4 ms·

Except for users that have dozens of tabs loaded because they're digital packrats, and don't care about most of them most of the time.

by ta12121 14y ago

FreeFull 14y ago
Like me. I can easily reach over 450 tabs, and have been using this feature since Firefox 4, when it was added.
phaylon 14y ago
I fully agree, I currently have 174 tabs open, and that's actually a low number for me (I closed a couple hundred down on the weekend). Having all of them reload when I restart my browser was a nightmare before this feature. Everytime I'd have to hunt down a couple tabs that contain auto-playing videos. All while getting Basic Auth password popups for work related resources. Plus, it is much better for over-all performance since some websites switched to an interface that polls for updates in the background. Of course I know I'm not a typical user, so I wouldn't really argue against this being an option that is off by default. But it would very much hurt my user experience if it weren't available at all.
- illumen 14y ago
  Yeah, it's definitely an improvement for you 50+ tab peoples. Not so good for the 5-8 tab people. I think both groups should get a good user experience though.
  - phaylon 14y ago
    I agree. That's why I said I just want to have the option, but I don't care about its initial state :) I wouldn't even care if it were only available in about:config. I just wanted to mention my viewpoint (started writing it before I saw the other replies), since I find it an important improvement. For example, I won't use Chromium regularly besides testing things in it, because it would be way too painful for me.
    - mbrubeck 14y ago
      It's already an option in the Firefox options/preferences UI. In the "General" preferences in Firefox 13, if you have "Show my tabs from last time" selected, there's a checkbox for "Don't load tabs until selected". In Firefox 15 and later, the checkbox is in the "Tabs" pane so it's always accessible: http://zpao.com/posts/making-restore-on-demand-accessible/ http://zpao.com/posts/making-restore-on-demand-accessible/
      - phaylon 14y ago
        I know, which is why FF is my main browser. I'm just arguing the importance of the option for my personal usage patterns.
      - illumen 14y ago
        It's great the option is there, and thanks SO much for pointing it out. Now for me as one of the 5-8 tab people, restoring tabs will be a good experience. You get 39 hero points, and 72.55 gold stars. However, I'm of the opinion that options are bad UX too (until you find them :). It's better when the experience is just good. I know that's asking a lot... but I think it's possible with some combination of the ideas mentioned in this discussion to automatically do the right thing for most users.
- kbutler 14y ago
  Sounds like the ideal would be: preload the most recent N (configurable?) tabs.
  - phaylon 14y ago
    That wouldn't hurt me :) I could even imagine it being useful to be able to automatically load the surrounding context (say N pages left and right). Or load all adjacent pages on the same domain as the active tab, which would be quite useful if one often browses manuals.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
derefr 14y ago
So, the behavior you're talking about is basically treating the tab bar as a hybrid "what I'm about to read after closing this" and "what I stopped reading and might get back to after closing this" queue. For this type of browsing behavior, I would go even further than just not restoring tabs. I would unload backgrounded tabs with "simple" content[1] when they've not been in use for a while (say, half an hour, plus not being in the 5-10 most-recently-used tabs), only keeping the URL and, say, the scroll-position. (Plus maybe <input> contents if you don't want to be cruel to the web developers who haven't yet heard of localStorage.) [1] It would be interesting to define a heuristic for what qualifies as a "simple" webpage. Perhaps anything that doesn't do any JS setTimeouts or websocket connection creation would count? It'd likely be best to just leave it to the web server to declare "simplicity" of a page as a header, the same way companies can declare "recyclable" on boxes. One would wonder if any company would bother to use this if it meant their own tab would seem slower-to-reload than their competitors', though...

Except for users that have dozens of tabs loaded because they're digital packrats, and don't care about most of them most of the time.

by ta12121 14y ago

Except for users that have dozens of tabs loaded because they're digital packrats, and don't care about most of them most of the time.

FreeFull 14y ago

Like me. I can easily reach over 450 tabs, and have been using this feature since Firefox 4, when it was added.

phaylon 14y ago

I fully agree, I currently have 174 tabs open, and that's actually a low number for me (I closed a couple hundred down on the weekend). Having all of them reload when I restart my browser was a nightmare before this feature. Everytime I'd have to hunt down a couple tabs that contain auto-playing videos. All while getting Basic Auth password popups for work related resources. Plus, it is much better for over-all performance since some websites switched to an interface that polls for updates in the background. Of course I know I'm not a typical user, so I wouldn't really argue against this being an option that is off by default. But it would very much hurt my user experience if it weren't available at all.

illumen 14y ago
Yeah, it's definitely an improvement for you 50+ tab peoples. Not so good for the 5-8 tab people. I think both groups should get a good user experience though.
- phaylon 14y ago
  I agree. That's why I said I just want to have the option, but I don't care about its initial state :) I wouldn't even care if it were only available in about:config. I just wanted to mention my viewpoint (started writing it before I saw the other replies), since I find it an important improvement. For example, I won't use Chromium regularly besides testing things in it, because it would be way too painful for me.
  - mbrubeck 14y ago
    It's already an option in the Firefox options/preferences UI. In the "General" preferences in Firefox 13, if you have "Show my tabs from last time" selected, there's a checkbox for "Don't load tabs until selected". In Firefox 15 and later, the checkbox is in the "Tabs" pane so it's always accessible: http://zpao.com/posts/making-restore-on-demand-accessible/ http://zpao.com/posts/making-restore-on-demand-accessible/
    - phaylon 14y ago
      I know, which is why FF is my main browser. I'm just arguing the importance of the option for my personal usage patterns.
    - illumen 14y ago
      It's great the option is there, and thanks SO much for pointing it out. Now for me as one of the 5-8 tab people, restoring tabs will be a good experience. You get 39 hero points, and 72.55 gold stars. However, I'm of the opinion that options are bad UX too (until you find them :). It's better when the experience is just good. I know that's asking a lot... but I think it's possible with some combination of the ideas mentioned in this discussion to automatically do the right thing for most users.
kbutler 14y ago
Sounds like the ideal would be: preload the most recent N (configurable?) tabs.
- phaylon 14y ago
  That wouldn't hurt me :) I could even imagine it being useful to be able to automatically load the surrounding context (say N pages left and right). Or load all adjacent pages on the same domain as the active tab, which would be quite useful if one often browses manuals.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

derefr 14y ago

So, the behavior you're talking about is basically treating the tab bar as a hybrid "what I'm about to read after closing this" and "what I stopped reading and might get back to after closing this" queue. For this type of browsing behavior, I would go even further than just not restoring tabs. I would unload backgrounded tabs with "simple" content[1] when they've not been in use for a while (say, half an hour, plus not being in the 5-10 most-recently-used tabs), only keeping the URL and, say, the scroll-position. (Plus maybe <input> contents if you don't want to be cruel to the web developers who haven't yet heard of localStorage.) [1] It would be interesting to define a heuristic for what qualifies as a "simple" webpage. Perhaps anything that doesn't do any JS setTimeouts or websocket connection creation would count? It'd likely be best to just leave it to the web server to declare "simplicity" of a page as a header, the same way companies can declare "recyclable" on boxes. One would wonder if any company would bother to use this if it meant their own tab would seem slower-to-reload than their competitors', though...