Firefox to restore all your tabs and windows after a crash
submitted by jiminoc 8 days ago (via http://wiki.mozilla.org/Sessio...)
"After a forced restart, restore the user's workspace exactly as it was. The state of various window, tab and user-data will be saved, and reloaded upon application start. " Nothing pisses me off more than FF crashing with 6 tabs open :) I believe there's an extension that does this but its nice to see it being built in finally
comments
^ session saver
sometimes crashes though.
That reminds me. Opera 9 Tech Preview 2 came out today! What am I doing on Digg, I have a new toy to play with?!
Bittorrent search and support, Widgets, oh my!!!
I
When I just launch Opera it starts with the homepage. When it crashes, it asks me what I want to do :-)
There are so many more things to fix. The memory required, for one thing.
But still, I guess it's a good thing for all the people who don't know about the extension or just don't want to install it.
Session Saver asks too.
First thing: Session Saving is good for more than recovering from crashes. I like it to restore the state of windows/tabs/websites from the last time I closed the browser. Like, if I shut down the laptop and go home.
Second thing: When was the last time you had FireFox crash on you?! I use FireFox for about 12+ hours per day on Java Desktop System, Linux, OSX, Windows XP and Solaris and have perhaps one or two crashes per week - usually due to me having so many things open and downloading dozens of enormous files simultaneously through the browser and it freezing on me.
Yes, it will. The article tells you:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Session_Restore#Data_to_be_saved
(stupid comment limiter, btw)
Yeah, I do hate that about session saver. Every once in awhile, you'll hit some myspace page where someone thinks they really need to have 37 different embedded videos playing simultaneously and 14 embedded MP3s playing and lots of flashign items, enormous photos and god knows what else . . . and it'll kill the browser. Then you load it again and BAM - it wants to load that page again and crash you all over again.
Of course, Session Saver will alert you after a couple repeat crashes and give you the option to load without recovering sessions. An additoinal feature that would be cool is the ability to tag a tab as "don't reload this in the next session".
It would be interesting to know how many extensions you guys have running. I surprise myself with about 25. Almost every one of them non-intrusive, that is you won't see them other than when you perform a special task. Examples are saving tabs, mouse gestures, download progress bars in the status bar, WML-browser, ad-blocker...
I'd say an easy way to indicate that is to simply close the tab before you shut down. Or do you expect to crash every time?
This is exactly what extensions are for! Stop bloating the core and release /standard extensions/ instead.
I'd say this is an obvious feature that you shouldn't need to get an extension for. Where do _you_ draw the line? Should the back button be built-in or an extension? How about at all being able to view web pages? Somewhere in the stripping down process we arrive at programming it ourselves.
I can have 6 tabs open, photoshop, open office, and 2 other programs open without have a problem.
2. I recently received a new PC and installed FF 1.5.01 and it crashed hard when I was closing it (blue screen even). It happened about four times each time with just four or five extensions installed. Because of that I am slowly reintroducing each of the plugins until I can hopefully narrow it down. I have gone the last four days so far without a repeat of the blue screen crash. Prior to this install I had never had firefox crash.
3. Currently, with 5 extensions installed (download statusbar, gmail manager, sage, greasemonkey, web developer) and six tabs open I'm using 71k of memory. I haven't hit 250k since the upgrade to 1.5.01 (but often ran out of memory on my old machine with only 1.5 on it).
Start->Programs->Internet explorer.
When is the last time IE crashed on you? You're a computer guy, use logic. If ie crashes < firefox then use ie.
I use IE.
This is a firefox topic, not yet another opportunity to spam us with "use opera!"
It gets tiresome. Really.
I use the Tab Mix Plus extension
very powerful control over tabs, including session and crash restore features
BMcClure you idiot, try reading the page first. Its an example of someone writing an extension that is going into the CORE BUILD of firefox. Its not another extension you ass.
This is a firefox topic, not yet another opportunity to spam us with "use opera!"
It gets tiresome. Really."
Tell that to everyone who spams "use Firefox!!" in an IE or Opera topic.
>> This is a firefox topic, not yet
>> another opportunity to spam
>> us with "use opera!"
Then just use Opera and get it over with. Opera users get sick of getting spammed with posts about this new, cool feature that FF has, which we've been enjoying for the past 25 years. Get over yourself.
