopen the last tabs. In most of the time I enjoy having a blank slate with no distraction. The time that I know that I’m going to want to restore the session is when I’m about to close Firefox.

Please could you bring something similar back so that I can end a session knowing that it will be waiting for me when I reopen my browser (and only if I decide so)?
I have to support confirmation dialog with sometimes the option to save my tabs.

Imagine this: usually I browse around and have senseless tabs. Then I don't want to save those. Obvious I guess. 

But SOMETIMES I have a bunch of important tabs and I need them the next time. As you might be able to understand, the next time you open firefox you don't think about your last session. That's mostly the reason for writing a memory note the moment you have the idea and not the moment I need the idea... Or your shopping list - you don't write them at the store. 

So since the second is more important, I have to restore the tabs always. For me this wastes a lot of time. 

I don't want my browser to think instead of me...
hi.
I like this sentence :
"I don't want my browser to think instead of me".

The new change is not an interesting idea at all.
I hope that the same option will be added ( Option Save and Quit).
I too would like to have things the way they were. However, perhaps a compromise can be reached: Would it be possible to have old behavior emerge using an extension?
(In reply to jfvenne.firefox from comment #10)
> One time out of two I want to close all my tabs, the other time I want it to
> remember ..

Totally agree

(In reply to Gingerbread Man from comment #1)
> Bug 1438499, comment 46. You can either click the Menu button and choose
> "Restore Previous Session", or you can click Options, then check "Restore
> previous session" so that this happens automatically.

The first is not a solution at all, as one has to remember to continue reading instead of using the feature as a reminder.
The second is annoying if you want to use the closing as a fast way to clean all tabs and memory(see first part of the comment). Ever wondered why there is no option "close all tabs", closing "all others" then closing the last one is so complicated

Totally vote for having this implemented again. Setting this is the absolute first I ever do after installing Firefox on a PC!
I am supporting the request to bring this functionality back as well. I want to be able to decide when and if I want to save my tabs depending on the context. That was a good working feature and I wonder why it was suppressed.
I have to agree with all the others to bring this option back, exactly for the purpose of reminding me what I was working on, and decision for setting this as reminder is always when closing the browser. Not that I have to remind myself (with a note) each time that I wanted to restore my session.
I set my firefox to `Clear history when Firefox closes` for privacy reason, this feature prevents firefox to restore session if I accidentally press ctrl+q. That's why I think many of us still need the confirm dialog!
(In reply to AppAraat from comment #17)
> I too would like to have things the way they were. However, perhaps a
> compromise can be reached: Would it be possible to have old behavior emerge
> using an extension?

There is a team that evaluates API additions for extensions. There is an API to change browser settings where it might be possible to add the critical preference:

https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/browserSettings

To restore the next time only, the developer would need to set

browser.sessionstore.resume_session_once => true

Firefox automatically sets that back to false after restoring the session at the next startup.

A developer then could provide a button that lets the user turn on "one time restore" at any point during their session if they determine that they will want to restore the next time. (Or the default could be to restore and the user could turn it off when applicable.)

But for those who want this dialog to avoid accidental quits, there's a different problem: extensions can't override built-in keyboard shortcuts. There is working ongoing on that but progress is slow.
Like many others I badly miss the browser.showQuitWarning and wonder why it was removed. The restore previous session option is not new. Can we please have the showQuitWarning restored?
Being able to say "yes open these tabs again" or "no I'm done with all these tabs" is extremely convenient. I'd argue that not only should it be restored, the mechanism to turn it on should be added back to the preferences page instead of buried in about:config and it should be set to the default like it was early on. Removing it from the preference page was a mistake. If people knew it was available I'd be willing to bet a lot more people it would use it and love it. You took a great idea, implemented it, made it readily available, then decided to bury the setting so no one knew it was there, and finally after 60 versions decided that since so few people were using it it was OK to remove it. Your metrics methodology seems flawed.
I strongly support this feature being restored. Removing it just seems like it was done in spite, as the functionality to save the session for next time (via the regular options) and to restore it (from history) are both available. The button simply improves the workflow of busy people like myself.

