Closed Bug 650384 Opened 13 years ago Closed 11 years ago

The "after crash menu" is totally inconvenient and causes repetitive crashes

Categories

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
Session Restore
Version:
4.0 Branch
Platform:
x86
Windows Vista
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: t8av, Unassigned)

Details

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0

The 'after crash menu' (the menu that starts with: "Well, this is embarrassing....") is practically causing repetitive. 

Many crashes are caused by overloading firefox with many open tabs. When restarting firefox after crash, the only two option available are: restore all tabs, or start a new session. Choosing the first option will cause simultaneous opening of many tabs which will, in many cases, cause a repetitive crash.

Indeed, firefox allows the user to choose which tab not to open, but disabling one or two tabs might not solve the problem. Typically the user wants to open the tabs ONE BY ONE and currently this option is not available.

The "lost tabs" should also appear at the "Recently closed tabs" menu, something which is currently does not exist.   

Reproducible: Always
hm I thought browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs would have taken care of not restoring too many tabs... Btw, how many tabs are we talking about? Since it's possible your crashes are not due to Firefox but to a third party add-on.
Component: General → Session Restore
QA Contact: general → session.restore
(In reply to comment #1)
> hm I thought browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs would have taken care of
> not restoring too many tabs... Btw, how many tabs are we talking about? Since
> it's possible your crashes are not due to Firefox but to a third party add-on.

I am not complaining about the crashes (that is a different story). I am saying that whenever there is a crash, firefox should allow the user to view the tabs one by one and not all together at the same time, which will probably cause another crash.
So it's not necessarily the best way to go about it, but you can double click or middle click on individual entries to open them.
(In reply to comment #3)
> So it's not necessarily the best way to go about it, but you can double click
> or middle click on individual entries to open them.

I don't think double click works. But anyway why can't I access them in a simple HTML format? Also, why don't they appear in the Recently closed tabs" menu?
(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #3)
> > So it's not necessarily the best way to go about it, but you can double click
> > or middle click on individual entries to open them.
> 
> I don't think double click works.

It should (not the checkbox, but the actual row item). Middle click also works I think.

> But anyway why can't I access them in a simple HTML format?

I'm not sure what sort of simple html format would be useful. There's a lot of data there.

> Also, why don't they appear in the Recently closed tabs" menu?

Because your session wasn't restored. Recently closed tabs are (invisibly) part of the session on the about:sessionrestore page.
Did the suggestions in comment 5 sufficiently address your problem?
Version: unspecified → 4.0 Branch
I'm still experiencing this in Firefox v8 latest. This problem has been around for a while (since v6 at least IIRC). 

Apparently, there are plenty of bugs on the topic:
Bug 653706
Bug 650384
Bug 639332
Bug 368602

A few extra info:

- The problem occurs 90% of the time at startup, even before "touching" Firefox.

- Following a useful tip (http://www.tweakguides.com/Firefox_10.html) I've changed the default setting of one environment variable (namely browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs) in order to get the same behavior as the defunct BarTab plugin (https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/bartab/). This in order to avoid loading more than one saved tabs at startup. (By the way, why isn't this the default behavior?)
(In reply to David Bourguignon from comment #7)
> - The problem occurs 90% of the time at startup, even before "touching"
> Firefox.

If it's occurring that often, then I would assume you have an addon/plugin that is causing crashes. It's possible though that you have a website that is consistently crashing Firefox - if you can track that down it may be helpful.

> - Following a useful tip (http://www.tweakguides.com/Firefox_10.html) I've
> changed the default setting of one environment variable (namely
> browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs) in order to get the same behavior
> as the defunct BarTab plugin
> (https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/bartab/). This in order to
> avoid loading more than one saved tabs at startup. (By the way, why isn't
> this the default behavior?)

As of Firefox 8, max_concurrent_tabs no longer exists. There is a visible preference in the General tab of Preferences/Options labeled "Don't load tabs until selected". that has the same effect as setting max_concurrent_tabs to 0.
(In reply to Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] from comment #8)

Thanks Paul for your answer!

> If it's occurring that often, then I would assume you have an addon/plugin
> that is causing crashes. It's possible though that you have a website that
> is consistently crashing Firefox - if you can track that down it may be
> helpful.

Concerning websites, I can assure you that this does not come from a specific web page. I've observed the problem with many different start pages (my FF remembers the tab that was active when closing, and uses this as a start page).

Concerning plugins, I only use very few of them, which are quite standard (dictionaries and others). The only potential suspect IMHO is F-Secure's Browsing Protection plugin. But F-Secure is a mainstream antivirus software and I guess many people are using FF with it. If you're interested, I can send you by email a copy of my about:support info.

> As of Firefox 8, max_concurrent_tabs no longer exists. There is a visible
> preference in the General tab of Preferences/Options labeled "Don't load
> tabs until selected". that has the same effect as setting
> max_concurrent_tabs to 0.

Yes, I noticed that this environment variable disappeared from FF v8 right after posting my comment... :-) That's good news! I checked my general preferences, and "Don't load tabs until selected" is checked.

As a general comment, I would say that what defines this bug is that it only occurs when I don't use FF right after launching it... (Waiting for 30s for example.) It definitely looks like a wrong initialization of some variable that is then correctly reset when new info starts flowing through the UI.

Nota bene: since I posted my first comment into several open bugs related to this topic, another reviewer suggested that I should open a new bug report. I did it yesterday: should we move this discussion to the Bug 707772 page?

Thanks in advance for your help!
(In reply to David Bourguignon from comment #9)
> Nota bene: since I posted my first comment into several open bugs related to
> this topic, another reviewer suggested that I should open a new bug report.
> I did it yesterday: should we move this discussion to the Bug 707772 page?

Yea, let's talk about the crash there.
based on comment 5, is this bug invalid or worksforme?
Flags: needinfo?
This bug has not shown up on my machine for a looong time... WORKSFORME
Flags: needinfo?
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 11 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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