Reviews for Session Sync
Session Sync by Gabriel Ivanica
Review by Firefox user 14684406
Rated 4 out of 5
by Firefox user 14684406, 6 years agoLots of good features, but one important thing it seems to be missing is a one-click "save and close all tabs" button (in the style of OneTab and others). I'd also prefer to have context menu options and/or text labels on the popup menu toolbar, as I don't find the icons that intuitive. It would be one of my favourite extensions if it weren't for those aspects.
** Update ** To give a little more information on the tab closure suggestion, I think the way OneTab does it is to save & close all tabs in the current window and leave the window open with a blank tab, although that aspect might actually be down to my browser settings. I tend to have just one Firefox window open at a time, but it could perhaps be configurable to choose whether it acts on all open windows or just the current one. This feature is a big thing for me in terms of how valuable the add-on is, as when my browser gets too cluttered or I need to break off and do something else, I'd like to be able to just quickly click to save everything and come back to a nice clean window, when I can then restore tabs one by one as I want to work on them. Nonetheless, on reflection I think maybe my original 3* rating was a little harsh, I've decided to make it 4*, but I think the addition of this save & close option would push it up to 5 for me, along with the labelling enhancement - good to hear that's planned. Just to emphasise, I think speed and ease of use is really important, so that when busy I can save or restore in one or two clicks without really having to switch between views or figure out which button to click.
Finally, one other thought is that some add-ons (e.g. TabStash) make use of the sidebar, and I like that as it provides instant access to sessions and reminds me what I have queued up as I can have it showing all the time. I realise that's probably quite a big thing to implement, but maybe worth considering? Thanks!
** Update 2 ** One other feature that would be very welcome would be a one-click option to remove an entry from a session when restoring/reopening it. So let's say I saved a session yesterday with sites A-F, and today I'm reopening sites A-C to work in them. Instead of having to click on each to restore and then go back to each and delete from the session, it would be nice to have an "Open and remove" option (which could perhaps be set as default left-click behaviour if preferred, maybe with a shift-to-override option too). Would be great if you'd consider adding this please! Thanks
** Update ** To give a little more information on the tab closure suggestion, I think the way OneTab does it is to save & close all tabs in the current window and leave the window open with a blank tab, although that aspect might actually be down to my browser settings. I tend to have just one Firefox window open at a time, but it could perhaps be configurable to choose whether it acts on all open windows or just the current one. This feature is a big thing for me in terms of how valuable the add-on is, as when my browser gets too cluttered or I need to break off and do something else, I'd like to be able to just quickly click to save everything and come back to a nice clean window, when I can then restore tabs one by one as I want to work on them. Nonetheless, on reflection I think maybe my original 3* rating was a little harsh, I've decided to make it 4*, but I think the addition of this save & close option would push it up to 5 for me, along with the labelling enhancement - good to hear that's planned. Just to emphasise, I think speed and ease of use is really important, so that when busy I can save or restore in one or two clicks without really having to switch between views or figure out which button to click.
Finally, one other thought is that some add-ons (e.g. TabStash) make use of the sidebar, and I like that as it provides instant access to sessions and reminds me what I have queued up as I can have it showing all the time. I realise that's probably quite a big thing to implement, but maybe worth considering? Thanks!
** Update 2 ** One other feature that would be very welcome would be a one-click option to remove an entry from a session when restoring/reopening it. So let's say I saved a session yesterday with sites A-F, and today I'm reopening sites A-C to work in them. Instead of having to click on each to restore and then go back to each and delete from the session, it would be nice to have an "Open and remove" option (which could perhaps be set as default left-click behaviour if preferred, maybe with a shift-to-override option too). Would be great if you'd consider adding this please! Thanks
Developer response
posted 6 years ago** Update **
Thanks for all the details. I will try to add the save and close feature in the next update. There will be 2-3 configuration settings to check for it initially to make it as you wish since I still need to consider everyone's ideas when implementing this but as long as it's a one time thing should be fine.
Regarding the sidebar... that requires a lot UI restructuring and that might take some time but I would consider this as well for future updates. Thanks.
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Can you please provide more information about how would you expect the addon to work when all tabs are closed ? All tabs from the current session or all windows and just leave one window (in case the session saves all windows and not just the current one). There's a thread here (https://github.com/ReDEnergy/SessionSync/issues/33) related to this issue, maybe you can provide your idea as well so that I can have multiple input on how to solve this.
I put tooltips for the toolbar menu but I suppose that you still need to move over them to understand them exactly what they do. Sadly, Firefox limits to 800 px the width of the addon so I can only put there labels for a few actions before I'm left with no space and that's why I used only icons. But, It's planed to have an option to also show the text along the icon, or only the text. I will try to provide this option as soon as possible.
So, If i fix those 2 issues then would you consider it a 5 star addon? Isn't there anything else? Because it's kinda hard for me to get how these only 2 issues make the addon a 3/5 star. I know it's hard to please everyone, but just think that it usually takes a lot of time to develop such an addon and the only reason why a developer would continue it is because there are users that support it, not financially, but by understanding that even if it's not perfect it can be improved. Of course, don't get me wrong, I'm not asking you to change the rating, but only to consider that low ratings can really hurt addons on the long run and are not really helping their development. Yes a review is also personal, it doesn't have to reflect everyone preferences, but it's really hard for me as a developer to add support for everything from the start. In time I might be able to do so but community support is valuable. Got a lot of request and ideas from users (https://github.com/ReDEnergy/SessionSync/issues) but implementing all of them is really challenging because many can be contradictory or were never in the original scope of the product.
Thanks for all the details. I will try to add the save and close feature in the next update. There will be 2-3 configuration settings to check for it initially to make it as you wish since I still need to consider everyone's ideas when implementing this but as long as it's a one time thing should be fine.
Regarding the sidebar... that requires a lot UI restructuring and that might take some time but I would consider this as well for future updates. Thanks.
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Can you please provide more information about how would you expect the addon to work when all tabs are closed ? All tabs from the current session or all windows and just leave one window (in case the session saves all windows and not just the current one). There's a thread here (https://github.com/ReDEnergy/SessionSync/issues/33) related to this issue, maybe you can provide your idea as well so that I can have multiple input on how to solve this.
I put tooltips for the toolbar menu but I suppose that you still need to move over them to understand them exactly what they do. Sadly, Firefox limits to 800 px the width of the addon so I can only put there labels for a few actions before I'm left with no space and that's why I used only icons. But, It's planed to have an option to also show the text along the icon, or only the text. I will try to provide this option as soon as possible.
So, If i fix those 2 issues then would you consider it a 5 star addon? Isn't there anything else? Because it's kinda hard for me to get how these only 2 issues make the addon a 3/5 star. I know it's hard to please everyone, but just think that it usually takes a lot of time to develop such an addon and the only reason why a developer would continue it is because there are users that support it, not financially, but by understanding that even if it's not perfect it can be improved. Of course, don't get me wrong, I'm not asking you to change the rating, but only to consider that low ratings can really hurt addons on the long run and are not really helping their development. Yes a review is also personal, it doesn't have to reflect everyone preferences, but it's really hard for me as a developer to add support for everything from the start. In time I might be able to do so but community support is valuable. Got a lot of request and ideas from users (https://github.com/ReDEnergy/SessionSync/issues) but implementing all of them is really challenging because many can be contradictory or were never in the original scope of the product.