A couple of simple use cases ->
1- Researching a particular topic or bug, I might have 20+ tabs open all related to the issue. Upon exit, I may wish to restore that session the next day so I can turn off my computer for the night, so I click "Save". When opening it in the morning, it is exactly where I left it and I can continue working without any distraction.
2- General browsing for entertainment, I may have multiple tabs open for some specific reason. When I close the browser, I have no interest in continuing that the next session, so on Exit, I simply quit without saving.

In the "new" way with Firefox, I am restricted to one way or the other by default. I can enable the "Restore Session" functionality through options, and then end up with loads of junk tabs open that I don't need (this meets requirements of use case 1, but NOT 2). Alternatively, I leave the restore session functionality disabled, and click "Restore Previous Session". This meets use case 2, but NOT 1.

Some might say "it's just a change to the workflow, you can still do this", but consider that many of us using this feature have it as an integral part of our way of working. Adding an extra two clicks (History --> Restore Previous Session) is intrusive to this workflow, as we wouldn't otherwise click on "History" during regular usage patterns. Closing and opening a browser is part of the standard workflow, so from a UX perspective - adding the option here just makes sense and is non-intrusive.

Like many others I ask - why was this feature removed? What improvement does it add to user experience? I have only seen negative feedback, with zero positive on this - as it was already a hidden option anyway. If anything, it should be available in the options menu as a non-hidden feature, as it makes it far better suited for productivity!
For others who have been frustrated by this feature removal too... you can use the Firefox 60 ESR to access this functionality. I suspect if enough people are bothered by this feature removal - speak up! As for me, I'll stick with FF60 ESR or portable versions of newer (< FF63) versions with this functionality. The Firefox team clearly failed to consider analytics or the user experience when they removed this functionality, as this is a regression in terms of usability and a key differentiator from other browsers.
I've been using Firefox for over 10 years and this is the first time a change prompted me to make an account for the Bugzilla forum.
Please bring back "browser.showQuitWarning": as other users have explained above, 'Save and Quit' was sooo useful and it's _absolutely_ not the same as manually restoring your previous session.
I agree with all the points everyone else has made here. The workarounds that were listed do not satisfy our needs at all. There is no way I'm going to remember whether I needed to restore the tabs from my previous session or not by the time I open my browser again, so using Menu>Restore tabs from previous session isn't a good solution. So that would force me to set it to automatically restore the tabs every time, which means that many times I would be loading a bunch of tabs that I don't need, which is a waste of time and resources. 

Every time I install an OS or reinstall an OS and therefore have to install Firefox, I have to go into about:config and change several settings (for instance opening my search in a new tab) because the developers have removed several extremely useful options from the options which is annoying, BUT AT LEAST THEY ARE STILL AVAILABLE TO THOSE OF US WHO USE THEM. I can't see a single good reason for removing this option at all, let alone removing it from the about:config options where it is bothering no one. I'm more an more irritated with Firefox because of removing options I need and use, but in the past I've been able to get the functionality from an add-on, but now many times those aren't available anymore because the functionalities that are needed aren't a part of the new API. The reason I started using Firefox was that is was so customizable and since 40 and up it's become less and less customizable and more and more restricted. I agree with the previous poster who said that if users knew that the option existed, more people would use it.

Please put the option back into about:config so that those of us who use it can be happy. Please stop removing useful options and especially since doing so gains nothing.
Holy shift mozilla, where are you going? How about more windows with bunch of tabs? How the "restore previous session" solves this? You have to killall firefox!
Is it possible to know the reasoning behind the removal of this FEATURE? I used it extensively. Please restore it ASAP.
Hej ito123456789, I think this bug has its root in bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1438499 – especially after comment https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1438499#c40. When I understood it correctly the reasoning was to make the warning on quitting multiple tabs more clear. The option for session restore was discarded because now it is possible to do that on start-up for every session. [Please read for yourself, the thread is a little bit confusing for me]

I don’t think this bug here will be re-opened so I started a new bug. My suggestion is a third option in the closing dialogue. Maybe that would be a solution? See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1506120
I don't know why Mozilla is closing the other mention of this bug as fix... it is NOT fix! as long as the option will not be restored, it will never be fix! There is no security issue related to it, no reason to remove this option!
Dear folks working on Firefox, please consider enabling that option again! You are spending so much time volunteering to improve this project. What are you doing it for? You want people to actually _use_ Firefox, don't you? Where is the point in removing a feature that people relied on? This just makes Firefox _less_ useful for them. Therefore it also makes your hard work on Firefox less useful. That is not what you want, is it?

