Firefox Tip: Save tabs just once (Shallow Thoughts)

Firefox Tip: Save tabs just once

I've been offline and unable to update the blog for a while (technical glitch, long story) but I'm back and have several stories to polish up and post, beginning with this helpful (I hope) Firefox tidbit:

I've often wanted a way to get Firefox to save the current set of tabs without actually bookmarking them -- the way it does when you install an extension and need to restart. But I'd never found a way to do that through the menus.

But then I realized that I could use the same trick that I use for landscape printing:

1. Edit user.js in your Firefox profile directory, and add this line:

   user_pref("browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash", false);
   

   This will ensure that normally, it doesn't give you the confirmation box, only when you ask for it.
2. In your running Firefox, go to about:config and search for sessionstore
3. Look for the browser.sessionstore.resume_session_once line and doubleclick it (change it to true)

Now the current session will be restored the next time you start Firefox, but in the future you'll still get clean startups.

Update: this article used to reference "browser.tabs.warnOnClose", which is probably the wrong preference. There's some documentation (not much) at the Mozilla support: Session Restore.