Undo Closed Window Coming In Firefox 3.5

This feature has existed in addon form for Firefox for quite some time.

However, I stopped using it, because keeping window history, etc. eventually uses up a lot of memory.

aj_robins

@GiveMeBreak: I've had up to 3 or 4 windows with 100+ tabs open in each. I usually roll with 2 windows with 20-50 tabs open. Anybody got a problem with dat?

Uhh, I've never accidentally closed one though.

@scottonthepot: Probably because they know a user is going to do it for them in the first half dozen or so comments.

mjgrady

@scottonthepot:
may be because;
i) this topic is about firefox,
ii) you showed your love for opera while somebody was thinking exactly the same way,
iii) addons mean, if you don't need-want a feature and you think it's useless than you are FREE to remove it at firefox,
iv) there are may be thousand addons for firefox and opera-devs can not add all those as features to opera.

balcis

@GiveMeBreak: I have only one at all times. Don't see how this feature is worth an article.

@AbeniRagnarok: It took you 4 minutes to type that?

mortenfriis

@Luis Deliz:
One feature opera still hasn't added is "doesn't crash all the time on my pc and my blackberry". Other than that, it has a lot of cool features and is fast.

vermeulen

@scottonthepot: Exactly. I find it funny how people always leave out Opera when they mention this and other features which they invented.

mortenfriis

Tab Mix Plus adds this feature in previous versions, FYI

Wingmanjd

Credit where its due, Opera has had this feature for ages. Only reason I use FF now is because its faster and I can turn it into Opera with add-ons (firegestures, speed dial, etc) undoable tabs is the last thing i was waiting for in FF

Luis Deliz

INB4 Opera had this first. INB4 Why didn't you credit opera in post

AbeniRagnarok

Opera has had this feature forever. Why doesn't anyone ever show any love for Opera when it has a lot of great features without requiring addins like FF does?

scottonthepot

@GiveMeBreak: 2 as some heavily scripted site require pop up windows! It's a useful feature for when you close the wrong one and it forgets all your tabs! Until now I've always used the session page add-on to avoid this alongside restoring tabs easily from a crash!

So.. how many Firefox windows do you have open at any point of time?

GiveMeBreak

@kbedwards: Really, when was the last time you actually used Opera? 9.64 loads everything correctly.

DemonParasite

As others stated before, this feature was available as part of some plugins.
I'm not sure why Mozilla goes the way other browsers went...

Others have many features built in, but Firefox has plugins!
Why do they add more features instead of fixing the memory issues?

vvvlad

I've been using this feature though tab mix plus for many years now, nice to see it baking into the program.

lbrtdy

@hallowdmachine: I also have that option turned on.

ssj4Gogeta

I kept the option to warn if closing a window with multiple tabs. Being that I rarely close a window it's not too annoying and if I accidentally close one it's a nice catch.

hallowdmachine

I think people are confusing "Recently closed tabs" with "windows". Firefox has had the tabs feature since ever I've been using it, v3.0. But Opera has always been doing this better with their "trash" menu on the tab bar. Which unifies both both the window and tabs. firefox has that lame tab drop-menu that nobody uses. It can totally be replaced by the trash menu.

Opera used to be a great browser, but they have lamified it in the past few versions by not allowing us to use the address bar surroundings for bookmarks.

Mudassir Chapra

@scottonthepot:

Because it's not as compatible as FF for one. I loved Opera for the few months I tried it, but just got tired of having to open some pages in IE to get around the compatibility issues. Not really Opera's fault, but that doesn't change the fact that it was a pain.

kbedwards

This has been available in Firefox for a long time using the "Undo Closed Tabs Button" Add-on.

RenfredScrimmer

It's already in Chrome also. When you close a window, that window appears in the Chrome "new page" menu, under history, and it'll restore all your tabs.

michaelrola

Chrome also has this feature already. (version 2.0.xx, Beta channel)

ssj4Gogeta

@kevjohn: Your productivity index and attention span have a problem with "dat". And so does your CPU.

it's been on Firefox beta 3.1 ever s:
i'm not sure why this is just being point out. Unless you're just referring to the complete version to those who haven't tried it out. :)

@aj_robins: You'll be able to tweak about:config to determine how many windows you want it to remember, which should help you decide how much memory it eats.

Is there anyone else who would like to tell us how other browsers have this, or do we have that covered now? Why do people need to repeat so much information?

I guess I will take my turn at it now, since that seems to be the "thing".

Windows and tabs are different.

ogoldberg

@scottonthepot: I think people give opera an awful lot of love.

Nobody uses it though. Dunno why, it's a great browser, but I love FF.

As others pointed out, this is present in Opera 9.64...but Opera is grievously slow at times, even on some of its own forum pages.

However, the topic here is FF. Fetching trashed pages is a decent addition to FF, perhaps, but still, in my mind, the FF folk still need to work on blazing speed on the MacOSX side.

This comes ahead of miscellaneous frills.

Even Camino approaches and at times outpaces Safari 4. FF does not, even with no add-ons. FF is truly the luxury browser. But meat-and-potatoes should come first.

@Adam Pash: True, but FF 3.0.X, with the (many) addons that I use, already uses up a fair bit of memory. I already have to restart FF every few days, and using even a little for window history is probably too much for me. And, yes, I know that one or more of my addons is the likely cause of the excessive memory consumption, but I'm not giving them up. Between my addons and window history, window history loses. :-) I tried using it, and it's not a feature that I need.

aj_robins

@vermeulen: How does it crash on your PC? It doesn't use as much resources as FF, and is pretty stable in my experience. Opera Mini/Mobile aren't compatible with some phones, though, but there isn't anything else to use.

