Reviews for Session Sync
Session Sync by Gabriel Ivanica
Response by Gabriel Ivanica
Developer response
posted 6 years agoUpdate: Sorry but I was not able to finish the update yet. I will update the message once it's done.
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Hi, and thanks a lot for the detailed information.
Sadly everything you mentioned is correct and the reason is that I implemented the saving mechanism without taking into consideration that closed windows should be saved. I realized that the behavior is not what is normally expected from a auto-saving feature. It should store all windows no matter how many are opened and closed and that's something that I quite failed to implement properly.
I will try to fix this ASAP (I should be able to fix it this weekend) and latest by Monday a new version to be ready.
Regarding saved location. Sadly the auto-saving functionality is not stored into Bookmarks. They are saved into the browser "localStorage" that is hidden from users. Most addons out there will store everything into this storage and you won't have access to the data unless the addon offers some kind of an export functionality. I decided to store what user would consider important data into "Bookmarks" because they users will be in control of it and not the addon and data will be there (visible) always. Please understand that not saving everything into bookmarks is not an issue but the other way around. I tried to offer something better by saving only those things that matter to you (every user) in the most transparent way possible (through bookmarks).
The reason why auto-saved data can't be stored in bookmarks:
- because it is saved periodically and saving into Bookmarks would create performance issues for many users as well as possible sync errors (bookmarks are not really intended to be changed that often, I mean not once every 10 seconds)
- bookmarks are usually intended for things that you want to keep for a longer period of time
- auto-saved sessions are usually intended only as recovery options/backup restoring: browser crashing, system crashing or getting back to a certain site that you know you visited a few hours ago/days
Because of this decision only bookmarks are synced across Firefox accounts. But I would say that is ok because you can always decide if you want to promote an auto-saved session to a synced session by saving it into Bookmarks.
Usually there are many things to consider when building such an extension and I tried to keep a good balance between functionality and features. It won't be perfect for everyone but as I receive feedback I try to improve it. Thanks again for feedback. Promise that I will have an update for this ASAP. I will update this comment as soon as the implementation is ready.
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Hi, and thanks a lot for the detailed information.
Sadly everything you mentioned is correct and the reason is that I implemented the saving mechanism without taking into consideration that closed windows should be saved. I realized that the behavior is not what is normally expected from a auto-saving feature. It should store all windows no matter how many are opened and closed and that's something that I quite failed to implement properly.
I will try to fix this ASAP (I should be able to fix it this weekend) and latest by Monday a new version to be ready.
Regarding saved location. Sadly the auto-saving functionality is not stored into Bookmarks. They are saved into the browser "localStorage" that is hidden from users. Most addons out there will store everything into this storage and you won't have access to the data unless the addon offers some kind of an export functionality. I decided to store what user would consider important data into "Bookmarks" because they users will be in control of it and not the addon and data will be there (visible) always. Please understand that not saving everything into bookmarks is not an issue but the other way around. I tried to offer something better by saving only those things that matter to you (every user) in the most transparent way possible (through bookmarks).
The reason why auto-saved data can't be stored in bookmarks:
- because it is saved periodically and saving into Bookmarks would create performance issues for many users as well as possible sync errors (bookmarks are not really intended to be changed that often, I mean not once every 10 seconds)
- bookmarks are usually intended for things that you want to keep for a longer period of time
- auto-saved sessions are usually intended only as recovery options/backup restoring: browser crashing, system crashing or getting back to a certain site that you know you visited a few hours ago/days
Because of this decision only bookmarks are synced across Firefox accounts. But I would say that is ok because you can always decide if you want to promote an auto-saved session to a synced session by saving it into Bookmarks.
Usually there are many things to consider when building such an extension and I tried to keep a good balance between functionality and features. It won't be perfect for everyone but as I receive feedback I try to improve it. Thanks again for feedback. Promise that I will have an update for this ASAP. I will update this comment as soon as the implementation is ready.
234 reviews
- Rated 4 out of 5by HumanistAtypik, 3 months ago
- Rated 2 out of 5by Firefox user 14309829, a year agoI wish they would add firefox container support. I have tabs stored that are assigned to specific containers, which go haywire when restored in a new session because they get assigned to "no container" and go on a loop
- Rated 3 out of 5by rediffusion, a year ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Mostly Harmless, a year agoAlthough not updated for some time, this add-on has consistently worked for me for over 5 years. It's been my go-to research tool when using Firefox. Bookmarks are OK but fall short when trying to do some concerted research but this session manager is fantastic. It's never failed me and syncs easily between devices using Mozilla Sync. Thanks to the dev for this gem and hopefully it stays updated as Firefox progresses.
- Rated 4 out of 5by Montanagrl5, a year ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by EcksDy, a year ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 14684093, a year agoThis addon does what firefox sync should do. And it does even more. You can setup collections of links. Fortunately firefox sync does sync bookmarks reliably. But it fails in syncing tabs in a reliable way. Here session sync comes in as a convenient workaround.
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 16850052, a year agoLost all saved history when I encounter a PC crash.
Developer response
posted a year agoPlease do not use Session Sync for auto history saving. It's not something that it's guaranteed and it's even in the description of the addon on the first line with bold. It's just a feature that is most of good enough but not something that is perfect.
THIS ADDON IS NOT INTENDED FOR AUTO-SAVING OF SESSIONS!
As for saving sessions manually, those sessions are stored into bookmarks so it should be impossible to lose them unless the whole Firefox profile is broken in which case is not the addon fault. - Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 17989927, a year agoI use Session Sync since 3 years now and it worked super for me, fast, reliable and neat to use. After a recent computer breakdown, at the computer store they made a new operating system installation and a minor recovery of my data. Mr.Ivanica helped me providing precious information and all the support in order to get the extension back at work again with all my sessions 100% restored.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 17422724, 2 years agoExtremely useful addon. I have used this for at least 3 years.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 17698144, 2 years agoGreat add-on! Pinned tabs are saved, but not restored as pinned in Firefox on Linux. It would be fantastic to be able to find duplicate tabs also! Cheers!
