482053 - A better session management in order to be able to set Firefox as default browser

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 374381

(Firefox :: Session Restore, enhancement)

Description

[Dominique De Vito]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011913 Firefox/3.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011913 Firefox/3.0.6

As I use frequently multiple tabs, I can't set Firefox as default browser ;-(
Indeed, if I click, for example, on a saved page in order to look at it, Firefox opens also the N tabs Firefox has saved from previous browsing.
And I don't want to load N tabs in order to see 1 single web page. So, IE is still my default browser.

Reproducible: Always




Session management enables to save the tab configuration during exit and to open the same configuration when one is using again Firefox. But a problem occurs when one has a lot of opened tabs, let say 50+ tabs, and has set Firefox as the default browser. For example, when one just wants to open a web page saved on the hard drive, or when at the end of a software installation, the README.html is open, then, in both cases, Firefox is launched and 50+ tabs, useless tabs in that specific case, are also opened with the wanted single web page. This problem occurs just because there is only one session that could be saved and so, that session is just the default one. Due to this behavior, I have never set Firefox as my default browser, it's still IE for fast startup purposes. One solution could be to enable multiple session saves and then, to let the user choose one session among the saved ones during the Firefox start or to open no session at all. So, this last option could enable to open a single web page without opening 50+ tabs. For those who are happy with the current behavior, it would be interesting also that Firefox could provide an option to enable only a single default session like the current v3 behavior. 

See point (23) : http://www.jroller.com/dmdevito/entry/some_simple_firefox_enhancements_i

Comment 1

[Simon Bünzli]

If you really want to use Firefox as your main browser, you'll currently have to install the Session Manager extension from <https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2324> in order to achieve the desired behavior.

Comment 2

[Dominique De Vito]

The official Mozilla distribution does not give satisfaction without extension installation.

As I wrote in http://www.jroller.com/dmdevito/entry/some_simple_firefox_enhancements_i :
""
I know Mozilla just want to put "minimal" features into the core and call to deal with add-ons for any other demand. One can say also some of these enhancements are already covered by existing add-ons. But I think having minimal core should not be anymore a main target and I advocate instead about out-of-the-box user experience.

Then, I do think small improvements, like the ones I have listed [...], have to be placed into the core as they are basic ones and increase Firefox usability just out-of-the-box, as usability depends on many details. A lot of attention has already be given on details by Mozilla (thanks a lot!), but some details may be still polished. [...]
""

Comment 3

[Simon Bünzli]

(In reply to comment #2)
> The official Mozilla distribution does not give satisfaction without extension
> installation.

It may not satisfy you perfectly, but I doubt any program not written by yourself ever will. If you think a feature would be useful, please first consider whether it would also be useful to a majority of our users and not just risk to confuse them instead, and then start listing those use cases in order to make a strong argument for inclusion of the feature.

BTW: What you're asking for here would AFAICT be nicely solved by bug 452772 with minimal intrusion instead of a full blown session manager as the extension provides.

Comment 4

[Dominique De Vito]

(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > The official Mozilla distribution does not give satisfaction without extension
> > installation.
> 
> It may not satisfy you perfectly, but I doubt any program not written by
> yourself ever will. If you think a feature would be useful, please first
> consider whether it would also be useful to a majority of our users and not
> just risk to confuse them instead, and then start listing those use cases in
> order to make a strong argument for inclusion of the feature.

(1) as you talk about how I program, I can tell you that if a user wants some behavior, and another user wants another behavior, I use AFAIC options to deal with and to configure different wanted behaviors.

(2) but in fact, you missed my point, about core/extensions line.

Just look about what happened for Eclipse and NetBeans.
First, only the IDE core was packaged and extensions were proposed as extensions.
Then, NetBeans has packaged core+some web extensions into a specific distribution (core distribution was still available for download, but NetBeans was not proposing 2 distributions: core and core+some web extensions).
People have been very happy with these more complete packagings. And Eclipse has been "forced" to propose also multiple distributions: core and, for example, core+some web extensions.

I think for Mozilla to propose only a core distribution is going to be a bit limited (read the first lines of my post), because other competitors include more and more features into the standard-base package and are going to provide a better out-of-box user experience. And Mozilla is going to need to provide a better out-of-box user experience too. So, I think there are 2 ways for Mozilla:
(a) if core Firefox does not provide enough satisfaction, a solution is to move the core/extensions line,
(b) another possibility for Mozilla is to provide different distributions (one for core, and another one, core+some selected extensions to be activated during installation).

I have just written before that a better session management needs (a).

Comment 5

[Simon Bünzli]

(In reply to comment #4)
> I use AFAIC options to deal with and to configure different wanted behaviors.

We don't believe in too many exposed options (as opposed to e.g. SeaMonkey) as they tend to force a user to decide on something he/she shouldn't have to. Hence my comment #3. However:

> (2) but in fact, you missed my point, about core/extensions line.

Your main point is far too broad for this specific bug, and rather belongs into the mozilla.dev.apps.firefox newsgroup than into Bugzilla, since you suggest a major change in how we distribute Firefox. Please take the discussion there, if you desire to continue it in a productive way.