Firefox and its stupid big version numbers.

[baratron]

Firefox 6.0 is pissing me off because it seems to have lost my old default setting of "please save all my tabs when I quit Firefox" - and I can't even find that setting any more in the Preferences! I generally work with a ridiculous number of windows and tabs on the screen, often more than 50 tabs open at once. Losing my entire session when I have to close Firefox for some reason such as Flash needing to update again or yet another stupid Microsoft Office update is just TOO MUCH.

Anyone know how to fix this? I'm sure one of you does :)

I also think it's stupid the way Firefox is now updating the big number every couple of weeks - going from 4.0 to 5.0 to 6.0 instead of 4.0 to 4.1 to 4.2, but that's another rant in itself, and I don't pretend to be savvy in the ways of software numbering.

An actual post with CONTENT will follow tomorrow, when I will have hopefully recovered from my minor cold-let and no longer have a brain full of snot ;)

Comments

[x-mass.livejournal.com]

firefox is so bad that i am thinking of going to chrome or opera or anything other then WE KNOW BEST WERE FIREFOX

[memevector.livejournal.com]

Someone on another thread was talking about similar stuff and they'd solved it by rolling back to Firefox 3.6.20. Apparently 4, 5 and 6 were all falling over too much. Don't know if that info is any help to you but good luck!

[lovingboth]

Yes, I had that. It is in the preferences (General / When Firefox starts...)

They've moved the 'actually do that then' to, amongst other places, the history menu and, if you use it, their default start page. I suspect it's partly a plot to get more people to use that.

(Usually with 500+... and yes, the version number thing is stupid.)

[mjl]

They decided that the prompt to save on closing was usually the wrong time for people to make the decision, and it would be better for people to make the choice when starting...

Firefox saves your session by default, so you can get your previous session back by choosing "Restore previous session" from the history menu (or history submenu from the Firefox button). You can make it restore every time using the preferences, as lovingboth said.

As for the version numbering (not that I imagine you really wanted to know)... With the rapid release thing they're doing now (release every 6 weeks, and whatever stuff is ready to be released that day gets released), the 4.1, 4.2 would be tricky, because it leaves the question of when to go to 5.0. They don't plan or know in advance what features are going to be in which release until very shortly before it happens. Deciding to make a particular version a major version jump would require having a debate shortly before each release to decide how to number it, which firstly means everyone spending time debating whether to make the major version jump or not on that release, and also means the numbering might go 4.2 -> 4.3alpha -> 4.3beta -> 5.0. Given that each release is date based rather than feature based, what they could have done instead of 5, 6, 7 would be 2011.1, 2011.2, 2011.3 and flip the major number with the calendar year, which might be slightly more meaningful than just counting on from the previous scheme...

[pir.livejournal.com]

I use the Session Manager extension because it gives more options on how to save/restore sessions than the built in stuff and keeps more history.

[lovingboth]

I used to use this one, but there were two problems.

Every so often, it failed to save a session properly and lost it. My wild guess is that the crash / exit happens while it's in the middle of saving the current info.

On restore, it tried loading everything at once = unusable until everything had. Which, with lots of tabs, could be ages. That might have improved now that Firefox doesn't do that.

[pir.livejournal.com]

I've never seen it fail to save a session. I've failed back to older saved sessions when something has gone very wrong (usually a tab that is crashing the browser) though.

Loading everything at once has never bothered me.

[rhialto.livejournal.com]

With so many tabs, did you notice that you can group your tabs in groups? (In the drop-down menu with the tabs, there is a new option Tab Groups).
In addition to this, I am now trying the extension "TabGroups manager", which allows those groups to be visualised by (yet another level of) tabs. It can also unload groups from memory, to make Firefox use less memory. They will be reloaded when you switch back to them.
I also use "BarTab lite" so that Firefox won't try to load all tabs at once.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Firefox on my Mac is incredibly stable. It only falls over every 15 days or so :)

No, in general I'm willing to go forward and try new features - but I want the old features to still be there!

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Hmm. There's something wrong with my default start page then, because IT'S NOT ON THERE!

The only thing that's on my default start page other than the Google search bar is You're not on the latest version of Firefox. Upgrade today to get the best of the Web! And then I click on the "upgrade" link to be told that I do have the latest version...

I'd better take it up with Firefox support, then :X

[mjl]

That's the old default start page. You can get the new start page by clicking the "restore to default" button there (the new page is basically the same Google search bar with Firefox bits, but it's now local - at about:home - rather than online, which allows them to add stuff like "restore your session" to it...)