Firefox loses empty tabs on restart or profile update
Categories
(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)
Tracking
()
People
(Reporter: kubuntu-user, Unassigned)
Details
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:70.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/70.0
Steps to reproduce:
I've created some profiles with multiple open windows, each having multiple tabs, and an empty "New Tab" as leftmost tab in all windows. I'm using the profiles for a long time, over multiple FF restarts and updates.
Actual results:
Sometimes, after FF restart (mostly, but not exclusively after a FF version update), the empty tabs are discarded.
Expected results:
I would like FF to leave alone my empty tabs. They are there on purpose.
-
They speed up starting FF, because no web content is loaded until I select one of the non-empty tabs
-
I'm using them to visually group tabs within a window. Almost all tabs have a favicon, but the "New Tab"'s don't, so they are a very useful group separator.
I'm regularly using 5 to 6 different FF profiles, each for a different topic (one for eBay, one for my Arduino stuff, one for banking, ..., and one for all the rest). Interestingly, the effect does not occur on all of them at the same time. So there may be some other factor that triggers the issue.
All of these profiles have been created long ago, i.e. with a very old FF version. And all of them had some AddOn's installed that did not make it through the switch to WebExtensions or I just did not like the new version (e.g. Tab Mix Plus). Maybe there are old AddOn settings or other data left in the profiles.
But anyway, I think this should not affect the decision if a tab is kept or dropped at FF start.
Furthermore, "refresh Firefox" is not an option. I also have some AddOns that survived until now and have tons of settings collected through all the time, either by learning (e.g. Privacy Badger) or manual configuration (e.g. NoScript). And I have lots of manually set up site permissions, cookie allow/deny exceptions etc. I really don't want to set up all of this again. Not to forget the transfer of the bookmarks from the old to the refreshed profile. Think of having to do all of this 6 times, and then you'll understand me. :-)
|
||
Comment 1•5 years ago
|
||
(In reply to Markus.N from comment #0)
Sometimes, after FF restart (mostly, but not exclusively after a FF version update), the empty tabs are discarded.
Sorry, but this is intended behavior according to bug 1549360, comment 1.
- They speed up starting FF, because no web content is loaded until I select one of the non-empty tabs
I keep the Library loaded in a tab, which accomplishes the same thing:
chrome://browser/content/places/places.xul
- I'm using them to visually group tabs within a window.
You can type about:about into the address bar for a list of internal about:… pages that might serve that purpose (provided they get restored on restart). Otherwise, you could load a local blank HTML page into a tab and use that as a separator instead.
Furthermore, "refresh Firefox" is not an option.
Please note this is not a support forum; that's https://support.mozilla.org. The purpose of this bug tracker is to identify issues to be fixed or enhancements to be made.
I filed it as a bug because to me it is unexpected behavior. I'm one of the persons who take the term "session" rather strictly: After restart, I would like to have the exact state as it was when I closed FF. I know that there are other opinions about that.
I also know that some tabs just are impossible to restore when a service is unavailable or when a login timed out due to inactivity. That's fine.
But I don't think that anyone else than me has the right to close the tabs I choosed to open. So I still think this is a bug.
My use case was just an example why even empty tabs are worth something to some people. Just in case the developers should have considered them "not restore-worthy".
Keeping the library loaded in one tab would work for one window, but my sessions usually have at least 3 windows, in some profiles it's even more ... like 8-10. A Library tab in every window seems suboptimal to me. But I'll check the about:about if I can find something that serves the grouping purpose.
Additionally, I'm currently running an experiment on one of my profiles:
Instead of refreshing it completely, I only refreshed all tabs:
- for all windows, selected all tabs and bookmarked them in folders like "window_01" ...
- opened a new, empty window
- closed all "old" windows
- restarted FF
- restored all windows manually from the bookmarks by opening more windows and then "open all in tabs" for all of my window_... folders
- added some more empty tabs
So far, it helped. The empty tabs are restored after FF restart. This may indicate that the bug is not about deciding which tabs to restore, but instead about failing to restore some tabs when they have been created with an older FF version. Maybe there is something not the way the current FF expects in the sessionstore for those old tabs.
Description
•