452772 - Suggestion: Change save on exit to an "undo" based model.

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Keith Bissett]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1

Currently Firefox asks you on exit if you want to save your session.  If you say "Yes", then the next time you open Firefox, your session will be restored.

While this is handy (and much appreciated!) the "undo" method is preferable because it prevents irreversible mistakes (such as saying "No, I don't need this session" - then realising that you do!).

Instead of asking on exit, just save the session automatically.  Then, when Firefox opens, ask the user if they want it restored (or optionally, bookmarked).  Optionally, it would be nice at this point to have a preview of what was in the session and be able to select some or all pages to open.

Firefox can then hang onto the session until the user exits again so that, if they realise midway through browsing that they DID want that session, they can still call it up.



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
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Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

That won't work for people that don't want to expose their browsing history to other people, without a way to prevent that. That's why there's a prompt before the exit.

Comment 2

[Simon Bünzli]

Should this be implemented (which I'd agree with), we'll have to add UI for disabling this in our Privacy options. That UI could either just expose the browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash pref - which prevents sessionstore.js to be written anytime except for restarts - or a new, shutdown specific pref.

Maybe Alex has an even more user friendly suggestion, though.

Comment 3

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Forcing a decision (either on open or on close) really does interrupt the user's flow and can be annoying when you are trying to get to what it is you actually want to use your computer for.  I personally think we should go with a combination of Safari and Chrome's solution.  Neither browser prompts on exit or entry.

Safari: the history menu contains the command "Reopen All Windows From Last Session"

Chrome: the options dialog allows you to always save your session

The Safari UI is useful for undoing accidental closures, and the Chrome UI is good for users who have really large tab sets that they keep with them over long periods of time.  By combining the two approaches we can hopefully make everyone happy without forced choice interruptions.

>That won't work for people that don't want to expose their browsing history to
>other people, without a way to prevent that. That's why there's a prompt before
>the exit.

The user's history is still very available to other people in the UI even if we don't restore the session. I think the best way to protect people's privacy is with an actual private browsing mode.

Comment 4

[Keith Bissett]

The Safari UI sounds like it resolves my concerns (I haven't used it before).

I agree with Alex, re: privacy.  That is best addressed at a whole-of-Firefox level (encryption, password protection etc.).  Trying to address it as part of the way sessions are saved does little to improve privacy and limits your options to improve the interface.

Comment 5

[Calc-Yolatuh]

The original suggestion is dangerous and troublesome, like "Undo Clear History" dangerous. Firefox can already "always save", and has been set that way on my computer for years. 'Dialogue on Close' models are dangerous in the event of an unattended shutdown. You would either need a backup default behavior, or just put up with a crash report on next start (due to OS killing program). This is why I despise most office software. Firefox also allows scripts in pages to interrupt shutdown of the browser, which once caused entire windows full of tabs to be excluded from the backup.

'Prompt on Start' is a bit better, and may tie with the dropdown menu item in Safari. In Opera, the user has choice of a fresh session, the last session, or any manually saved session. This flexibility (for me) excuses the rudeness of a pop-up on start, and at least it's prettier than a simple dialogue box. There are still cases where this is inconvenient, as you can not get back your last session after choosing one of the other options. Opera should fix this by duplicating last session in 'Load Saved Session' menu, which would make the previous session available after starting a new session or loading a manually saved session.

Safari's dropdown menu is very handy when using hotspots (first log in, then choose to restore tabs), but it's not enough to make up for my issues with the browser as a whole. Especially, the dropdown should be re-defaulted to a friendly button that pulses for a minute or so after Safari opens.

The sophistication to selectively recover tabs from a prior session is not that great, and simple thumbnails of open pages could serve for previews. Yet, none of the browsers do this for now. Perhaps Apple will add this to Safari in keeping with their theme of spatial and visual backup navigation?

Security concerns would best be tended by some sort of paranoid branch or fork, done under non-Firefox branding. There's Flock for social networking, I could easily envision something that encrypts sessionstore and never caches to disk, for starters. Look to the Heatseek environment for an example.


PS: Many of the preinstalled Firefoxes on Linux have a "Clear Private Data" box at every close, or something that itemizes what can be deleted (clearing cache but not cookies, whether to retain typed addresses, etc)