620697 - App Tabs disappear if you clear History

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Session Restore, enhancement)

Description

[Xavier Stevens [:xstevens]]

Attachment: My clearing preferences.

My app tabs disappear after I close my browser.  I think this is because I have it set to clear history, cookies, active logins and cache.  I think it should be that app tabs get treated more like apps and persist through sesssions, or at least the tab would remain and I could re-login each time.

Comment 1

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

Xavier: Are you running with an extensions installed? That doesn't look like the Mac stock preferences.

Comment 2

[Xavier Stevens [:xstevens]]

I do have extensions, but I modified those preferences myself.  I agree those aren't stock.  I was suggesting in this bug that app tabs should be treated differently than regular tabs.

Comment 3

[[not reading bugmail]]

You mean you always restore app tabs even if you don't want to restore tabs by clearing history.  Paul, any thoughts on this issue?

Comment 4

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

I think something of this sort was discussed in another bug somewhere... Bug 580512 comment 30, 31 are the closest I could find... at which point it was decided that app tabs should be restored regardless...

Soooo we should probably reopen them based on that. Implementation-wise its overly complicated though :/ If we make it a blocker I would put it at [softblocker] or .x

Comment 5

[Sheila Mooney]

Sounds like this shouldn't block 2.0 if we are saying it's a softblocker or .x. If it's complicated, does that mean it needs a beta.

Comment 6

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

(In reply to comment #5)
> Sounds like this shouldn't block 2.0 if we are saying it's a softblocker or .x.

My requirements for actually blocking firefox 4 are pretty high right now. That's not to say this isn't something we really should fix, just that I'm OK not fixing it before 4. But I'm not a driver.

I'm not even 100% sure we shouldn't wontfix this.

> If it's complicated, does that mean it needs a beta.

I don't think so.

Comment 7

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

I think we need the UX team to weigh in here; we've always had these niggly problems around user expectations for not-storing-history-but-restoring-tabs, and my preference would be to mismatch expectations consistently, at least. That implies WONTFIX, but let's wait for their weigh-in.

Not blocking, for sure, though.

Comment 8

[Thopter]

Why would you developers make a built-in feature to pin tabs like this if you weren't going to make them permanent until unpinned? What is the point of having pinned tabs if they disappear every time you close the browser? Yes, I know I just have to not clear my history on exit, but that is a completely separate setting that should have no effect on tab behaviour.

As a regular user, my "expectations" for how a "pinned" tab should act, are that it should be made permanent and persistent through sessions until unpinned, no matter what any other settings are. By setting a pinned tab, I'm telling FF that this is a tab I want to be always there every time I open FF.

Comment 9

[Frank Thommen]

The bug is still here with Firefox 5.0 (Mac OS X) :-((  App Tabs must be independent from history.  They are rather to be seen as a kind of bookmarks than as part of the history.

Comment 11

[Johan Cronje]

I also get this and let me tell you, it is SUPER ANNOYING.

Comment 12

[xyteran]

I'm going to weigh my opinion in as well: app tabs should stay open regardless of history. "Browsing history" is simply a record of where we've been. App Tabs are tabs that are supposed to be open at all times, much like setting the home page. Right now, they are a completely pointless feature, but they shouldn't be.

Comment 13

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

(In reply to Nathanael Shermett from comment #12)
> I'm going to weigh my opinion in as well: app tabs should stay open
> regardless of history.

fwiw, clear history is misnamed, the feature works mostly as a clear private data, and history is just a minor part of it.

Comment 14

[Frank Thommen]

(In reply to Marco Bonardo [:mak] from comment #13)
> (In reply to Nathanael Shermett from comment #12)
> > I'm going to weigh my opinion in as well: app tabs should stay open
> > regardless of history.
> 
> fwiw, clear history is misnamed, the feature works mostly as a clear private
> data, and history is just a minor part of it.

but app tabs are not part of any private data...or then the bookmarks are too.  IMHO clearing the app tabs is just a design flaw and/or a bug.

Comment 16

[Andrei Purice]

Hey Xavier,
Can you still reproduce this issue or should we close it?

Comment 17

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Redirect a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user to the triage owner.
:dao, since the bug has high severity, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 18

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

In the process of migrating remaining bugs to the new severity system, the severity for this bug cannot be automatically determined. Please retriage this bug using the new severity system.