Indispensable Firefox Extension

17 October 2006 : Indispensable Firefox Extension

A couple of weeks back, I discovered the Session Saver extension and I just can’t believe that I had never installed this wonderful Firefox extension! Get it! If you don’t already use it, just forget the rest of this post and install it… now! Update: Or install Firefox 2.0 and set up the Session Restore feature!

Session Saver has got to be one of the most indepensible extensions out there. And this one’s not just for all the Web developers out there either. I reckon this even beats the Web Developer toolbar in terms of usefulness.

Gradually going ga-ga

I’ll often have several windows open and several tabs open in each of those windows. Maybe I’m researching something or I’ve ended up multitasking again!

Then, I find myself in one of the following situations:

I’ve hit utter knackeredness and need to get some sleep. I’d usually hibernate Windows, but this sometimes leaves your programs running sluggishly when you resume Windows. As long as I don’t have any half written posts or other programs open, I’d bookmark all my open tabs and come back to them. Now, the problem is that I have a silly number of bookmark folders!

I go off on a little tangent and try out a demo for SVG or something. The demo crashes Firefox and I lose all the pages I have open.

My computer crashes, or Windows just decides that there’s some driver problem and restarts without any warning. Again, I lose the pages I have open.

I somehow manage to click “Close tabs” when I accidentally click the close button on the browser window.

All of the above situations usually end up with me trawling through my browsing history to find the useful pages I had left open to either read or bookmark.

Well, no longer. Session Saver will save pretty much everything, the entire state Firefox is in, including half-written posts.

A word of warning though: don’t panic! If you somehow manage to lose your previously saved state or accidentally close a single tab (I’ve done both so far), Session Saver backs up your previous state and the last ten tabs you have had open. Don’t do what I did: close Firefox one window at a time, worry that the two windows you wanted didn’t get saved, open Firefox, swear a lot, close Firefox only to ponder about whether or not Session Saver backs up your previous sessions, open Firefox to find it was too late and your last session had been backed up over the session you wanted.

A huge thanks to Jeroen for linking to the extension in the post I was reading about Multiple Firefox Versions.

How about you?

There are other extensions I use, but I’m not going to list them all here. I’ve seen several lists of essential Firefox extensions around, so I don’t see the point in adding mine. What’s the most indispensable extension you use?

16 Comments

Comment 1

I only recently started using SessionSaver too, mainly since switching to a Mac (Apple-Q is far too close to Apple-W!)

I didn’t know it saved the contents of textareas though – that’s pretty handy.

Matthew Pennell, 17 October 2006 at 1711

Comment 2

Yup, I can now scrap the JavaScript function I had for saving textarea content. :)

Furthermore, judging by today’s e-mail from Mozilla about Firefox 2 Release Candidate 3, Session Saver functionality is being built in as core features:

Improvements to tabbed browsing, including the ability to re-open recently closed tabs

Firefox will resume from where you left off after a system crash or browser restart

Mozilla

There's more detail in the Firefox 2 release notes (new features).

dotjay, 17 October 2006 at 1725

Comment 3

Very sweet. Thanks for the heads up. I just installed it and just need to restart my browser. FF doesn’t crash much, but when it does this is going to be a blessing.

Mike Cherim, 19 October 2006 at 0146

Comment 4

Thanks Jon, fantastic extension, just what I needed but never knew existed!

Found a good extension list here: http://indorgs.virginia.edu/betech/…

Cheers,
Nigel

Nigel Peck, 20 October 2006 at 2308

Comment 5

Glad to have been helpful, Mike!

Cheers for the link to that list, Nigel. Tails Export could be very interesting on the microformats front and Regular Expressions Tester looks very useful.

If anyone’s interested, I’ve started bookmarking my Firefox essentials on del.icio.us.

