Session Manager 0.1 to 0.3.9+

Talk about add-ons and extension development.
Locked
Gary King
Posts: 983
Joined: September 5th, 2003, 9:27 pm

Post by Gary King »

zeniko wrote:
Gary King wrote:My Firefox info is in my sig, by the way. I've PMed you a test session.

I've configured the forum not to display sigs (don't like the noise). The problem turned out to be specific to Macs (you seem to be the first Mac user...). It's fixed as of <a href="http://www.haslo.ch/zeniko/software/sessionmanager.xpi">version 0.6.4.2</a>. Thanks for the bug report.


Me? First Mac user for Session Manager? Makes me feel special, than. :) Anyways, Mac users are more likely to use Safari (about 70% of Mac users use Safari, according to most places, so Firefox isn't as popular among us.)

You fixed the problem so quickly - thanks! Did it take long to diagnose the problem?
billyswong
Posts: 27
Joined: March 13th, 2005, 11:33 am

Post by billyswong »

People in MozillaTaiwan found that the functions of "Focus last selected tab when closing tabs" in TabFX and "Close Right Tabs" in TMP do not work after installing Session Manager. I don't have any one of these two extensions installed but someone there asked to report the problems. So...
Muescha
Posts: 53
Joined: February 17th, 2005, 9:18 am
Location: Germany

Post by Muescha »

zeniko wrote:
Muescha wrote:at my installation the delay after closing a tab is always between 7 seconds and 12 seconds and i think this is too much.

Interesting. My tabs close as good as immediately. How many windows/tabs do you usually keep opened? And what system are you working on (CPU, RAM, OS)?


I have normaly about 15-20 windows open. and some windows has sometimes up to 20 or 30 tabs.


My System:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1 - Build ID: 2006011112
Pentium 4 2,8 GHz 1GB RAM
Windows XP - SP 2

zeniko wrote:
Muescha wrote:i would prefer a faster solution integrated in session manager

Alternative solutions are already available apart (such as the mentioned undoclosetab extension). I only integrated Undo Close Tab, because I could reuse the session managing code. After all, this is a session manager and no tabbed browsing extension.


i disagree:

firefox has the great thing of tabbed browsing.
and each tab is the same as each standalone window.

if you implement in session manager some functions for windows, then you dont can exclude this functions for the tabs.
********
Posts: 947
Joined: August 24th, 2005, 12:23 pm

Post by ******** »

Muescha wrote:
zeniko wrote:
Muescha wrote:at my installation the delay after closing a tab is always between 7 seconds and 12 seconds and i think this is too much.

Interesting. My tabs close as good as immediately. How many windows/tabs do you usually keep opened? And what system are you working on (CPU, RAM, OS)?

I have normally about 15-20 windows open. and some windows has sometimes up to 20 or 30 tabs.

My System:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1 - Build ID: 2006011112
Pentium 4 2,8 GHz 1GB RAM
Windows XP - SP 2

well, that would explain it.
you have 200 to 600 "pages" open at once!
most users have 1 to 5 open at once.
i have 7 to 15 and all in one window.
with that many tabs and windows, even with your fast computer, it's going to take a while for Session Manager to read/write all the data to a file.
if you really need the speed, just use undoclosetab or superT's built-in undoclosetab function.
old zeniko
Posts: 0
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 5:00 pm

Post by old zeniko »

Gary King wrote:You fixed the problem so quickly - thanks! Did it take long to diagnose the problem?

As soon as I saw that you were using a Mac and that your session file didn't work on my installation, either, it was pretty clearly a line-ending issue (since that's basically the only OS-specific part of this extension).

billyswong wrote:People in MozillaTaiwan found that the functions of "Focus last selected tab when closing tabs" in TabFX and "Close Right Tabs" in TMP do not work after installing Session Manager.

Thanks for mentioning these problems here. The TabFX issue is an extension incompatibility which IMO should be resolved on the TabFX end. As a work-around, set the number of remembered tabs in Session Manager's options to 0 and use TabFX's Undo Close Tab functionality. The TMP related issue seems to be irreproducible on a clean profile (I don't see why this shouldn't work and would need more information for being able to do anything about it).

Muescha wrote:I have normaly about 15-20 windows open. and some windows has sometimes up to 20 or 30 tabs.

Interesting. As you might guess, I rarely get over one window and 10 to 15 tabs. And since I doubt that my system would sustain only half that many tabs as you cite to have opened, I won't be able to do any testing at these extreme ranges...

Muescha wrote:if you implement in session manager some functions for windows, then you dont can exclude this functions for the tabs.

What's your point? Session Manager allows you to reopen closed tabs just as well as closed windows, doesn't it?
SevenSeven
Posts: 33
Joined: February 8th, 2004, 1:05 pm

Post by SevenSeven »

zeniko,

Using 0.3.6.3, came across a bug. I had 2 windows open, 1 with several tabs, the other with 1 tab, saved the latter using Save Current Window, then loaded that session and both windows were restored.
old zeniko
Posts: 0
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 5:00 pm

Post by old zeniko »

SevenSeven wrote:Using 0.3.6.3, came across a bug. ...