It's free as in beer, and I've used it as a paying customer since version 5 because it's just better software. I won't choose open source software unless it's superior in functionality, but if you like running crap because it's free (as in freedom) go right ahead.
Lastly, maybe widgets are a cool thing, and I was glad to see that this is going into FF's core functionality, but those plugins/extensions/whatever bug me. I just want a functional browser right out of the box without having to add-in all that garbage. It's worse than buying a car. 'You want floor mats with that? Muffler? Wheels? It's gonna cost you.' Sure, the cost is cheap in a free browser, but it's annoying to have to download an extension every time you want to do one little thing.
Waaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!! >':O
Right now I have 13 tabs open and 300mb of memory used (and another 300 mb virtual).
Here are some things I've noticed:
Adblock Plus seems to have fixed most of the "memory leaks". 1.5.0.1 seems to crash more than 1.5. Java, Adobe reader, quicktime, and other plugins seem to be the most common causes of crashes. Session-saver (the extension) never works for me.
That's why the big features like "opera speak" are not normally installed until you need them.
All these feature that you add to firefox to make it useful bloat the crap out of it.
>For the power user (I consider extensions and tweaking power use, not OCD patients with 200 tabs >open in one session), there is only one.
Tabs, mail client, rss, contacts list, and mouse gestures are all things that opera comes default with.
When will firefox get in-address searches? You just type "g something" for a google search, "x something" for a google Linux search, "e something" for an eBay search, and many more.
Opera does all this and actually does it faster than your 'lite' firefox without extensions
.
>Free as in beer eh? Does beer come with obtrusive advertising (as I believe Opera did the last time I >checked). No amount of "free" will bring back market share.
First, I find beer commercials the funniest ones. Second, this used to be Opera's main draw back (like FireFox's memory leaks). But, Opera has fixed this.
> You snooze, you looze Opera. :>(
Really?
> posted by hakujin (0)
Normally, I prefer open source programs to closed-source. That is because open-source software usually does a better job. But Opera takes the cake. I tried going back to firefox. But once I had enough extensions to be productive, it ran unbearably slow.
And I say good day to you sir!
The ads were dropped in version 8.5. You snooze, you lose. ;)
The ads were dropped in version 8.5. You snooze, you lose. ;)"
Oh Shoooot!
Right...So anyway I switched to Opera after finding out how much memory firefox was using (ALOT) and after it crashed 1-4 times a day. I got sick of it...And now I am not sick...
You could almost compare Opera to Penicillin...Almost...
OMFG! INFINITE LOOP OF DOOM IN FIREFOX?! OMFGWTF?!!?
.....he has a damn good point though.
IE vs. FF vs. Opera vs. Netscape = Petty Bullcrap
FF, Opera, Netscape vs IE = Organized Effort.
Wow, seriously only 6? I average 30-50, so I *really* know what it's like to have a crash (usually from Quicktime, I've noticed). And as far as the "this adds bloat!" comments go, I'll have to point out that this is a feature that stays out of the user's way and makes using the browser a more pleasing experience. Asa has explained before that they're only looking for features that fit those (or similar) criteria. Think yellow address bar on secure sites. Think click-and-drag tab reordering.
I am not being a drama queen - It really crashed that often. It also seemed to conflict with Visual Studio 2005's debugger...Which is also bad.
Memory leaks... I've got about 60+ tabs open at the moment... and am only using 256 MB. Most of the sites up are heavy on ajax/javascript... and aren't anything to sneeze at. The tip to reduce the number of stored pages is the trick...
Go to about:config
Find 'browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers' - this determines how many of your 'previous' pages Firefox stores in it's memory.
If it's '-1', Firefox has set itself for you, based on your memory. If you don't like using that much ram, change it.
If you want VERY low RAM usage, select '0'. This'll lead to slower browsing, but much more computer friendly. If you want low RAM usage, select '1'. This stores the last page you viewed in your RAM for quick viewing. This is the setting I have on... and like I said, 60+ tabs, 256 MB used (1 GB total).
PS: I'm in a bit of a rush, so I didn't check the comments for this being posted already. If it was, sorry, if not - hope you can use this to help you. Also, if for some extremely odd and strange coincidence you completely screw up your firefox settings due to this, I hereby hold myself not responsible. However, I've done this on about 15+ computers already with no problem...
