Firefox 2.0 and Session Restore...

I just installed Firefox 2.0 on my iMac G5 after reading about the new version release this week and I was having a really hard time figuring out how to enable the new Session Restore feature that was mentioned in the Release Notes.  There's no documentation in the notes as to how to enable it to work like the now obsolete Session Saver add-on that I've come to love and rely on heavily in Firefox.  The application Saft for Mac OS X's Safari browser has a similar tab save and restore feature but Safari 2 just doesn't cut the mustard for many of the web 2.0 application sites, including Vox.  Hopefully, Safari 3.0 will fare better than 2.0 has with these new website applications.

So, I was just looking at the Firefox Add-Ons page for Session Saver and discovered that there is no new version of this software and no way to contact Rue, the creator of the Firefox Session Saver plug-in.  I also searched the Firefox Help via the Help menu and there's no entry anywhere for Session Restore which is really stupid.

Luckily, someone was nice enough to mention where the feature can be selected in the Session Saver user comments on the Firefox Add-Ons site and I have the scoop for those that are having the same difficulty I was.

In Windows, go to Options > Main > When Firefox Starts and select Show my windows and tabs from last time.  The default is normally Show my home page.  What this does is, every time you close Firefox 2 with one or more tabs open, the same tabs are opened again the next time the application is launched.  I absolutely love this feature.  Your mileage may vary depending on your personal taste.

For Mac users, the instructions are just a tad bit different: Go to Firefox > Preferences > When Firefox starts and select the Show my windows and tabs from last time option from the pop-up.

With the addition of Session Restore in Firefox 2.0, there are some really nifty features that are still missing from the add-on Session Saver and the Safari-only Saft application's equivalent tab saving feature.  Session Restore also restores all previously open pages or tabs after a crash of the browser which on the surface is very useful but sometimes, you need to be able to pick and choose from the list of pages that were open when the crash occurred because one of the open tabs may have caused the crash and you don't want it to be reopened and have the browser crash all over again.  Only Saft for Safari provides a pick list of pages or tabs that were open prior to the crash where you can choose which pages or tabs you want it to open and remove pages that might have been the source of the browser crash.

Another feature that is missing in Firefox 2.0's new Session Restore that Session Saver .2 and Safari's Saft include is the ability to save a specific group of tabs as a set.  When the tab is saved in Saft or with older versions of Session Saver, selecting the user-defined saved tab set item from the appropriate menu opens all of the tabs that were saved at the time of creation into a new browser window.  I like that feature but it's not nearly as important as being able to choose which pages to restore after a crash.

I hope someone find this information helpful.