That update behavior where ff is still running and existing tabs mostly keep working, but new tabs don't, has been a thing for years and everyone hates it, not just you or me.
I thought it was possibly related to ff on ubuntu switching to being a snap by default (even though I thought I had forced my system to have no snaps and no snapd and added a special ppa for ff) and said something in a comment on hn, and several people clued me in it's way older than that and I'm not the only one who hates it.
It's like ff devs don't actually use browsers, which is crazy of course. But, they really are ok with always having to blow away everything ypu have going at any random time middle of the day? (it's always someone's middle of their day or stretch of involved work)
They never have tabs open with partially filled forms or search results or web apps that "restore tabs" won't restore the way they were? Or this just doesn't bother them?
It feels like a case of "you're holding it wrong", as in the user should shape their usage pattern around ff's update strategy, like, always do and apt upgrade before sitting down, and never after starting to work, and if you leave tabs and work open over night, well I guess just don't do that?
> But, they really are ok with always having to blow away everything ypu have going at any random time middle of the day?
Y'all don't get your tabs restored when you restart your browser?
For me, the restart experience pre-snap was very easy - close, re-open, and you're right back. Most 'serious' webapps will happily save your drafts if, for whatever reason, you don't want to finish and send that half-composed slack message before restarting.
>Y'all don't get your tabs restored when you restart your browser?
Ironically, the tab restore breaks when you open a new tab and it hits the "Restart required" page.
On restart, the browser found a clever way to maximize user frustration. It simply attempts to restore the "Restart required" page again (and fails), leaving the new tabs you tried to open blank after the restart.
I still have updates enabled, despite the "Restart required" page providing a strong push to disable them. But at the current rate I might give in eventually.
The weird update behaviour is because file got replaced while Firefox is running. On Windows and macOS the updates happen on next start (whenever you choose that to be) so it's not an issue; on Linux updates are handled by your system package manager, so they couldn't line it up as nicely.
Of course that also means you could end up having queued but not applied updates for a long time on Windows and macOS…
You can avoid this issue (which pretty much only ever happens on Linux, mind you) by installing the package directly from their website instead of from your distro's package manager. If you'd like to help improve stability or use try features before they're fully stable, try the beta, dev, or nightly channels.
I run Arch and upgrade ~weekly, but I am very rarely inconvenienced by this restart behavior. Restore Tabs works pretty well on the modern web, and since old tabs still work, you can always complete whatever outstanding forms you have first.
Problem is when you click a link or enter a URL, restarting your browser restores the previous page from before you had triggered the restart prompt, discarding the page you were trying to open.
I thought it was possibly related to ff on ubuntu switching to being a snap by default (even though I thought I had forced my system to have no snaps and no snapd and added a special ppa for ff) and said something in a comment on hn, and several people clued me in it's way older than that and I'm not the only one who hates it.
It's like ff devs don't actually use browsers, which is crazy of course. But, they really are ok with always having to blow away everything ypu have going at any random time middle of the day? (it's always someone's middle of their day or stretch of involved work)
They never have tabs open with partially filled forms or search results or web apps that "restore tabs" won't restore the way they were? Or this just doesn't bother them?
It feels like a case of "you're holding it wrong", as in the user should shape their usage pattern around ff's update strategy, like, always do and apt upgrade before sitting down, and never after starting to work, and if you leave tabs and work open over night, well I guess just don't do that?