- Rated 3 out of 5by BryanChance, 2 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 17687656, 2 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Shodaime, 2 years agoGreat add-on. I wish there are options to change the colour or theme of the interface. Something even basic, like; light, grey and dark.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 6010058, 2 years ago
- Rated 4 out of 5by PeaceByJesus.net, 2 years agoSorry: I had stated that "there is no option to save a session" since I did not see one, or read that this was to be found via mouse hover over a heart icon (like "favorites"). I thought it would be in text, and maybe via right click. As a long time user of the legacy Session Manager I also assumed that this add on would auto save sessions depending on how often you wanted, and where you wanted. And restore local web pages as well.
However, the untitled heart icon does work to save that session as a bookmark, which is good though where the bookmark is saved is not an option.
And I also see via the tutorial (moz-extension://cf54e725-638a-4074-b4ae-b519e7d0f380/data/home/home.html) that Gabriel Ivanica has put a lot of work into this add on and that there are some options!
So thanks for this needed good add on, and it works for me even while using the Izheil Multi-row tabs patch.Developer response
posted 2 years agoWhat do you mean by no option to save sessions?
There's a red heart icon that has a tooltip with "Save Session".
Auto-save is not saving in bookmarks, only manual saving will do so because otherwise I would create thousands of almost useless bookmarks for users.
The addon should work as intended, but in case some other addon creates some weird incompatibility it might not, but that's something I can't fix or change. Though, there should clearly be no issues to save a certain session. - Rated 5 out of 5by asdasd asdasasd, 2 years agoExcellent!!! very few plugins are as useful as this one. I like to have many tabs open and this tool allows me to manage them in a spectacular way. Thank you very much!!!
I hope that in the future it will continue to be updated, even if they don't add more features, it should be incorporated by Firefox natively. - Rated 2 out of 5by dafFDasd, 2 years agoOK, so I have updated the review:
Lists currently open windows and tabs, clicking switches to clicked tab. But no tab delete nor search in tabs functionality. Max Pop up window size is too small. It needs to be a full page in new tab.
Does not auto save sessions.
UPDATE: The „Tab View” button opens a new page instead of a pop up. I'd rename it to something more intuitive (maybe view everything in new tab). It is possible to search the tabs there using Ctrl+g.
But despite the entry being highlighted after exiting from the search, the Enter key does not activate the tab.
Also Ctrl+Shift+V is a bad choice of hotkey. It is already universally reserved and used as „Paste without formatting”. I'd recommend opening in new tab view by default instead.
UPDATE 2: The hotkey can be changed. But the Settings popup closes every damn time I set something. It requires to reopen the stupid main pop up, then the settings pop up again and scroll down again to the last place.
Additionally the developer has not responded to the lack of close current tab/window functionality. This is the most important feature remaining.
Instead of practical functionality, this add-on includes wasteful animations without option to turn them off. They should be off by default or removed completely. It is an (annoying) anti-feature to waste time staring at unnecessary delays in workflow.Developer response
posted 2 years agoHi. I understand that you would expect something from an addon but the description states clearly that the addon is not intended for Auto-Saving of session. At the same time popup size is simply limited by Firefox, that's the maximum any developer can do, simply I can't make it bigger than that because that's and API limitation (nobody knows why just Firefox stupid decisions).
Regarding the full-page or new-tab -> those options are already available
Regarding search in tabs: yeah.. sorry that's a feature that would've been nice but was not able to implement it.
Auto-Save: There is some autosave implemented but not a full-featured like maybe other addons might have, but the whole purpose of the addon is to manually save what you need. - Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 17455306, 3 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by SiteBuilderOne, 3 years agoExcellent add-on, highly intuitive.
The ability to dock this in to native FireFox Sidebar would be awesome (Simple Tab Groups has this option). Currently using Tab View working great - thanks!!! - Rated 3 out of 5by Rei, 3 years ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by kcufuoyeid, 3 years agoIf you have hundreds of tabs autosave feature will use high IO/ disk writing, even while Firefox is IDLE. I mean no user activity, not a single website opened or active, no changes happening. On fresh profile it's negligle. My main profile its hitting up to 36mb every 10 seconds. Given that I leave Firefox running 24/7. This is an SSD killer. For the record I have thousands of bookmarks and hundreds of tabs opened but they are inactive and unloaded. I recently updated Firefox to 100 and have Firefox running in Sandboxie. A workaround for this is to disable the 'autosave' option or change it to a high value like 600seconds (10 minutes). The default setting is absurdly low 15 seconds. I personally uninstalled as I rarely used this addon.
Developer response
posted 3 years agoHi. I'm sorry that you consider this a bad experience but please understand that your context is way outside of a normal user situation. The addon just tries to save the data into storage and I have no way of configuring how and where that storage goes, it's what the API provides. As regarding the configuration, you have the option to not use the saving at all (disable) or you have the option to change the interval of the saves, there is not really anything left to do, and the timing was set to 15 seconds because most users have a few tabs opened and saving them will not require substantial IO or storage. In your case yes it does not makes sense but that's why you have the options to change. The storage space is just made up of the URL and title of the addon and the icon of the site nothing more, so there's no real overhead that I create other than what it is required for a session.
Please also not that the addon description clearly states that "THIS ADDON IS NOT INTENDED FOR AUTO-SAVING OF SESSIONS!".
Having this in mind, giving a 1 star rating to something that is not intended for your own purposes and in that context of having hundreds of tabs it's a little bit excessive.