523073 - Session restore: don't show 'this is embarassing' page for a single about:blank tab

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[José Jeria]

Build ID: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.3a1pre) Gecko/20091018 Minefield/3.7a1pre

Firefox crashes sometimes when about:blank is open. The session restore will then ask you if you want to restore it... kind of pointless.

The screen (see image attached) should not be shown if only about:blank is to be recovered

Comment 1

[José Jeria]

Attachment: Screenshot

Comment 2

[Saint Wesonga]

Doesn't the browser still remember other session related state info (like your closed tabs) even in this scenario (i.e. is the fact that about:blank was the last open URL enough to support not restoring the session)?

Comment 3

[Michael Kohler [:mkohler]]

We should restore about:blank if it was just the last loaded URL and there were other URLs loaded in that tab. IMO if the about:blank has no history (means the user has set browser.startup.page to 0 and has recently opened a new tab) we shouldn't restore it, since the user can reopen a new tab very quickly. Do you agree?

Comment 4

[José Jeria]

Yes, I guess that this makes sense now that it was explained. -> invalid?

Comment 5

[Michael Kohler [:mkohler]]

Yes, of course we should restore about:blank if there is other session information. IMO we shouldn't restore about:blank if it is a freshly opened tab.

Simon, what do you think?

Comment 6

[RNicoletto]

Me agree with comment 5.

Comment 7

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

(In reply to comment #5)
> Yes, of course we should restore about:blank if there is other session
> information. IMO we shouldn't restore about:blank if it is a freshly opened
> tab.

If about:blank is the only thing open & there's nothing else in session restore? I don't think there's any difference between restoring or opening a new session (from the user's perspective anyway).

If you mean amongst other tabs, it's hard to say. Right now the about:blank page could contain a userTypedValue (see bug 522545 & bug 497730) which gets restored. We wouldn't want to get rid of that.

If it's still completely blank, that's a possibility. Personally, I'd say we should still keep it open. Otherwise we're making too many assumptions about the user (we'd have to redo the dialog, 1 real tab + 1 about:blank would equal 1 tab, so the closing multiple tabs dialog wouldn't show). Those are my thoughts right now.

We have some inconsistencies about how we treat the empty tab right now. Those should (probably) be fixed, but I'm not sure in what way yet and that probably belongs in a couple bugs. For example, a window with just about:blank doesn't show up in recently closed windows, but does get restored. Same with about:blank tabs.

Comment 8

[José Jeria]

I am not sure if this got worse now, but I am seeing the "Well, this is embarrassing." basically every time that Firefox starts up.

Firefox does not offer to close the last tab anymore, so I always do the following
1. have one tab with any url 
2. open a second tab
3. now close the first tab
4. close firefox
5. reopen firefox
6. you will be presented with the "this is embarrasing"

This must be incorrect, since I _did close the tab_, why is it now trying to restore it?

Comment 9

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

(In reply to comment #8)
> I am not sure if this got worse now, but I am seeing the "Well, this is
> embarrassing." basically every time that Firefox starts up.

This would indicate that you're never quitting cleanly and you are crashing (or killing the process) a lot.

> Firefox does not offer to close the last tab anymore, so I always do the
> following
> 1. have one tab with any url 
> 2. open a second tab
> 3. now close the first tab
> 4. close firefox
> 5. reopen firefox
> 6. you will be presented with the "this is embarrasing"

Again, related to your crashing/killing.

> This must be incorrect, since I _did close the tab_, why is it now trying to
> restore it?

Well, you closed the tab with a URL, but you still have the blank tab open. So we're trying to restore that blank tab (and as mentioned above, a lot of other info). This would work perfectly if not for your crashes.

So perhaps a better way of handling this is to see if the there is only 1 tab & it's blank before showing that page. If it is, then just restore the session.

Comment 10

[José Jeria]

(In reply to comment #9)
> This would indicate that you're never quitting cleanly and you are crashing (or
> killing the process) a lot.

I am not crashing at all (or killing the process). See step 4 in comment 8, i am _closing_ the browser by clicking on the close button.

Comment 11

[Simon Bünzli]

Comment #8 is a different issue than comment #0, so please file a new bug for it for separate investigation.

As for the original issue, I'd be fine with just restoring a single blank tab (as long as it doesn't have a userTypedValue we'd try to reload automatically). This should also prevent users from accidentally losing their recently closed tabs, etc., when they don't bother to restore that single blank tab.

Comment 13

[Don Albertson]

Comment on attachment 406990 [details]
Screenshot

I never saw this until 20.0.1 came along.  Now it happens all the time.  I disabled all add-ons to no avail. Changed my default home page from blank to default.  Really annoying.

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Don Albertson from comment #13)
> Comment on attachment 406990 [details]
> Screenshot
> 
> I never saw this until 20.0.1 came along.  Now it happens all the time.  I
> disabled all add-ons to no avail. Changed my default home page from blank to
> default.  Really annoying.

bug 848518