I've never personally spammed an opera digg with a bunch of Firefox talk. I don't personally care what browser you use, but I do care about having digg topics stay at least marginally on topic.
Since I don't exhibit the behaviour you mention, I guess you're not talking to me...
Not a feature, an annoyance for me.
and to all the opera users - firefox has tons of extentions that do lots of things that you can install or not install.
Usually I'm running the latest release of firefox on win32 (xp, sp2, current non-evil patches) or gentoo with a 2.6 kernel. Firefox is working just fine for me thanks very much.
And to everyone who said that this isn't important because there was already the extension or because Firefox should have had this functionality long ago. Firefox extensions are a fantastic example of the bazaar method of coding versus the cathedral method. Basically, once someone sees the need for something, they add it. If enough people like it, it becomes standard.
And to those saying firefox shouldn't crash. Everything crashes. Maybe firefox crashes more than other things, maybe it doesn't. I guarantee that there are people working to make it crash less. But in the meantime, isn't it nice to know that you won't lose your work,research, or whatever else you might be looking at because of a crash?
"Yeah...But most "major" extensions are already implemented in Opera and the new Opera (Is it TP2 or something?) Beta...If you can't live without a little weather icon telling you if it is raining or sunny outside than Opera is not for you...But I know that I would just look out the window."
So, in other words, a light handful of Firefox extensible functionality is implemented within Opera and if you want the rest, use Firefox? I'll agree with that :)
As to your last statement, I don't have a "weather icon" on Firefox as there are far greater extensions for Firefox that save me loads of redundant typing, mouse gesture, and key strokes... Good try though :)
To the point I was going to make, I think just about every commentor in this thread missed the whole point of building this new feature into the Firefox core:
"The API should allow session information to be easily accessed by extensions. An extension could store session info on a remote server, and allow users to restore the same session from multiple computers. This is currently a feature of the SessionSaver extension that doesn’t really fit into the core browser."
The Session Restore feature is a consequence of a more useful API that will allow persistent data storage, a feature that can be very useful to Extension developers all over.
I will cautiously point out that Opera can leverage neither the Extensions mechanism, nor a commonly available persistent session data store (this will be the extent of my Firefox fanboyism).
That said, if you don't like Firefox, don't use it. If you don't like Opera, don't use it. If you don't like IE, don't use it. If you don't like any of those... use Lynx ;)
Just FYI: Opera has been able to "save sessions" since the first public version (IIRC).
And it *does* have "extensions". It *is* possible to extend Opera. There's even a web dev toolbar available:
http://nontroppo.org/wiki/WebDevToolbar
More:
http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2005/01/opera-and-firefox-extensions
http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2005/09/opera-and-firefox-extensions-ii
Second, what is claimed as the gmail notifier equivalent is lame. If I wanted to use a client with gmail, that's what Outlook is for. But why would anyone want to do that? It defeats the beauty of webmail, that is Gmail. But Gmail Manager with Customize Google... not that is even better. :)
Dunno, I guess if you're a sysadmin that thrives on standardization and tire of IE's myopic ways, than Opera is the way. But if you like to stay on the frontier of extensibility, don't mind an occasional bug, and like "fashion" labels, Firefox is the optimal choice. For me, it just keeps getting better and better. For what it's worth, I used to use Opera before Firefox... but when I was introduced to FF, it was like a web browsing spiritual enlightenment.
I can have 6 tabs open, photoshop, open office, and 2 other programs open without have a problem."
same here. i've got 1GB of ram (not 2 or 3 or 4 like some people) and yet i have no problems with it either. i even have upwards of 20 extensions installed, too.
"Opera has being doing this for ages", "opera this, opera that, opera blah blah blah"
ok we get it, opera has a lot of features out of the box, but some of us DON'T NEED THEM. i hear opera has mouse gestures pre-installed, but since i hate them, i have not downloaded the extension. it's so great that firefox lets you pick which features you want to install, as opposed to what some random programmer WANTS you to use. so STFU all of you opera fanboys, this discussion in no way has to do with opera, so please just fuck off.
thank you.
you looking at porn.. grandma knocks on door. you close porn and hang out with grandma. A few hours later she asks a question or something so you offer to look it up on the internet. Fire up firfox and we are looking at big bouncy nurses from poland and my grandma has the for shame look in her eyes. Session saver is the spawn of the devil. But still use it.
To that person - get a life.
