820983 - Firefox ignores user directive "open with blank page" on resume from crash

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 713968

(Firefox :: Session Restore, enhancement)

Description

[Gerry Lawrence]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux i686; rv:17.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/17.0
Build ID: 20121129151900

Steps to reproduce:

Select "startup firefox with a blank page".  This works if you "properly shut down firefox" - but I rarely do that.  I just shut down the OS.  (Linux).  On startup firefox then ignores my directive to start with a blank page and then restores my session, which I do not want.



Actual results:

So when firefox is not "properly shut down" - it brings up all the pages and tabs, in spite of the user directive to not do this.   There is an "advanced" option  browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash  -- it used to work bu no longer.  SO now, no matter what you do - it brings up previous tabs and pages.  You might think this is a bug about the resume_from_crash option - but it's not - that's a separate bug.   The functionality of "startup on a blank page"has been mis-designed from the start of firefox - blank page should mean just that - not "let firefox decide what you need to see when it has an excuse to do so".


Expected results:

Firefox should start up with a blank page as the user has directed - not make some bad decision on its own.

Comment 1

[Ioana (away)]

This behavior might actually be what it was designed to happen in this case. That's how it should be, in my opinion.

Someone that implemented the Session Restore component will most probably know better what the expected behavior is.

Comment 2

[Gerry Lawrence]

It's pretty obvious that yes, the designers of the option "start firefox with blank page" decided that what it should really do is "start with blank page unless we can come up with an excuse not to".   

As to the issue of "should be" - consider this:   The user explicitly checked the box that says "start with a blank page".  The user did not check a box that says "start with a blank page unless firefox can find an excuse not to"   Maybe firefox devs should implement the feature as documented and not what they think ought to happen....

A better way to implement this would have a restore button available somewhere, in case the user does actually want a session back to be restored.   But developers need to respect the wishes of the user.

I always want to start with a blank page, but alas, can no longer (firefox now ignores the sessionrestore config variable which I've filed as another bug).  But if this were implemented correctly, we wouldn't be wasting our time here.

Comment 3

[Bleddle]

Hello,

I would like to +1 here and add my thoughts to this.

At the moment session restore is convoluted in my opinion and is most likely the reason it doesn't work. I therefore request a major clean-up of the functionality with at least a clear description of the use-cases and possibly even the variables to be used.

Quoting http://kb.mozillazine.org/Session_Restore
> Starting in Firefox 3.5 the preference browser.sessionstore.enabled is no longer used. [5](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=449596) Instead, you can set the preferences browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo and browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo to 0.

The side effect of that is that, during normal browsing, unclosing windows is most likely wanted and doesn't work any more.

------------

Then, as the bug title mentions, the start page options are simply overriden after a crash. In my case even with sessionstore completely disabled
    user_pref("browser.sessionstore.enabled", false);
    user_pref("browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes", 0);
    user_pref("browser.sessionstore.privacy_level", 2);
    user_pref("browser.sessionstore.privacy_level_deferred", 2);
    user_pref("browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand", false);
    user_pref("browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash", false);
    user_pref("browser.sessionstore.resume_session", false);
    browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo;3 // this isn't in the prefs.js?
    browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo;10   // and this neither
,a specific homepage
    user_pref("browser.startup.homepage", "chrome://fvd.speeddial/content/fvd_about_blank.html");
and session clearing on shutdown
    user_pref("privacy.sanitize.sanitizeOnShutdown", true);
the session is STILL restored after a crash.

For now I'm forced to write a script that deletes the session store every time firefox started and an instance doesn't exist, until this works.

Kind regards,
Bleddle

Comment 4

[Gingerbread Man]

Firefox will automatically restore the session after a single crash in a 6-hour interval [1]. If you always want to be prompted instead,
1. Type about:config into the address bar and press Enter.
2. To bypass the warning, press the big button labeled “I'll be careful, I promise!”.
3. In the search box, paste browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes
4. In the search results, double-click browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes and set its value to 0

I've just tested the above in the latest Nightly, and it still works without a hitch. If the preference doesn't work as expected for you, please try a brand new profile [2], as one of your add-ons or other preferences might be interfering.

[1] http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-release/source/browser/app/profile/firefox.js#1053
[2] https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles