514370 - Middle clicking on items in about:sessionrestore is not working

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Session Restore, enhancement)

Description

[Cheng Renquan]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; zh-CN; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090723 Gentoo Firefox/3.5.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; zh-CN; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090723 Gentoo Firefox/3.5.1

my usage of firefox is open many tabs (maybe 50+), just because the network maybe not good for sometimes, I need to open many tabs for many readings in advance, but in fact till I shutdown the computer, some tabs may have been read while some not, and some I need to keep it to read the next time, I don't want to save so many items in bookmarks, so I just use the sessionrestore: I just quit firefox and restore them on the next time,

from firefox 3.0 to 3.5, the sessionrestore has gotten much usability improvement already, indeed,

but there is still a feature to improve usability, 

which is to make sessionrestore items can be open seperately, 

then in so many items in sessionrestore, I don't need to decide which items should be open, which should be closed, immediately after launching firefox,

even I can keep the sessionrestore tab as a temporary bookmarks,

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. open 50+ different tabs of different URLs;
2. quit firefox;
3. start firefox again;

Actual Results:  
4. then you will see sessionrestore tab, you must decide which to resume, which not at this time, otherwise you can not see the to be restored URLs,

Expected Results:  
5. It should make every items in sessionrestore can be opened seperately;

usability improvement about firefox about:sessionrestore

Comment 1

[Simon Bünzli]

You can already do that, just middle-click or Ctrl+click the individual items listed in about:sessionrestore. -> WORKSFORME

In your steps to reproduce, you should however not get about:sessionrestore after quitting regularly to start with...

Comment 2

[Cheng Renquan]

It does not work for me,

when middle-clicking, it alerts with "URL invalid"

Comment 3

[Simon Bünzli]

We'll need more precise steps to reproduce then (and maybe a screenshot). What  are you middle-clicking on (URL of that tab)? And how exactly are you getting into that state?

Comment 4

[Cheng Renquan]

Well, I've made a screenshot

http://imagebin.ca/view/iiDwPZQ6.html

it's when I try to middle-click on an item of the sessionrestore, the Chinese words in the alert box means "this url is invalid, cannot be loaded"

Comment 5

[Simon Bünzli]

I see. This should indeed work. Does the same issue also happen when you start Firefox in Safe Mode?

Comment 6

[Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (not bugmail, email directly)]

Cheng, is there any chance you could upload your sessionstore.js file from your profile? Or you could email it if you don't feel comfortable leaving it up here. This would help us diagnose the problem.

Comment 7

[Cheng Renquan]

It seems not related with any of my session restore, it reproduces always,

There are strange problems with sessionrestore: the sessionstore.bak is 79MB!

gektop@tux ~ 0 $ find ~/.mozilla/firefox/ -ls |grep session
631597   76 -rw-------   1 gektop   users       76620 Aug 14 18:30 /home/gektop/.mozilla/firefox/y85wl7et.default/sessionstore-1.js
397044   12 -rw-------   1 gektop   users        9413 Sep 11 09:32 /home/gektop/.mozilla/firefox/y85wl7et.default/sessionstore.js
394075 80468 -rw-------   1 gektop   users    82393138 Sep 11 09:23 /home/gektop/.mozilla/firefox/y85wl7et.default/sessionstore.bak

and I've created a tarball to wrap the 3 sessionstore files, sent to [e-mail],
gektop@tux ~ 0 $ tar -cjvvf sessionstore.tar.bz2 -c .mozilla/firefox/y85wl7et.default/sessionstore*
-rw------- gektop/users  76620 2009-08-14 18:30 .mozilla/firefox/y85wl7et.default/sessionstore-1.js
-rw------- gektop/users 82393138 2009-09-11 09:23 .mozilla/firefox/y85wl7et.default/sessionstore.bak
-rw------- gektop/users     9413 2009-09-11 09:32 .mozilla/firefox/y85wl7et.default/sessionstore.js

Comment 8

[Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (not bugmail, email directly)]

(In reply to comment #7)
> It seems not related with any of my session restore, it reproduces always,

I'll take a look and see if it's session restore related. You might just have a general problem with middle clicking. You can test this by middle clicking a bookmark in the bookmarks manager - the page should open in a browser window.

Alternatively it could be related to how you use session restore (not the intended way!). See more below.
 
> There are strange problems with sessionrestore: the sessionstore.bak is 79MB!

This has to do with how you're using sessionstore. You're leaving the about:sessionrestore page open as you do more browsing. When you crash with that page open & normal browsing done, you get an about:sessionrestore that has a nested about:sessionrestore (and so on). Do this with a few browsing sessions and it's easy to get that file to be quite large.

Comment 9

[Cheng Renquan]

But I like this way, use the sessionresotre as a temporary bookmarks,

When I have some tabs not read before work time end, I just quit filefox, or just kill it (shutdown without closing all applications), next time when I start firefox, the sessionrestore can be a good starting point to continue reading, sometimes I don't need all tabs last time not read, I just leave sessionrestore tab open, and kill firefox on the next day end, repeat again and again,

Comment 10

[u279076]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.3a3pre) Gecko/20100309 Minefield/3.7a3pre

Works for me using the above build.  Resolving WORKSFORME.  Reporter, please reopen with more details if you can reproduce this on a more recent build (at least Firefox 3.6).

Comment 11

[mjs]

Failure to restore the previous session happens consistently for me with FF 4.0.1 (in Fedora 15).  To reproduce, open multiple tabs and/or windows, then crash Firefox (e.g. power off the machine).  Opening FF in restore mode or opening and attempting a restore brings up the dreaded "URL is invalid" pop-up.

My sessionstore.bak looks legitimate, AFAICT.

Comment 12

[u279076]

(In reply to comment #11)
> Failure to restore the previous session happens consistently for me with FF
> 4.0.1 (in Fedora 15).  To reproduce, open multiple tabs and/or windows, then
> crash Firefox (e.g. power off the machine).  Opening FF in restore mode or
> opening and attempting a restore brings up the dreaded "URL is invalid"
> pop-up.
> 
> My sessionstore.bak looks legitimate, AFAICT.

Please file this in a new bug and provide a screenshot. This bug report is about middle clicking links on about:sessionstore and is not reproducible.

Thanks.