Session Manager 0.1 to 0.3.9+

Talk about add-ons and extension development.
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alta88
Posts: 1029
Joined: January 28th, 2006, 3:08 pm

Post by alta88 »

ausgezeichnet! loading a saved window is lighting fast now that you don't seem to reinstantiate the browser.. great feature idea, btw ;)

however, if i open File->New Window, loading a saved Window kills the original window. so there's a distinction between Reload Session and load window.

didn't know the FF restart bug, thanks. but even if i File->Exit, check taskmanager for no runnng firefox.exe, i still don't get the Startup Dialog. also, how do i set the shutdown dialog, i didn't see a pref.

zeniko wrote: And if you really want to get rid of that additional click, you'll just have to use TMP (I'm not yet convinced that you surely won't accidentally replace a session you still needed).


alas, methinks i didn't phrase the request right again ;) hard to imagine anyone would want to babysit my doubleclicking - beyond that, it's pretty standard and common that single click is select, and doubleclick is select and go (damn the torpedos!). TMP has a lot of nice small ergonomic things in it (like bolding the default startup session and right click named session options) - but i can't use it because it doesn't do state! since that's the whole thing - i'm stuck with SM :D
old zeniko
Posts: 0
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 5:00 pm

Post by old zeniko »

@alta88: You've probably set the options to resume the current session and to replace existing windows. Unset them and try again... and please don't go looking for preferences anymore when using Firefox. You can now access each and every option from the official Options dialog (available through the Extensions dialog).
SevenSeven
Posts: 33
Joined: February 8th, 2004, 1:05 pm

Post by SevenSeven »

zeniko, 2 separate buttons, 1 for "Save Session..." and 1 for "Save Current Window...", or having the choice of a default behavior for the 1 button? It would make things a little more convenient, for me at least. Thanks for the continued work on this excellent extension. I just noticed it selects the last selected tab on session restore; very nice.
madonion007
Posts: 2
Joined: February 20th, 2006, 3:30 pm

Post by madonion007 »

hi, I'm running deerpark 1.5.0.1, and when I try to install Session Manager 0.2.7.1 I keep getting cannot install 'invalid file hash' come up. Any Ideas?
C@rb0n
Posts: 1428
Joined: February 19th, 2005, 11:22 am

Post by C@rb0n »

madonion007 wrote:hi, I'm running deerpark 1.5.0.1, and when I try to install Session Manager 0.2.7.1 I keep getting cannot install 'invalid file hash' come up. Any Ideas?

Try downloading it again.
alta88
Posts: 1029
Joined: January 28th, 2006, 3:08 pm

Post by alta88 »

zeniko, thanks for implementing suggestions in 2.7.1.

SM has changed how i can organize multiple 'groups' of tabs, and is especially invaluable for multiple virtual desktops with multiple ff windows. just brilliant!

there are probably a few usage enhancements i'll think of soon. sevenseven has a good idea, as sessions/windows are often just save-replaced with additions or removal of tabs in 'groups', so one-click would be great. a big help would be to identify the name of the active session/window as well.

most excellent work.
C@rb0n
Posts: 1428
Joined: February 19th, 2005, 11:22 am

Post by C@rb0n »

Is there a maximun number of remembered sessions? Right now I see 3 crashed sessions and 2 crashed sessions in my list, for a total of 5 sessions. I'm hoping there is a reasonable limit.

Also, would it be possible to also have date and time displayed for the "Previous Browsing Session" - especially since more than one can be displayed?

Thanks
old zeniko
Posts: 0
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 5:00 pm

Post by old zeniko »

@logan: <a href="http://www.haslo.ch/zeniko/software/sessionmanager.xpi">Session Manager 0.2.8</a> is a release for you, since I mainly improved the underlying session storing code.

@SevenSeven: You can now (as of 0.2.8) either shift-click or middle-click the button for saving the current window only.

@alta88: Please don't think too hard. ;) ~ As for displaying the name of the active session: session's aren't really "active" but represent a momentary snapshot. As soon as you click somewhere, you probably changed that state. Of course I could display the name of the last loaded session, but if you load a session, close all its tabs and surf somewhere else, that won't be of much use, either. ~ And as for TMP's usability: sure they've got some great ideas, but you won't get all here (that's not my intention). One of the things I'm not really fond of is the bold "active startup session" in the menu you mentioned. While highlighting makes sense, since you can change it in the menu itself, having a context menu on a menu item is not what I call intuitive or user friendly (since the menu closes after each and every operation) - and having highlighted items in a menu is also quite non-standard (so far only seen in context menus in the system tray - as to denote the default action on double-clicking)...
old zeniko
Posts: 0
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 5:00 pm

Post by old zeniko »

C@rb0n: The maximum number depends only on the space of your hard disk... currently you have to manually remove the crashed sessions. What about limiting those to a maximum of 3? ~ As for the multiple "Previous Browsing Session" entries: there shouldn't be more than two. I changed the default filename about two releases ago, so that the old one isn't overwritten any longer. Just open the sessions folder and get rid of the file backup_session. After that, you'll have just the one previous browsing session - and I'm not sure whether adding a date/time-stamp to that would be that useful.
madonion007
Posts: 2
Joined: February 20th, 2006, 3:30 pm

Post by madonion007 »

C@rb0n wrote:
madonion007 wrote:hi, I'm running deerpark 1.5.0.1, and when I try to install Session Manager 0.2.7.1 I keep getting cannot install 'invalid file hash' come up. Any Ideas?

