Mozilla's upcoming mobile browser Firefox Fenix changes tabbed-browsing fundamentally
Mozilla is working on a new mobile web browser for Android called Firefox Fenix currently; that is the main reason why development for Firefox for Android slowed down in recent months.
Fenix is based on Android Components and GeckoView, and in active development at the time of writing. While it is likely that Firefox Fenix will replace Firefox for Android eventually, nothing appears to have been set in stone yet.
Note: The following information is based on mockups and development versions of Firefox Fenix. Functionality may change during development.
Firefox Fenix's tabbed browsing functionality
A core difference between Firefox Fenix and other mobile browsers such as Google Chrome or Firefox for Android, is that Fenix changes tabbed-browsing significantly.
All major mobile browsers supported tabbed-browsing. The functionality is more or less identical to how desktop browsers handle tabs. Users may open multiple tabs and open tabs are retained across browsing sessions.
Sessions
Fenix supports browser tabs just like any other browser but changes tab management across sessions significantly.
Firefox Fenix stores open tabs in individual sessions; this happens automatically when the user exits the browser and does not reopen it shortly after exiting the application.
Means: the browser starts without open tabs from the last browsing session when the user opens the mobile browser at a later point in time. Firefox Fenix users may save sessions manually at any time next to that.
Sessions work differently from browsing sessions of desktop browsers. Fenix handles these sessions individually and gives users access to these tab sessions so that they may reopen sites they visited in the past.
The browser's homepage lists the current session and recent sessions opened in the browser. Fenix users may access these at any time from there to reopen sites that were open previously.
Fenix users may delete sessions, e.g. when they don't require access to them anymore. Sessions may also be archived for safekeeping.
Mozilla plans to integrate session share functionality in Fenix next to that; this open may be used to send information about the current session using Android's Share functionality or linked devices or Firefox Sync.
Closing Words
Mozilla's idea to change tab management in Firefox Fenix is certainly an interesting one. One benefit that comes out of it is that the browser won't use as much RAM as other browsers on mobile devices since tabs are only kept open during sessions but not across sessions.
Will there be an option to restore the classic behavior? We don't know the answer to that. It is certainly possible that some users will dislike the new method. Those who prefer to keep tabs open in the browser may find the new approach less useful as they'd have to reopen tabs frequently. One way around this would be to allow users to lock tabs so that they remain open across sessions.
Now you: What is your take on this approach to tabbed browsing on mobile devices? (via Sören)
thanks you saved my 1000 tabs :)
Fantastic! Thank you! This worked like a charm. Had exactly the same issue in Firefox on a PC and this fixed it.
Thank you for sharing this! Like you, I’d noticed that disabling/re-enabling the extension would work for that browser session, but I hadn’t tried anything yet to force a fix. I’m SO glad it was this easy!
I sure hope the OneTab team issues an official fix ASAP, though. Now that it’s been a few days, they’re starting to get bad reviews, which is unfortunate.
Yes! I also tried the workaround. I also reported this bug to OneTab team on the first day I faced this issue.
Thanks, Ashwin for the fix!
I was nearing desperation when I found your direction. It worked.
Thank you so much.
Hi, OneTab developer here. Sorry for this – it’s not clear why this bug is suddenly happening for some people, but we’re urgently investigating this with the Mozilla/Firefox team and will be providing a fix very shortly.
Thank you so much for sharing this fix! You saved my tabs. The only note/point I would like to add is for Step 2.
Perhaps put a note stating they should copy Step 3 and forward of your tutorial to Word. Once we close Firefox, we lose visibility to your tutorial. For me, I know I would not be able to remember the .bkp.
Again, thank you!
Easy temporary fix: To make OneTab work again, type “about:addons” in your Firefox address bar. Then find OneTab in the list of extensions, and click the blue toggle button twice. This will disable and then re-enable OneTab, and cause it to work again.
We’re working with Mozilla for a permanent fix. Sorry for the inconvenience, this is a very strange issue that is only affecting the Firefox version of OneTab.
I have found by disabling and then re-enable in the add on menu I get my tab back. Short term fix. Will try yours.
Thank you. I thought I had lost a month of digging. I’ll be a little more attentive about exporting the urls from the extension list now. It’s a great tool but Firefox doesn’t always play nice with its extensions.
Good news – I’ve been working with Mozilla all morning to resolve this. Mozilla have confirmed it was due to a bug in Firefox (related to extension permissions downgrades).
To fix OneTab, just go to “about:addons” in your Firefox address bar, click the ‘cog’ icon in the top right, and click ‘Check for updates’. This will upgrade you to OneTab v1.39, which fixes the issue.
Darn, I tried everything here and I still can’t get my tabs back. I even did a full system restore to a point last week hoping that my saved tabs would be in the old .xpi file, but no luck.
I’m pretty disappointed :(
Probably I should’ve been more patient, but now I don’t know how to feel about this. I lost about 900 tabs in the recovery process (I reinstalled OneTab), which, incredible as it sounds, weren’t all just a messy dump I’m never going back to, but actually important stuff (yeah, I have a peculiar workflow).
Trying to suppress the anger and reflecting on what happened, it seems I should blame myself for not having a backup. But surely I couldn’t back it up manually every time I save a tab, it would defy all purpose of having this addon in the first place. A couple of years ago data was stored at “~/.mozilla/firefox/%PROFILE%/jetpack/[email protected]/simple-storage”, and you could back it up with simple crontab. This is no longer the case, this folder is just empty. And since OneTab is closed-source black box, I couldn’t have done anything else as well.
So the only reasonable lesson to be learned is that I actually must stop relying on OneTab, since sooner or later it will let me down again. Fuck it.
I just disable and re-enable. No tabs lost!
I switched from OneTab to Tab Stash (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-stash/) months ago and haven’t looked back. I had never experienced any data loss with OneTab, although I was a bit concerned by some reports of data loss I read about. My main issue was with OneTabs performance, it’s a hog. I had been looking for a replacement and testing out a ton of addons for a couple of months when I finally discovered Tab Stash, and am damn glad I did. I really can’t recommend it strongly enough…
Thanks, bsdaddict. Never tried it, looks nice, but I’m a bit concerned by small number of stashed tabs on these screenshots, not sure if it’d be usable when stashing a lot of tabs. How many tabs do you usually have stashed?
Tab Stash is is a great alternative to One Tab, y’all… I made the switch months ago and am very happy with it.
>DO THIS FIRST: Before trying the following fix, I recommend disabling OneTab and re-enabling it from the about:addons page, to access and regain your tabs.
Worked for me! Many, many thanks!
I know it’s late but ist there an option for chrome on android tablets aswell? My wife hates it that the search bar and Tab list will just come Up again when she Scrolls up