I used this feature very often and for many years now, at home as well as at work. When I had to shut down my computer while not being finished with what I was doing, I saved the tabs so I could continue work/reading when I started firefox the next time. Using "show my windows and tabs from last time" when firefox starts is not an option as I need my home page to show when there is nothing to finish. The necessity to close lots of tabs from your last session each time you start firefox is not useful. "Restore last session" is also not an option as when I start firefox the next time I will most likely not remember that there was unfinished work or some "read-ons" left.
I want this back too.
The ability to control stuff is why I use firefox over chrome. Taking away that is not what Im looking for.
I want it back too. It is a function that makes FF better than the other browsers.
Please bring it back!
Too bad, why all this? Firefox is getting worse. Someday I will use one of the alternative browsers that I have always installed as standard browser.
I'm also new here and like the others to ask to bring back this function. I don't understand the police of remove useful functions of firefox to gain nothing. Lately firefox developers have been adding useless functions and removing many useful features...

The restore function is a lost of time if you have to dig throug menus and you can forget that the last time that you used firefox forgot tabs without reading. With the "show quit warning" and "save tabs" function, the next time you open firefox you have your tabs ready without having to do anything...
The worst thing, I cannot start with an empty Firefox now anymore. There is always that last tab reappearing. Or at least allow me to press Ctrl+Shift+W to close all tabs and DO NOT restore them. Then I would even be fine with always restoring. Also Ctrl+W (or x on that tab) should allow me to start Firefox in a clean state.
I am casting another vote for restoring the feature. Here is another use-case where I want this:
1. I have tabs open that I need.
2. I need to restart the PC possibly more than once (installing updates, or hardware).
3. Between restarts, I want to look up something (assume click on a link) then restart soon after but *keep* the tabs/windows from before. 

Menu -> "Restore Previous Session" is annoying, if I want to click on a link, then I have to do that every single time. This is annoying to begin with but also easy to forget and if I do not click that, the session is obliterated. Conceptually, it's whether you want to remember the session on save or recall on start but in practice, it's a lot easier to know whether you want to do that when quitting vs startup.

Ticking Options -> "Restore previous session" is too annoying as I don't need to preserve the session every time.

Another problematic situation is similar but instead of frequency, there is a larger timespan. If I shut down the PC for a while (e.g., a week or more) and then come back 

Menu -> "Restore Previous Session": it's hard to remember whether I have to restore a previous session or not and if I open a link, then close the browser, I might destroy a session with useful pages. 

Ticking Options -> "Restore previous session" I'll a session every time when I don't necessarily want that. 

To top it off, I'll echo the problem with ticking Options -> "Restore previous session" offering no confirmation on quit. I used this for a while and it's immensely frustrating to accidentally close the browser when you don't want to. There is a compound problem where you can't rebind the Exit keyboard shortcut, so I sometimes end up pressing it. Yes, you get the session restored if you open it again, but it's still taking more time than NOT closing the browser, I may need to do more stuff to go back to browsing like re-arrange browser windows, walk through tabs to load them, find a tab with a running video and pause it (assuming it was paused before), etc.
I'll also want to add, that this "feature" causes this bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1512847. And other than said in the comments, it's is a bug. Because if I click close on a tab, my intention is to destroy this tab. If I close the firefox window, my intention is to close firefox but (maybe) leave the session as it is. 

It's pretty frustrating not being able to destroy the last tab without doing unnecessary steps (creating new tab, close the one I want to close, close the window). 

It's also kind of arrogant to mark that bug as invalid without even thinking about the different meanings and suggesting me to turn this feature of, which is nonsense like many comments in this thread show. 

As I said, I think I would be fine with restoring all tabs always, but then I need a shortcut or button to close firefox and disable restoring the next time.
I too would like this feature brought back.

Sometimes I want to save those tabs, sometimes I don't. Having to go through menus to "restore session" is inconvenient and also allows someone else using my machine to see what I was doing last time!

Having it auto-restore is also a terrible option, because what if have to quickly close my browser whilst looking at pictures of kittens, and then next time I open my browser my dog sees the kitten pictures and disowns me? Serious stuff.

