Bugging bugs with Firefox #1

I love Firefox, it’s a great web browser. But there are two things which have annoyed me forever and it’s about time I did something about it.

Numero Uno:
The first is the in relation to the ability to save tabs for the next time Firefox starts. I love this feature. When you have multiple tabs open and you close your last main window it prompts you to “Save and Quit”. When you open Firefox next time, it will automatically open the same pages in the same tabs.

But this doesn’t happen if you have another main browsing window open. Fair enough, I guess. The thing that bugs me is that it doesn’t prompt you if you only have the “Downloads” window open, for example. I get why this is the case – Firefox is still running. In fact, if you close the main browsing window and leave the downloads window up, Firefox is still running, just without any windows present.

What I’d like to see is for Firefox to prompt you to save your tabs if all you have open is the downloads window. It’s annoying to have to cancel the close quit request, go and close the download window, then come back and close Firefox again. Hell, close the download tab too if you like, I don’t mind!

I’m assuming the way it’s coded to work is to check if it’s the last “Firefox” window open, and is so, prompt if there are multiple tabs open. If not, then just quit. Changing the way it works might require a considerable re-write of the code and also open some new case bugs like what to do when the user is still downloading, but hey.

Try it yourself. Open a few tabs, quit Firefox and note the option to “Save and Quit”. Then open the download window (CTRL+Shift+Y on Linux) and try again. No option to “Save and Quit”.

Does this bug anyone else?

-c

2 thoughts on “Bugging bugs with Firefox #1

  1. What is this ‘Download Window’ of which you speak? Every new FF install gets Adblock Plus, XMarks and Download Status Bar. No more horrible download window to worry about.

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