Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Session restore - logical paradox

  • 3 cavab
  • 1 has this problem
  • 15 views
  • Last reply by infiniter

more options

I'm not using Firefox that often and didn't realise that paradox before: session restore, i.e. re-opening of tabs from last session, does only work if in the privacy settings, at "Clear history when Firefox closes" the item "Browsing & Download history" is not checked. Well, this is not mentioned anywhere on http://kb.mozillazine.org/Session_Restore and the illogical thing is that restoring tabs with the one last URL for each tab is not browsing history. It means, even if the other browsing history is cleared on exit, the URL of every tab still being open should be saved for session restore. I consider it as a paradox, because I don't want to keep all the browsing history, but simply restore the tabs. Shall I post this somewhere else as request or bug?

Works with Chrome - why not with Firefox?

I'm not using Firefox that often and didn't realise that paradox before: session restore, i.e. re-opening of tabs from last session, does only work if in the privacy settings, at "Clear history when Firefox closes" the item "Browsing & Download history" is not checked. Well, this is not mentioned anywhere on http://kb.mozillazine.org/Session_Restore and the illogical thing is that restoring tabs with the one last URL for each tab is not browsing history. It means, even if the other browsing history is cleared on exit, the URL of every tab still being open should be saved for session restore. I consider it as a paradox, because I don't want to keep all the browsing history, but simply restore the tabs. Shall I post this somewhere else as request or bug? Works with Chrome - why not with Firefox?

All Replies (3)

more options

If you do not want to keep history and remove the history when you close Firefox then this also disables restoring tabs automatically via session restore. Privacy settings prevail in this case and tabs are considered as history. Cookies may behave strangely as well as cookies from open tabs are stored as part of the session data in sessionstore.js.

more options

Where does Google save the list of tabs?

As a workaround, you could use "Bookmark All Tabs" to save your active tab addresses (on a window-by-window basis). You can access this feature by right-clicking any tab in the window.

more options

cor-el said

Cookies may behave strangely as well as cookies from open tabs are stored as part of the session data in sessionstore.js.

That's exactly the point. Restoring just tabs and restoring a session are two separate things. FF is actually restoring a session, not just tabs. Chrome, as a comparison, only stores the URL for the tabs, even if you clean the history. That's what I'd wish for FF to do, too.