If they do add this feature I just hope they make a wayto disable it because I hate session saving.
Cheers,
Ryan Jones
To that person - get a life."
What is "this" and who is "that". Pronouns don't work with the level of OT in this thread. Secondly, the only time "spam" was denoted was in the context of people saying, "My browser is better than yours". ,
And your assertion is a fallacy... affirming the consequent. Because Firefox does something that Opera already doesn't mean it's not a big thing (or a big thing) for that matter.
?? Galeon still does this.
*yawn*
it seems firefox is just the trendy new alternative to ie rather than the best browser out there.
Don't see what's so difficult to figure out and what’s up with all this “who did what first” mess.. Why would anyone honestly give a shit about it, unless you have shares of Opera that are going down because of FF?
Up until recently, Opera charged for their service, only loosening the purse strings because FF's success made 'em do it, not because they wanted to do it for you. So what if Firefox mimics the best features of Opera and adds loads on top of that. For me it's simple. I've listed functionalities an extended firefox can do that Opera can't do. It’s always been free, and it will only get more functional every day. Yet the Opera lovers just gloss over the extensions part.
On top of that, once some new website comes out, someone is bound to write an extension to take advantage of that with FF, not so with Opera. So why again, do you think average people are going to feel Opera’s jade because something was taken and introduced to FF?
“It uses 1/10 of my system’s memory and I’m afraid my RAM will get offended”
“It crashes when I open a million tabs”.
“Sniff… sniff… WE DID IT FIRST… IT’S JUST NOT FAIR [BOO HOO]”
If that is the best Opera loves can come up with, is it any wonder which Browser is more popular between the two?
I admit it though, Opera rocks too ok? I'm running it on my laptop now simply because it runs faster on my older hardware.
Argh...
Better have an option to turn it off...
Better have an option to turn it off..."
Isn't that the beauty of the Mozilla framework?
about:config
>
>To that person - get a life."
>
>What is "this" and who is "that". Pronouns don't work with the level of OT in this thread. Secondly, the >only time "spam" was denoted was in the context of people saying, "My browser is better than yours". >,
>And your assertion is a fallacy... affirming the consequent. Because Firefox does something that >Opera already doesn't mean it's not a big thing (or a big thing) for that matter.
think about this for a second: the headline reads "FIREFOX TO RESTORE ALL YOUR TABS AND WINDOWS AFTER A CRASH"... what the hell does "omg firerfoxx is teh suk get operaa cuz operaa inveteded this, not lame fireeerfosx!!!!@" have to do with this discussion? if you think about it, comments like those are considered pure, unaldulterated *Spam* in a thread such as this. Opera fanboys invariably come out of the woodwork to let everyone know how they use opera and that opera does more stuff out-of-the-box than firefox. Happens every time. Here, on Slashdot, hell even on Fark and pretty much every. single. fucking. public. forum. on the Internet.
i actually used to use opera but was bothered by the fact that they kept the source closed AND tried to make money off its users via advertisements. then along comes firefox which was free and ad-free (unlike opera at the time) and on top of all that, was completely open source. oh well, opera got greedy and lost a massive market share to firefox. i'm not a fanboy for opera or firefox, i (and everyone else) just want something that we can customize the hell out of, is free, open source, and user-driven. so i can understand why you opera fanboys get mad everytime more and more progress is made on the firefox project ;p
To all the Opera fanboys: get a life.
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about freaking time. opera's had it for ages. now they have to add about 100 other features to Firefox to compare to Opera. and no, I'm not talking about extensions. all the sensible features that Opera has could be very well integrated into browser and put to use immediately after installng the browser.
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I honestly don't know what features you're talking about. I read the extensions comparison someone posted and only a small handful (of Firefox extensibility) was chosen (which btw, I don't use) and the comparison on one I do use (Gmail Manager) was a shoddy one at best.
But wait! You have a dumb downed IRC chat in your browser and an email client integrated. No wait! Built in search, but only to those sites deemed appropriate by Opera. Well there you have it. Opera is the big winner (not!).
Simply, I want the features I'm running within Firefox and no, no, no, Opera can't do them. Because? It's closed, as in, that would be a cool feature, let's incorporate it, but sorry, we can't maybe next time.. well anyway here is the .xpi so use Firefox. So why bother? Because it runs 10 milliseconds faster and uses 20 megs less RAM? Wow! Where do I sign up?