1898925 - Firefox remembers windows with sidebar or not only if window where you leave Firefox has not.

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Sidebar, defect, P3)

Description

[gtgrippp]

Steps to reproduce:

Hello!
I use Lubuntu 22.04 OS, and I have seen the behavior I'm talking about in the 2 Firefox I have installed: Firefox 115 (ESR) and Firefox 126 (Snap version).
I used 2 addons, GrassHopper and Sidebery, in the sidebar, and saw the same behavior, but I suppose it would be the same if I would display Bookmarks or any other addon in it.
With these addons I open sidebars in not all windows, to save memory or other reason.

Steps:
1/ Open e.g. 5 windows, 2 containing a sidebar, and 3 containing not. Choose a window with a sidebar to focus it, and restart Firefox.
2/ Do the same, but instead choose a window with no sidebar and then restart Firefox.

Actual results:

1/ In first case, at Firefox opening, sidebars will be present in every window, which makes Firefox take more time to open, and obliges me to close one by one unwanted sidebars.
2/ In second case, at Firefox opening, sidebar presence or absence in each window will be respected. Which makes it open faster, and doesn't make me have to close unwanted ones (as most of the time, windows I want to have a sidebar are the same in the following restart).

Expected results:

I guess the first behavior is a bug or a flaw regarding users? And the 2nd behavior is the right one, and the way Firefox opens should always be this one wether the last focused window has a sidebar or not?
Thank you.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'WebExtensions::Untriaged' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[mprops]

Personally i'd prefer if the sidebars don't open automatically on launch. Some heavy sidebars can take a while to load. Instead it should be easy to show/hide them. What I do is add the "Show sidebars" button on the toolbar, or use a shortcut.

Comment 3

[Alex Cornestean]

Hello,

I reproduced the issue on the latest Release (126.0/20240509170740) under Windows 10 and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
I also tested the latest Nightly (128.0a1/20240526212755) and Beta (127.0b6/20240524102635), but the issue does not reproduce there.

Having Grasshopper installed, I opened several windows, 2 with the sidebar opened and the rest with the sidebar closed. Then from a window where the sidebar was still open, I restarted the browser. After the first restart, the windows where the sidebar was closed, still had the sidebar closed. However, after a second or third restart, the windows where the sidebar was closed, had the sidebar now open.

Comment 4

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

Per-window persistency of sidebars could be a nice feature. The extension framework delegates this responsibility to Firefox's general sidebar implementation, so I'm moving this bug to Firefox::Sidebar.

Comment 5

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:sclements, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 6

[Sarah Clements [:sclements]]

We're doing some work in the sidebar and I think for the first case, this shouldn't re-occur but I will leave this open for now.