Please bring back "save and quit?"
Dont forget us
I made a bugzilla account just because of this. My normal work flow looked like this:
1. Browse stuff
2. Press ctrl+q to exit. Confirm I want these tabs saved or not and exit.
3. Start firefox and automatically see the previous tabs restored.

Now with ff64 if I enable auto-restore I don't get a quit warning even with the about:config property set to true. And I sometimes press ctrl+q accidentally because it's right next to ctrl+w! Now if I press ctrl+q accidentally I LOSE all my tabs in incognito mode plus also have to wait for firefox to reload which takes another 30 seconds. And also uvf4saf29eutdhg33s has a valid point.

There is some discussion here https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=502908 but I don't understand the final conclusion.

This is clearly a bug. Can we please bring back "save and quit"? I don't want to save a session every time. I want to have an option at exit.
Please bring back the option to 'Save and Quit'.

The loss of this feature is exactly the reason why I downgraded Firefox on my PC to the older 62.0 version following the infamous update.

I'll cite another use case where this feature works by alerting/warning any other user (say, my wife, whose PC keeps running into problem every other day) on my PC to not to fiddle with my FF tabs since the tabs are reloaded every time FF is run. Imagine where I forget to enable the 'Restore...' option thereby having all my tabs overwritten the next time I bring up FF. :/

This is a rather whimsical move to remove a working and in-use feature. Created an account just to express my dissatisfaction over the loss of this seemingly tiny but handy feature.
See Also: → 1506120
I'm restricting further comments on this bug, as none of the more recent comments add more information, and instead just contain vitriol, "me too" complaints, and suggestions to abuse bugzilla by filing ever more duplicate bugs, none of which is acceptable as per the bugzilla etiquette and contributor guidelines.

We won't bring back the original dialog to duplicate the other dialog that everyone else gets. Any other options to allow users to more easily restore the session sporadically (e.g. by adding a similar button to the extant dialog) are being discussed in bug 1506120. Please refrain from adding additional "me too" comments there. I understand that it's frustrating, but just repeating how valuable this feature was to you won't accomplish anything.

(In reply to Matt from comment #40)
> The worst thing, I cannot start with an empty Firefox now anymore. There is
> always that last tab reappearing. Or at least allow me to press Ctrl+Shift+W
> to close all tabs and DO NOT restore them. Then I would even be fine with
> always restoring. Also Ctrl+W (or x on that tab) should allow me to start
> Firefox in a clean state.

To avoid having one last remaining tab, open a new tab (ctrl-t) and then right click the tab, click "close other tabs", before quitting.

(In reply to ceccc from comment #45)
> Now with ff64 if I enable auto-restore I don't get a quit warning even with
> the about:config property set to true.

In Firefox 65, there is a separate checkbox to have a quit warning in this case (added in bug 1506173, because people also complained when we always showed this quit warning to everyone...). You can download the beta version from https://beta.mozilla.org/ , or wait for it to hit general release in just under 5 weeks.


In terms of extension support,

(In reply to jscher2000 from comment #23)
> There is a team that evaluates API additions for extensions. There is an API
> to change browser settings where it might be possible to add the critical
> preference:
> 
> https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/
> browserSettings
> 
> To restore the next time only, the developer would need to set
> 
> browser.sessionstore.resume_session_once => true
> 
> Firefox automatically sets that back to false after restoring the session at
> the next startup.
> 
> A developer then could provide a button that lets the user turn on "one time
> restore" at any point during their session if they determine that they will
> want to restore the next time. (Or the default could be to restore and the
> user could turn it off when applicable.)

This seems a reasonable idea. Someone would need to file a bug in WebExtensions - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=WebExtensions&component=Untriaged&blocked=1487547 . It'd be up to the webextensions team whether they'd take a patch to add such functionality.

Even without the additional API, someone could write an add-on where a click on a button "clears" the session, for people who want to more easily "forget" the open tabs (either before or after autorestore). It may also be possible to do so automatically under some conditions, just before the browser closes, but AFAICT it would depend on using window close listeners to keep track of when the browser is about to quit.

There are also numerous other session management add-ons available, some of which may be able to help with some of the issues people are raising here. However, bugzilla isn't the best place to troubleshoot that - if you need more help or have recommendations for add-ons that do this, support.mozilla.org would be a better place.
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