Try downloading it again.


All ok now, 2.8 has autoupdated, and installed fine. Thx
C@rb0n
Posts: 1428
Joined: February 19th, 2005, 11:22 am

Post by C@rb0n »

zeniko, thanks for the response; and for all the updates.
old zeniko
Posts: 0
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 5:00 pm

Post by old zeniko »

Another minor update: <a href="http://www.haslo.ch/zeniko/software/sessionmanager.xpi">Session Manager 0.2.9</a> - again less bugs and more stability and a basic framework for extensions to get their own tab settings recovered:
* all xul:tab attributes with names starting with CR_ are stored and recovered
* upon recovering, there are two events an extension can listen for: CRTabRecovering when the tab chrome has been recovered and CRTabRecovered when the tab content is ready (including restored scrolling and text data, but not necessary with all frames loaded).
This should allow it e.g. the ImgLikeOpera extension to persist its tab settings (note that TMP specific settings are recovered since day one).
villepyry
Posts: 10
Joined: August 25th, 2004, 12:19 pm
Location: Helsinki, Finland
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Post by villepyry »

Love the extension. Thanks for doing all the hard work zeniko!

Would you zeniko consider adding a small (optional) tweak to the way the extension works? I'd like to see an option that when you start the browser after a succesful shutdown (ie. no crash recovery situation), you could instruct session manager to open both the saved session and open default homepage(s). Preferably so that the homepage(s) would be first in tab-order and then the saved session.

I personally hate feature bloat so not implementing a feature like this (that is likely used by few people) is completely acceptable, but I'd still like to see this :)

Also, please consider adding a single icon to the status bar instead of the menu in the Tools menu (hidden pref for this one perhaps?). My Tools-menu is exploding with all the extensions crowding in... and I'm sure most heavy extension users suffer the same fate.

But once more. Thanks for a great implementation of this feature.
alta88
Posts: 1029
Joined: January 28th, 2006, 3:08 pm

Post by alta88 »

i'll keep it as short a list as possible ;)

yes, i see your point re active session; i hadn't thought that out very well.

the confusion (for me) lies in the fact that a Session may contain one or more Windows. the UIs are not helpful in making it easy to know what Windows are in a Session, and thus manage them. i believe users tend to think of saving/naming/restoring a Window more.

for example, i have a Window with 10 tabs of Mozilla stuff. i add a tab, save the Window named Mozilla (lucky not to confuse with save a Session since you reuse the dialog wording ;)), then restart. i choose not to save the Session on shutdown, on restart i get to choose a Session to start and there in the list is my saved Mozilla name, so i choose that. well, the window does not size to what i expected when i saved the Window and it adds an extra (home page) tab when restoring tabs. if i select Mozilla from the toolbar button, i get a new Window with the right size/tabs.

i might have 2 other windows with completely unrelated activity. so i'd name and use a Session like ThisWeekStuff if i wanted to start all 3 windows on reboot or crash recovery or beginning of day etc. or if i were forever done with Mozilla, i'd close the window and resave the session and expect it to only include the other 2 windows from now on.

i hope my usage description hasn't bored you too much. the request is to create some way to manage this better.
old zeniko
Posts: 0
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 5:00 pm

Post by old zeniko »

@villepyry: This sounds indeed like hack you'll first have to tell me the usefulness about... this surely would be possible, but I don't know yet why you would want it in the first place. ~ As for the statusbar icon: won't happen. The status bar is for status messages, not to be used as yet-another-toolbar. Do you know that there is in fact a toolbar button. To get rid of the menu entries, you might want to have a look at MenuManipulator or do a userChrome.css hack:

Code: Select all

#sessionmanager-menu { display: none !important; }

@alta88: Yes, trying to keep the UI minimal and informative at the same time can be pretty impossible. Anyway, if you want to know what windows are in a session, you might think about naming your sessions more appropriately (somehow I doubt that indicating just the number of windows and tabs helps much here) - or about getting a more elaborate session manager such as MultiZilla's. ~ The second issue you mention should have been fixed some days ago. Does this also happen on a clean profile or with about:blank as homepage? Care to share your extension list and homepage setting with us? ~ As for your third point, that's about as it's supposed to work now already. Managing sessions even more comfortably lies not in the scope of this extension...
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