Odd Firefox 4 Restore Previous Session Behavior

If I can’t hibernate my desktop, not to worry, Firefox always has the Restore Previous Session feature. The newer builds of Firefox 4 beta – right now I’m still using 4.0b12pre – will no longer ask the user to save the session if there is more than one tab open. Its default action is Save Session. So don’t be surprised.

However, you might be surprised when the next time you start Firefox 4 it does not automatically restore the previous session. I was used to that behaviour in earlier versions and even with Firefox 3. Maybe so were you. But don’t panic. The session is still there but you will have to manually restore it. See the image below? Look at where the mouse pointer is resting. Surely you noticed that big button just waiting to be clicked.

If in case you changed the Home Page to something else, you will have to go to the menus. It is under History > Restore Previous Session, as seen in the next image below.

Another way to auto-load previous session is to set that as default action. Go to Preferences > General > Startup > When Firefox Starts > Show my windows and tabs from last time, and voila!

 

That isn’t the odd behavior in the title just yet. What is odd is when the session is restored, another Firefox window comes out, this one with all the tabs from the previous session. Now there are 2 Firefox browsers on the desktop. Weird isn’t it? Has anyone, using the same beta version or newer, noticed the same behavior?

How to prevent Firefox from doing its 2-window trick? Simple. Just pin some tabs (right click a tab and select Pin as App Tab). Do this before restoring the session.

Let me say again that I’m currently using Firefox version 4.0b12pre. This is a beta version folks. One I’m comfortable with for a long time. I stuck with this because I didn’t want to see warnings, yet again, that my “addons do not work for this particular Firefox version.” And yes I’m aware that final release of Firefox 4 is on the way. HURRAY for that! 🙂

Update: This behavior I’ve experienced only in beta 12 and earlier versions.

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Notice: This article was published on March 15, 2011 and the content above may be out of date.
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