750057 - Cookies that have "Expire: At the end of the session" get deleted after FF restart since FF11.0. Doesn't happen on FF10.0

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[Guniu]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:12.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/12.0
Build ID: 20120420145725

Steps to reproduce:

Since v11.0 Firefox doesn't remember those cookies that have "expire at the end of the session" after session restore. It was working on v10.0. I noticed it because of the youtube player. I always have it set to large size, and on v10.0 after Firefox restart it always stayed that way. But since v11.0 (and now also v12.0) the cookie that holds the player size gets deleted on session restore.
What did I do? Go to youtube.com, open any video, set the player size to large. Now close the page and close Firefox, saving the session (it's important to close youtube.com, otherwise the cookie doesn't get deleted). Reopen Firefox (restoring the session), go to youtube.com, open any video.


Actual results:

After restarting Firefox the youtube player is again of small size, because the cookie "wide" didn't get saved.


Expected results:

The cookie "wide" should have been restored with the session, just like it was working on Firefox 10.0.

PS. Link for the Firefox help forum, where I was asking about it first: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/923187

Comment 1

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

Based on that support link, it's been happening for a while. It sounds like Youtube may have changed the cookie type to be a session cookie instead of persisting. Session Restore only saves cookies for open tabs and that's been the same behavior for several years. If you can find a version of Firefox where the cookie is saved without the tab open, then we can look into this further, but it sounds like it's an unexpected change by Youtube.

Comment 2

[Guniu]

As I already mentioned, the cookie doesn't get deleted on Firefox 10.0. I can revert to that version and I know the cookie will stay. I already checked that many times. As you can read on the linked support site, the last comment, user Vivek.Wilfred is also confirming that the cookie stays on FF10.0.
Also this thing happened before, as I mentioned in that link in my first post. Youtube probably never changed anything with that cookie. I remember it was saved on Firefox 7.0, but then on FF 8.0 it wasn't. Reverting back to 7.0 fixed that behavior. Then in later version of FF it was again fixed. I'm not sure now which version was it. Either 9.0 or 10.0. So with 10.0 the cookie was saved, and then with 11.0 again it wasn't. I was waiting for the new version to see if it will get fixed, but it wasn't, so here I am.

Comment 3

[Guniu]

I did some more research, and I found out something. My session looks like that I have few groups created and in one group I have a Youtube site opened. But I hardly ever open this group. Mostly I'm on group that doesn't have YT site. On Firefox 10.0 it doesn't matter. If I have a Youtube site opened somewhere in another group, the cookie is always saved. I even noticed that if I change that Youtube site to any other site, but not closing that tab, the cookie still is saved. So basically if there is a tab (in any group), that has a history of being a youtube site, the cookie stays. Only after closing that tab, the cookie goes. Now with Firefox 11.0 - this doesn't work. Now even if I have a youtube site opened in another group, the cookie doesn't stay, unless I visit that group with a youtube site, every time I open a Firefox. So if I open Firefox that have a youtube site somewhere in another group, but I don't visit that group, and I set the yt player to large, it doesn't get saved on session restore. I have to visit that group with yt site before I close Firefox for the cookie to get saved.
I hope it sounds somewhat understandable. If not, then ask, I will try to describe it more accurately.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Guniu writes "I'm not using Firefox in a way I was using it back then, so I am not sure if the problem is still there." So I think we close this incomplete