506526 - there should be a pref to turn off session restore

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Preferences, defect)

Description

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

There should be a pref to turn off (tab) session restore.

Comment 1

[rsx11m]

Maybe some code around "browser.startup.page" can be reused for this.

As said in bug 501288 comment #16, 2nd part:
> It would be good to have some way to influence the startup behavior beyond the
> password issue. Think of it as the equivalent to a browser's home page. You may
> want to start with your previous tabs restored, or with a given set of tabs.
> In this case, I'd simply like to get to the Inbox of my default account for new
> mail, regardless of where I've been before closing Thunderbird.

It should be fine to leave session restore in place to recover from crashes, if it's easier (browser/suite does that) and only have that choice relevant for intended shutdown/restart operation (i.e., toggling persistent tabs).

Comment 2

[Nomis101]

Yes, this "new" behavior is one thing I really dislike about Thunderbird 3b3 / 3b4pre. It would be very nice if we could have a pref for this. I've tested a few builds to see when I will see session restore (new behavior) and when not (old behavior):
Old behavior: Gecko/20090625
New (current) behavior: Gecko/20090626

Comment 7

[Chris Wilson]

This can easily confuse users.

One of my users complained that every time they opened Thunderbird, they got 4 windows opened instead of 1. I had no idea why this was happening, and it took me a long time to find out that it was this bug (some forums mention incompatible extensions which turned out to be a red herring).

If you right-click on a tab and choose "move to new window", then it creates a new window that ALSO has an Inbox (unlike right-clicking on a message and choosing "open in new window).

These windows containing Inboxen are a bit magical: it seems that if you close any of them, using the [X] close button in the title bar, it closes ALL of them (closes the application): but they are ALL remembered and restored next time!

This is extremely counter-intuitive. People who close a window expect just that window to close (not the whole app) and they don't expect it to reopen itself!

The same happens when choosing File->Exit, but this is at least more explicable behaviour (I consider it "close all windows" as opposed to "close this window").

I only found two ways to close the unwanted extra windows that the user complained about:

* Close all the tabs in them except the Inbox, and then choose File->Close (not File->Exit). Repeat for each unwanted window.
* Right-click on the unwanted window in the taskbar and choose Close. Unlike clicking on the [X] button, this just closes the one window.

This is on Windows XP, in case that makes any difference (perhaps it's less obvious in Vista/Windows 7 due to window stacking).

Session restore after a deliberate shutdown (File->Exit) without prompting or ability to disable it is very counter-intuitive in my view. Is this bug really so hard to fix? Also, please can we make the behaviour of the [X] button more sane?

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Chris Wilson from comment #7)
> This can easily confuse users.
> 
> One of my users complained that every time they opened Thunderbird, they got
> 4 windows opened instead of 1. I had no idea why this was happening, and it
> took me a long time to find out that it was this bug (some forums mention
> incompatible extensions which turned out to be a red herring).

a fix for the multiple windows closing issue is in the next version, via bug 814630. 

----

FTR, we see relatively few requests for this feature in support forums.
modulo the issue of bug 814630

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Nomis101 from comment #2)
> Yes, this "new" behavior is one thing I really dislike about Thunderbird 3b3

consider doing a patch?
or have you come to love the feature/  :)

Comment 11

[Nomis101]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #10)
> (In reply to Nomis101 from comment #2)
> > Yes, this "new" behavior is one thing I really dislike about Thunderbird 3b3
> 
> consider doing a patch?
> or have you come to love the feature/  :)

I think I don't know how to do a patch for this. And it is not annoying anymore to me, because I've got used to it.

Comment 12

[Jim Bennett]

I no longer care. I open few windows in ThunderBird and don't mind them being open on a restart. 
 My spouse opened scads of eMails for various reasons, knowing they would all vanish on close / restart. The bug drove her nuts but of course we have to adapt.
 At this poin, I no longer care. The bug's been there for a long time, eh?

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

workaround https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/dontrestoretabs/