Need command line argument for launching firefox with last set of tabs

[Bryce Harrington]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

New feature needed to allow launching firefox with all windows and tabs loaded.

On launch, firefox prompts with a dialog whether to load new, or with the previous windows and tabs.

I'd like to launch firefox in ~/.xprofile to bring it up automatically with all the windows and tabs pre-loaded. Currently it requires hitting one of the buttons on the dialog. I'd like command line option to specify which of the two options to select.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

this wishlist bug has to be dealt with upstream. please file your bug in bugzilla.mozilla.org and give us the bug id. wishlist bugs are best carried forward by the reporter.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008121711 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Firefox/3.0.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008121711 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Firefox/3.0.5

New feature needed to allow launching firefox with all windows and tabs loaded.

On launch, firefox prompts with a dialog whether to load new, or with the previous windows and tabs.

I'd like to launch firefox in ~/.xprofile to bring it up automatically with all the windows and tabs pre-loaded. Currently it requires hitting one of the buttons on the dialog. I'd like command line option to specify which of the two options to select.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

472259

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

this was forwarded from ubuntu: http://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/287417

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

confirmed upstream; moved to session restore component. If you dont get any response upstream, plesae let me know.

[Zeniko (zeniko)]

If we haven't crashed, either we restore per default or don't have the data needed. And if we have crashed (as it shounds to be in the reported case), there's a reason we ask...

You can disable the prompt completely in Firefox 2.0 and 3.0 by adding a new string pref in about:config named browser.sessionstore.restore_prompt_uri and with the value "javascript:close()" (without the quotes).

In Firefox 3.1 the prompt has been replaced by an error page which is only shown after repeated crashes (making such a command line switch pointless). There you can set the pref browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes to -1 for that page never to be shown.

All in all the bug's INVALID, because it is about a no longer existing feature, and would be WONTFIX if the feature were still there (at least I can't see any use case where such a command line switch would achieve something different than either hitting "Resume Previous Session" or setting the above mentioned pref).

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

i think the problem here is that session integration with gnome and other desktop environment doesnt really work for firefox and fixing that seems to be rather non-trivial ... so in general we know that firefox has crashed on shutdown/resume (or got a SIG), so having a special one-time command line flag for "X session startup" would still make sense.

The pref obviously doesnt help here. neither does the resumt session button help (as this is exactly what this bug doesnt ask about).

[Zeniko (zeniko)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> i think the problem here is that session integration with gnome and other
> desktop environment doesnt really work for firefox

So this would just be a wall-paper patch.

> and fixing that seems to be rather non-trivial ...

How so? And writing an extension to interact with GnomeClient doesn't sound too difficult (just set browser.sessionstore.resume_session_once to true and send the application-quit notification or even properly close Firefox down when you get a logout/shutdown request), so you should even be able to handle this downstream.

> The pref obviously doesnt help here.

The Firefox 3.1 pref still helps (even in its default setting), as in most cases your users won't even notice that Firefox crashed because we now resume a crashed session once without any prompt whatsoever.