DemonParasite

@DemonParasite: It's been about 6 months, but as I recall, I would be browsing multiple tabs one minute, then "poof" Opera would close with a little error reporting box. Sorry for the non-technical response, but I've found Firefox to be more stable. On my blackberry I've been using Bolt for a few months and have been very impressed with the speed, features and stability.

vermeulen

@DemonParasite: Opera mini lags on my phone :(

Fastest browser by a mile, though.

@scottonthepot: Opera doesn't load Outlook.com correctly :(

gauden44

For Firefox 2.0 and 3.0, The extension "Tab Mix Plus" has this functionality -- not to mention all the other stuff it can do.

IMO, it is essential for any firefox installation. You can customize every single aspect about tabs and the tab bar, and its session utility to save different tab arrangements is second to none!

winterspan

Feature is already available in the 3.6a1pre trunk nightly :-) As well as a great update to tool-tips which make then stay visible long enough to actually read.

This is a hijack, but how the hell do I get Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 to not close the window when I close the last tab? And how can I remove that stupid new tab button?

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases/Firefox_3.5b4 suggests beta 4 comes out in a few hours

BarclayMalinky

Does this also work after the window crashes?

funyun2

The "Session Manager" extension does this pretty well already, you can select how many closed windows/tabs you want it to remember. And as a bonus it displays a list of your previous sessions after a crash, so you don't lose any data.

TheLostVikings

@Luis Deliz: Undo close tabs comes with tab mix plus. I believe this is talking about whole windows.

@GiveMeBreak: I'll use them to break up my browsing, one for lifehacker and tech stuff, one for facebook stuff and email, one for researching or work?

Get 3.5 beta 4 here: [wiki.mozilla.org]

I've had it for a week now. It's the real beta, not a nightly. It's just not published yet.

Aarrrgh

@chappell101: I do that sometimes and it just kills me. 50 saved tabs killed just like that.

@BarclayMalinky: It's now out.

Only when I upgrade Firefox do my feeds (WizzRSS or Sage - doesn't matter) break.

Sure, I can back them up and reimport the OPML, but, that still doesn't resolve what happened to them in the first place.

I've got feed garbage running all through my bookmarks / places that it's just a pain to clean up.

Tab Mix Plus is broken. Tabs don't load for me when it's enabled. The other 69 extensions I have seem to be working ok.

Just once, it would be nice to be able to upgrade Firefox and have everything WORK. Waiting for the final upgrade hasn't changed this.

The beauty of Firefox is that I can customize it according to my usage. The downside of Firefox is having to fix everything that breaks with every upgrade.

If cars worked like this, every time you got a tune up, your engine would stop working. There's got to be a better way to do this.

stpurniq

@RenfredScrimmer:
they are talking about windows not tabs, you see?

balcis

@GiveMeBreak:
I have two, one for my personal sites and one for our CMS which is really heavy in scripts and most of the time crashes firefox.

@balcis: But... this new feature is *not* an extension, right? So this feature cannot be removed from Firefox as well. Don't you think it makes it very relevant to compare it to other browsers with similar built-in features?

@kbedwards: Have you used Opera since 1999?

Again, why don't they just cut to the chase and make Tab Mix Plus features default?

libertao

@scottonthepot: What are you talking about, every thread about Firefox mentions Opera and Chrome, every thread about Windows will mention Macs and Linux, etc.

And Tab Mix Plus has had this feature "forever".

libertao

@libertao: Tab Mix Plus was the only way I could move from Opera to Firefox - closed tabs list is impossible to leave behind once you're used to it. TMP slowed my old pc down though, but not a problem any more. This 'new' feature is good for people (probably the majority) who use Firefox and never learn about plugins from which they could benefit.

pipedreambomb

@GiveMeBreak: most of the time just 1.
But when I visit megaupload.com I sometimes get a popup window in the background with ads in it. When I close my main window (I have 'show my tabs from last time' on) I can't recover all the tabs from the main window since there is a second window behind it, which infuriates me!

so GO Fx 3.5!!!

Greyh0und

@AbeniRagnarok: INB4 You're too late. INB4 It took you 4 minutes to type that?

@Wingmanjd: Been using TMP since it came out, it certainly rocks for when I have to re-open tabs or windows.

Opera always has EVERYTHING before other browsers. See tabbed browsing, Speed Dial, etc. Closed tab recovery is just another feature other browsers are just now catching on to.

blur880

@libertao: Because not all of us use TMP, me for one. It had some nice trimmings but the bloat factor it added wasn't worth it to me.

paintbox

@blur880: Yeah whatever. Show me a way to make Opera's tabs not look squared-off and boring and oversized, that is, make them faviconized. Make Opera better at loading webpages. Make it work with JS properly, i.e. fast, the way FF does. Give it an Autocopy too. And then maybe I'll think about trying it again.

paintbox

@gauden44: I don't know that Opera should be blamed for not loading a Microsoft page correctly. ;)

jc364

@GiveMeBreak: As of this moment: 1 window, 4 tabs.

The most I ever have open is about 2-3 windows with 6-7 tabs each. Usually that's because I neglected to close the tabs/windows that I no longer need.

jc364