500824 - Crash detection is too aggressive

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[Alex Limi (:limi) — Firefox UX Team]

When we detect that the previous shutdown wasn't clean, if there is another unclear shutdown within 6 hours (!), the "This is embarrassing" dialog appears.

Six hours is too long for people to connect the two events, and people are already asking "why is my Firefox always saying that something is embarrassing?"

The value is set here, SIX_HOURS_IN_MS:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/sessionstore/src/nsSessionStore.js#2676

Proposal from Mossop:

"""
If I'm reading this right, then that would mean if Firefox crashed, then they waited more than 5 minutes to open, then it would show them the "whoops" page immediately.

hat you need to do is set a flag somewhere permanent to say when you start restoring the session, and five minutes later clear that flag. If in startup the flag is still set then you know something went horribly wrong the last time around.

"""

Comment 1

[Alex Limi (:limi) — Firefox UX Team]

Missing context: It was suggested that the value should just be lowered to 5 minutes, then Mossop suggested the better approach.

Comment 2

[Simon Bünzli]

You're reading the code the wrong way: If you crash and then crash again, we _always_ display the "embarrassing" page.

The 6 hours only come into play if you crash for the first time and then don't reopen Firefox for over 6 hours. In that case, we prefer the "embarrassing" page because it'd be _even more_ confusing to just restore a set of tabs that might just as well be random to the user (who'd remember that they crashed 6 hours ago right before they had to leave the office?).

What we however might do is reset this._recentCrashes after 5 or so minutes after startup, so that we don't display the "embarrassing" page after the next crash (that'd be bug 344852, though).

Comment 3

[Jesse Ruderman]

Shouldn't it be a different message, then?  Instead of "Minefield is having trouble recovering your windows and tabs", just "Looks like Firefox crashed.  Would you like to restore your previous session?"

Comment 4

[Graham Perrin]

Is this still an issue? 

(I can't tell … sorry … crashes here are so rare.)

Comment 5

[Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]]

I think this bug is too old and stale to still be actionable - the about:sessionrestore page has been changed a couple of times since then.
I'd prefer to work on improvements there based on feedback on a more recent state.