I’m wondering how many extensions are going to make their way into the Firefox core. I can just see Firefox’s footprint getting huge!

dotjay, 21 October 2006 at 1254

Comment 6

I have to admit I am not a huge firefox fan (Opera is more my style) but yes this kind of thing is very useful. Opera has had this feature for as long as I can remember. It is the sort of thing that makes you realise that the world isnt all bad and that someone is trying to make life easier for you! :)

Not sure of the extent of the firefox ext, but in Opera it also saves your history, so you can open a load of tabs, do some work avoidance (ie surfing), and then close the browser. Open it up again and you can still click ‘back’ through all your previously visited pages. Great!

Rathers, 22 October 2006 at 1253

Comment 7

Rathers, you’re certainly not alone, e.g. Simon Willison, Tommy Olsson.

The thing that concerns me about Firefox at the moment is the memory footprint. Opera’s is a lot better it seems. The fact that I find Firefox increasingly sluggish these days may persuade me to try out Opera soon, especially now that it is ad-free!

For now though, I’m sticking to Firefox. Something that Opera apparently doesn’t do, is save session form data. And there’s just so much I’m used to about designing and developing with Firefox and its extensions.

dotjay, 22 October 2006 at 1415

Comment 8

The whole Opera/Firefox debate seems quite divisive and folks from both sides seem to be unwilling to accept the other might be better. My problem is that I am lazy so I am unwilling to hunt out and install all the extensions to firefox, whereas Opera gives you pretty much everything out of the box. However extensions seems to be the one reaosn people prefer firefox! I am surprised Opera hasnt looked into this further.

Back on topic though, I can see why saving form data would be useful. I am always nervous about writing loads of text into a textarea on a forum/email website/blog/whatever, just in case the unthinkable happens! I often write a post in a text editor first and then copy/paste into the textarea. That protects you from browser crashes, comms failures the lot!

Rathers, 23 October 2006 at 1340

Comment 9

I often write a post in a text editor first and then copy/paste into the textarea. That protects you from browser crashes, comms failures the lot!

Rathers

Yeah, I used to do this too, but my laptop got so unreliable that unless I hit Ctrl+S every few seconds, I’d be likely to lose something! That’s why I wrote some JavaScript to save textarea contents to a cookie.

dotjay, 23 October 2006 at 1346

Comment 10

Now I need it for version 2.0 :-/

Mike Cherim, 25 October 2006 at 2316

Comment 11

Mike, the extension’s functionality is built into Firefox 2.0 – see my earlier comment on new core features in Firefox 2.0 and the Firefox 2.0 release notes.

Update: I've just tested the session-saving features in Firefox 2.0 and they're pretty good. To get the previous state to appear upon starting Firefox, you need to select “When Firefox starts: Show my windows and tabs from last time” from the main Firefox options. It still saves the contents of form fields and there's a selection of recently closed tabs in the History menu. The only thing I can't find is a way to go back to previously saved sessions as you could with the Session Saver extension.

dotjay, 26 October 2006 at 1932

Comment 12

Thanks for the tip dotjay. Got it. I couldn’t find it at first but I have now. I just wasn’t looking for the right thing in the right place :-)

O/T: Did you ever do those abbr/span tests we were discussing a couple weeks back?

Mike Cherim, 27 October 2006 at 1559

Comment 13

You’re welcome, Mike.

Regarding the tests, I’ve been busy with hosting troubles this week, so not had a lot of time. Keep an eye on my abbreviations test page in the meantime, but I’ll be sure to e-mail you with updates.

dotjay, 03 November 2006 at 1715

Comment 14

No problem, Jon. I didn’t see my approach on the test page, though.


.abbr {
  border : 1px dotted #999;
  cursor : help;
}

ABBR

I was hoping it was going to be tested as well. Thanks.

Mike Cherim, 10 November 2006 at 0409

Comment 15

Shoot, my code was removed :(

Mike Cherim, 10 November 2006 at 0410

Comment 16

Mike, I test it locally before publishing it on the site.

dotjay, 10 November 2006 at 1147

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17 October 2006 : Indispensable Firefox Extension