Thanks for notifying me of this. The bug is fixed as of <a href="http://www.haslo.ch/zeniko/software/sessionmanager.xpi">version 0.3.6.4</a>. This fix should also improve further tab closing performance.
Peng
Posts: 778
Joined: November 9th, 2004, 2:31 pm
Location: Central Florida
Contact:

Post by Peng »

Okay, I have one thing I would really like, if I were to replace Tab Mix Plus's session manager with this extension: When I re-open a session, I'd like to have it overwrite old windows, but not overwrite old tabs. Meaning, if I have one Firefox window open, with two tabs, and I open a saved session that only contains one window, I'd like all the tabs from the saved session to be added on to my current window. Try Tab Mix Plus to see how it handles it.

Also, IMO, TMP has a spiffier UI. It, unfortunately, isn't as reliable as Crash Recovery (and then I hope Session Manager) has proved to be, so I think I'll replace it with Session Manager, but I do think it looks better.

I prefer TMP's context menu over the separate rename and delete dialogs SM has. The delete one is okay, actually, because it's useful to be able to delete multiple sessions, but since the rename dialog only acts on one session, it's not as nice. It might actually be useful to make it act on multiple sessions, and have the 'Rename' button in it only save the changes and not close the window, or allow you to rename multiple sessions in one shot. Then it would be okay, because there would be a purpose for having the dialog.

The only other UI thing that bothers me much is that I think I'd prefer if I could make the buttons just activate the drop-down, instead of having both the button on the left that does something and the separate drop-down. (Optionally!) Having both means they take up more space and I have to be more accurate with my clicks. I'm not sure if it's worth coding an option for, though. I'm rather spoiled by Tab Mix Plus's almost excessive amount of customization. But it would be a nice option.

But, thank you very, very much for your reliable extension(s). :) (So far -- I've never experienced what happens to Crash Recovery if Firefox crashes again on startup; that's what really bothered SessionSaver and Tab Mix Plus.) That is what matters most. But a pretty UI is a nice cherry on the top.

Edit: Ack! I forgot about my other UI complaint: It would be nice if the preferences window was accessible from the toolbar button/menu.
Hug Peng
(aka Matt Nordhoff)
Check out: Adblock Plus | FoxClocks | OpenBook
old zeniko
Posts: 0
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 5:00 pm

Post by old zeniko »

Peng wrote:When I re-open a session, I'd like to have it overwrite old windows, but not overwrite old tabs. Meaning, if I have one Firefox window open, with two tabs, and I open a saved session that only contains one window, I'd like all the tabs from the saved session to be added on to my current window. Try Tab Mix Plus to see how it handles it.

I don't see how overwriting all windows but the current one and adding tabs to that one makes sense. Either you want to overwrite, or you want to append - IMO there is no reasonable in between. Further on, appending to the current window is already possible: simply hold the [Ctrl] key down when loading a session.

Peng wrote:I prefer TMP's context menu over the separate rename and delete dialogs SM has.

I don't. Context menus on menu items are against most HGIs - because when the context menu closes, the underlying item vanishes as well, which tends to get quite frustrating at times.

Peng wrote:The only other UI thing that bothers me much is that I think I'd prefer if I could make the buttons just activate the drop-down, instead of having both the button on the left that does something and the separate drop-down.

You've got two options here: either you get used to right-clicking the buttons to open the drop-down menu (which is how Back and Forward buttons work) or you have a look at the CSS hack mentioned above.

Peng wrote:I'm rather spoiled by Tab Mix Plus's almost excessive amount of customization.

And I hope you are aware that I'm not really fond of that... ;-)

Peng wrote:Edit: Ack! I forgot about my other UI complaint: It would be nice if the preferences window was accessible from the toolbar button/menu.

Why? What's wrong with having this extension behave as all other extensions (except TMP and few others) and have the Options dialog available through the Extensions manager? What options do you have to access that often?
Peng
Posts: 778
Joined: November 9th, 2004, 2:31 pm
Location: Central Florida
Contact:

Post by Peng »

zeniko wrote:I don't see how overwriting all windows but the current one and adding tabs to that one makes sense. Either you want to overwrite, or you want to append - IMO there is no reasonable in between. Further on, appending to the current window is already possible: simply hold the [Ctrl] key down when loading a session.


I generally operate with just one window. Sometimes I'll have another one from a JavaScript popup, but not often and not for long then, rarely across restarts. I don't like a separate window being opened when I restore a session, but I don't want to lose whatever tabs I have in the window when I open the session. I'll remember the Ctrl key thing, though. It looks like exactly what I want, except I don't want to have to hit Ctrl. ;) Thanks. (Note that I don't have different sessions for different purposes, like one for school- and one for work- and one for gaming-related sites or whatever like some people do. I only use them so that I can close all my tabs except one when messing with extensions and restarting multiple times, so they all don't have to be loaded each time I restart until I actually want them all again.)

zeniko wrote:I don't. Context menus on menu items are against most HGIs - because when the context menu closes, the underlying item vanishes as well, which tends to get quite frustrating at times.


