How do I save my tabs without saving all my history like I used to?
I just reformatted last night, and reinstalled Firefox today. For quite a few years, I'd had Firefox set up to 1) upon closing, save all my opened tabs, and the previously visited pages of those tabs 2) save no history other than the previously visited pages of tabs I have open while browsing, and save no history upon closing beyond saving my tabs 3) still be able to save cookies and such for sites I specifically allow
This is my computer that others occasionally use; I want to be able to closes Firefox keeping inconsequential pages I'm reading still there for my attention later, but be able to close private pages without people going through my history snooping around. I'm not willing to go one-by-one through my history deleting stuff. If I close a tab then close the browser I want that history gone; if I leave a tab open and close the browser I want that history there.
I can't seem to be able to set this up; 1) and 2) are completely eluding me. Years ago when the first add-ons were made to do it, I had my tabs saved via those add-ons; since then, (I only formatted yesterday) I think I had been doing it through Firefox's current features.
(I know there's related answers, ie "How can I save my tabs upon exiting?", but none seem to satisfy my issue) Eh, what gives? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Modified by nymersic
All Replies (5)
Does this sound like something that I only had working through a GreaseMonkey script or something like that? Guess it could be, as I hadn't really changed settings in a long long time, and may have forgotten. (I don't think so, though)
Anyway, this seems like it should all be stuff customizable straight through the Privacy tab, but isn't, which is... sad.
I'm not about to test and lose my history, but since you don't want your history anyway, it will definitely mean you lose the richness of the the History menu, and history in sidebar and library.
To restore the old feature, which I don't know if it will still work now without saving history, see item #31 in
You can make Firefox 7.0.1 look like Firefox 3.6.*, see numbered items 1-10 in the following topic Fix Firefox 4.0 toolbar user interface, problems (Make Firefox 4.0 thru 8.0, look like 3.6). Whether or not you make changes, you should be aware of what has changed and what you have to do to use changed or missing features.
Please check out item #31 and mark "Solved" one answer that will best help others with a similar problem, -- hope this was it. Please comment on any deviation needed different from suggestions.
I appreciate the quick response. I don't have enough time now but I'll hit that up later today; I think / hope that'll fix it. Firefox 3.6 sounds like the good ol' days to me. I'm quite willing to do without richness of sidebars and menus - they annoy the crap outta me. :D
Everything I needed was never more than two clicks away how I had it, with less clutter!
Thanks again.
You can come along way with using session restore to reopen the currently open tabs with its tab history, but you can't use Clear Recent History to clear the history when you exit Firefox in that case as that will prevent opening the previous session.
I'm not sure how you manage to do that previously unless you cleared the history yourself before exiting Firefox.
You can let all cookies expire when you close Firefox and create an allow exception for cookies that you want to keep. In that case you can't use Clear Recent History to clear the cookies as well as that will clear all cookies.
Regrettably dm, I got nothing out of that one. There doesn't seem to be the ability any more to set up what I had set up. Seems like I was lucky I never screwed with the settings after I had them like that. (No, I wasn't deleting my history upon each exit; I had the "Firefox doesn't save history" option selected - the only history saved was for tabs I left open when I exited. If you can tell, it sounds more related to the old "Clear History On Exit" option than the "Save No History" option today)
... it seems like Firefox is getting more bloated with each release (which comes out sooner and sooner each time!) while giving less customizability. I / we could all just be missing it (perhaps some wise Firefox techs know what I need) but the fact that I can't just go Tools--->Options and do it easy is bothersome. I'd rather have long menus (under Advanced buttons if you want to make them look pretty) than to try so hard to minimize the number of options shown, to make it look simpler, or whatever.
Rant done. I figure this problem won't be solved... gonna go check out some other browsers. Thanks anyway folks!