682603 - Having only app tabs opens an empty tab on session restore when there are no tab groups

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Session Restore, enhancement)

Description

[echogene.alpha]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:9.0a1) Gecko/20110826 Firefox/9.0a1
Build ID: 20110826221111

Steps to reproduce:

With Firefox's built-in session restore, I opened Firefox when my last session had no normal tabs, only app tabs.  I have tried this with other tab groups saved and none.  This has been present for a few versions now, possibly since 4.


Actual results:

With another tab group saved and the current one empty (only app tabs), Firefox loads with the app tabs and no normal tabs, as it should do.  When there are no other tab groups and the current one is empty, Firefox loads with the app tabs and one additional empty tab.

To create an empty tab group with only app tabs, I just created a tab group with an empty tab and closed this empty tab, keeping the empty tab group active on Firefox's closing.


Expected results:

The empty tab should not load when Firefox is started up, as it was not in the last session.

Comment 1

[(mostly gone) XtC4UaLL [:xtc4uall]]

Is this the Bug?

* create X App Tabs
* close any non-App Tabs
* close Firefox
* start Firefox

=> X App Tabs + one additional empty normal Tab are restored

Comment 2

[echogene.alpha]

That sounds like it, but only when there are no tab groups.

Comment 3

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

I think we'll open whatever is set as your homepage in the case where all of the remaining tabs are app tabs. That's sort of treated as a special case and considered (mostly) as "I'm done with this session, give me a new one".

Can you confirm that your home page is about:blank?

Comment 4

[echogene.alpha]

Huh.  It is about:blank, it seems to be on my other machine as well.  I must have set those ages ago.  So I guess it is opening the homepage.  Know I know that, my problem isn't really that it's being opened on startup — I suppose I can cope with that — it's the inconsistency when there are background tab groups.

Comment 5

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

(In reply to echogene.alpha from comment #4)
> Huh.  It is about:blank, it seems to be on my other machine as well.  I must
> have set those ages ago.  So I guess it is opening the homepage.  Know I
> know that, my problem isn't really that it's being opened on startup — I
> suppose I can cope with that — it's the inconsistency when there are
> background tab groups.

Yea, We should probably do a bit of cleanup on that behavior... when there are no app tabs and you close all of your visible tabs (but have another group) we pop back into tabview. But with app tabs we don't.

Tim, not sure if there's a panorama bug filed to get that behavior when we have app tabs. Does that sound like something we should do? Feel free to move this into panorama if you think so. Otherwise, we probably want to do something when quitting to select the other group or restore into tabview.

(this bug title needs to be changed but not sure what to yet, so I'm leaving it as is)

Comment 6

[Tim Taubert [:ttaubert] (inactive)]

(In reply to Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] from comment #5)
> Yea, We should probably do a bit of cleanup on that behavior... when there
> are no app tabs and you close all of your visible tabs (but have another
> group) we pop back into tabview. But with app tabs we don't.

IIRC this is intentional behavior (introduced with bug 595943). I also somewhat dislike it and find it irritating. I think we shouldn't show Panorama unless we have non-empty tab groups. How does that sound?

Comment 7

[rob64rock]

Yes this intentional behavior it does the same when not having any save tab groups:
Bug 588733

Comment 8

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

(In reply to Tim Taubert [:ttaubert] from comment #6)
> (In reply to Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] from comment #5)
> > Yea, We should probably do a bit of cleanup on that behavior... when there
> > are no app tabs and you close all of your visible tabs (but have another
> > group) we pop back into tabview. But with app tabs we don't.
> 
> IIRC this is intentional behavior (introduced with bug 595943). I also
> somewhat dislike it and find it irritating. I think we shouldn't show
> Panorama unless we have non-empty tab groups. How does that sound?

So you think we shouldn't ever start up in tabview if there is a non-empty group? I could probably get on board with that. I'd talk with Faaborg though & see what he thinks here. It's a bit odd, but I'm not sure where it falls on the spectrum of least surprise.

Comment 9

[Ioana (away)]

Since the current behavior is intentional behavior, this bug should be marked as an enhancement request.

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Panorama is gone as of 2016. Replacements https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-tab-groups/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-groups/

But there is a request to bring it back per Bug 1509350 - Provide tab groups (panorama)