Well, that could also be solved by changing Firefox so the underlying menu is not closed, couldn't it? I think it looks better than having a more-cluttered main menu.

zeniko wrote:You've got two options here: either you get used to right-clicking the buttons to open the drop-down menu (which is how Back and Forward buttons work) or you have a look at the CSS hack mentioned above.


Ooh. I try to read threads completely before I post in them unless they're just really, really long, but I haven't managed to do it with this one. I'm still stuck on page 4. I'll check the CSS hack out, thanks. :)

zeniko wrote:And I hope you are aware that I'm not really fond of that... ;-)


I didn't know that, but it doesn't surprise me. Being able to customize every little thing is nice for the user so they get just what they want, but being able to customize very minor things that don't really matter makes the code more complex pretty much unnecessarily and can lead to teh extension being slower and buggier, which is bad for the user. So far, I think Tab Mix Plus is doing excellently, but it may reach the point of big and buggy and clunky Tabbrowser Extensions. I hope not, it's a really great extensions, except for the unreliable session-saving stuff.

zeniko wrote:Why? What's wrong with having this extension behave as all other extensions (except TMP and few others) and have the Options dialog available through the Extensions manager? What options do you have to access that often?


It's quicker than having to open the Extension Manager and scroll down and find the proper extension. But, you're right. Once I get it set up how I want it (I have used Crash Recovery for some weeks, but not Session Manager), I won't be accessing the preferences much.

You know you do have those certain preferences listed at the bottom of the menu, though. ;)

Edit: Hey, what's with sessionmanager.dat? What is it? It doesn't have all the nice blank lines that crashrecovery.dat and the *.session files do that make them easier to mentally parse. It hasn't been modified in an hour and 40 minutes, since just a few minutes after I installed Session Manager.

Edit: I have a silly question: Why do the four extensions I know of from you (Console², Crash Recovery, Fission, Session Manager) all have almost the same GUID, only the last two characters are different?

Edit: You know, the icon in the Session Manager toolbar button, when you're using small icons, is about two pixels higher than centered.
Hug Peng
(aka Matt Nordhoff)
Check out: Adblock Plus | FoxClocks | OpenBook
User avatar
dougeeebear
Posts: 548
Joined: September 15th, 2005, 4:17 pm

Post by dougeeebear »

Peng wrote:Well, that could also be solved by changing Firefox so the underlying menu is not closed, couldn't it? I think it looks better than having a more-cluttered main menu.

I have removed some items from the Sesson Manager toolbar menu with the help of this code (thanks to zeniko):

Code: Select all

#sessionmanager-toolbar menuitem[oncommand="gSessionManager.saveWindow();"],
#sessionmanager-toolbar menuitem[oncommand="gSessionManager.openFolder();"],
#sessionmanager-toolbar menuseparator[_id="separator"],
#sessionmanager-toolbar menuitem[oncommand="gSessionManager.rename();"],
#sessionmanager-toolbar menuitem[oncommand="gSessionManager.remove();"],
#sessionmanager-toolbar menuseparator[_id="options-separator"],
#sessionmanager-toolbar menuitem[_id="resume"],
#sessionmanager-toolbar menuitem[_id="reload"],
#sessionmanager-toolbar menuitem[_id="overwrite"] {
   display: none !important; }


Then if I want to use a selection that I have removed, I use it from the Tools > Session Manager menu.
Peng
Posts: 778
Joined: November 9th, 2004, 2:31 pm
Location: Central Florida
Contact:

Post by Peng »

Hmm, I think I might try that on a few of the items. Thanks, dougeeebear.

I don't think I'll try the toolbar button-changing thing, though. Looks too big and messy and hackish.

Edit: zeniko, why don't all of the menu items have _id attributes? Or why don't all of them just use id? Just for your convenience?

Edit: Cool. I removed some of the items I didn't want, now it looks better. But now it also jumps when I open it because it's not as wide as it would be without my CSS. Ick.
Last edited by Peng on March 21st, 2006, 2:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Hug Peng
(aka Matt Nordhoff)
Check out: Adblock Plus | FoxClocks | OpenBook
User avatar
dougeeebear
Posts: 548
Joined: September 15th, 2005, 4:17 pm

Post by dougeeebear »

Peng wrote:I don't think I'll try the toolbar button-changing thing, though. Looks too big and messy and hackish.

That's what it is, a hack (but it works) :)
Peng
Posts: 778
Joined: November 9th, 2004, 2:31 pm
Location: Central Florida
Contact:

Post by Peng »

dougeeebear wrote:That's what it is, a hack (but it works) :)


Yeah. Hacks are fun, but it's a big, messy hack. No thanks. And I like the 3D effects.
Hug Peng
(aka Matt Nordhoff)
Check out: Adblock Plus | FoxClocks | OpenBook
C@rb0n
Posts: 1428
Joined: February 19th, 2005, 11:22 am

Post by C@rb0n »

Thanks, zeniko. Tab closing performance is significantly improved with 0.3.6.4.
Locked