Reviews for Session Sync
Session Sync by Gabriel Ivanica
Review by Multipanda
Rated 4 out of 5
by Multipanda, 5 years agoIt's still saving tabs as it should, but the restore function seems a bit broken.
The restore doesn't restore them in the right order, and also might not restore all tabs when I try to have it restore in a new window. I have a lot, more than a hundred and that seems like too much for the extension to handle.
ALso it would be a good idea to indicate next to each snapshot exactly how many tabs are saved.
It's something Session buddy does and it help keep track as to whether tabs get lost or not.
EDIT 2 (May 2020):
The things mentioned above are still applicable, such as tabs being moved around (someone else suggested creating a tiny delay between each saved tab, might fix it, and it wouldn't negatively impact those who aren't using many tabs),
but worse, sometimes in the intervening months the History seems to have become more bugged, it's just blank, it seems like autosync doesn't actually create sessions in the history tab anymore. At least not anything I can see.
I can still save sessions manually, but there's no auto currently.
EDIT: I appreciate you being so quick to respond, and how obviously dedicated you are to keeping this extension running.
It seems like it's only the History that's bugged, once it gets saved permanently and restored from that one instead, it pops up in the right order it seems. I also disabled all other add-ons and it made no difference.
Shame I didn't notice that until I had spent 10 minutes restoring every tab by hand :-( but them's the breaks.
Yes I'm sure it's not just in reverse order when restoring from History, since that's easy enough to see, by checking first and last, and those around them. I also searched several other tabs and their placement were very different from both what I remember, and what's seen in the stored session.
The very first one always seems to be the same, and some of the early ones are also fairly early, though not in the same place exactly, some are shifted ahead, the final one isn't the right one, more like 4/5 towards the end, where the final tabs are shifted to somewhere in the middle.
If I restore the same session again from History, they show up in the same misplaced order, so at least the system/bug is consistent.
I think all gets restored, but have so many tabs that's not easy to know if all of them are there though.
Two other small things:
1. The popup prompt "Drop Item to delete" seems to interfere with the scrollbar, so I have to mouse scroll near the bottom, the scrollbar also seems a bit glitchy sometimes locking to the mouse cursor, and it also seems awfully small, I think it could stand being a bit bigger, especially in width for ease-of-use.
2. I saved multiple sessions from the history just to be safe, and noticed that another saved tab pushed what is the first tab in both the browser and history into second place.
What's even weirder is that it's a different tab in each of the three saved sessions that's taking the first place. And none of them were pinned or anything, at least two of them should actually be near the end.
My only guess is that it's the tab I had open in the exact moment that the session was saved in history or something.
The restore doesn't restore them in the right order, and also might not restore all tabs when I try to have it restore in a new window. I have a lot, more than a hundred and that seems like too much for the extension to handle.
ALso it would be a good idea to indicate next to each snapshot exactly how many tabs are saved.
It's something Session buddy does and it help keep track as to whether tabs get lost or not.
EDIT 2 (May 2020):
The things mentioned above are still applicable, such as tabs being moved around (someone else suggested creating a tiny delay between each saved tab, might fix it, and it wouldn't negatively impact those who aren't using many tabs),
but worse, sometimes in the intervening months the History seems to have become more bugged, it's just blank, it seems like autosync doesn't actually create sessions in the history tab anymore. At least not anything I can see.
I can still save sessions manually, but there's no auto currently.
EDIT: I appreciate you being so quick to respond, and how obviously dedicated you are to keeping this extension running.
It seems like it's only the History that's bugged, once it gets saved permanently and restored from that one instead, it pops up in the right order it seems. I also disabled all other add-ons and it made no difference.
Shame I didn't notice that until I had spent 10 minutes restoring every tab by hand :-( but them's the breaks.
Yes I'm sure it's not just in reverse order when restoring from History, since that's easy enough to see, by checking first and last, and those around them. I also searched several other tabs and their placement were very different from both what I remember, and what's seen in the stored session.
The very first one always seems to be the same, and some of the early ones are also fairly early, though not in the same place exactly, some are shifted ahead, the final one isn't the right one, more like 4/5 towards the end, where the final tabs are shifted to somewhere in the middle.
If I restore the same session again from History, they show up in the same misplaced order, so at least the system/bug is consistent.
I think all gets restored, but have so many tabs that's not easy to know if all of them are there though.
Two other small things:
1. The popup prompt "Drop Item to delete" seems to interfere with the scrollbar, so I have to mouse scroll near the bottom, the scrollbar also seems a bit glitchy sometimes locking to the mouse cursor, and it also seems awfully small, I think it could stand being a bit bigger, especially in width for ease-of-use.
2. I saved multiple sessions from the history just to be safe, and noticed that another saved tab pushed what is the first tab in both the browser and history into second place.
What's even weirder is that it's a different tab in each of the three saved sessions that's taking the first place. And none of them were pinned or anything, at least two of them should actually be near the end.
My only guess is that it's the tab I had open in the exact moment that the session was saved in history or something.
Developer response
posted 5 years agoUpdated after user answer:
Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation of the issue. I promise that I will go through each one and investigate it thoroughly to find the bug.
Regarding the other 2 issues:
1. The scrollbar is awfully small on purpose, let's just say by design (I thought that a non intrusive scroll bar is better because I expected most people to just use the mouse scroll )... of course, it doesn't have to be like that, it can be stupid small and I totally understand that. I will make sure to add an option to configure it to be just normal. Regarding the interference from the popup with the scrollbar... this one also on purpose because it looked a little out of place to move it near the scrollbar. Not really sure who to approach some things having in mind that there's no real solution to place everything on screen and not affect something else. I will think about it. The fact that the mouse can be glitchy sometimes... I'm afraid that can't be something from be but most probably from the addon popup window (if in the Tab View it doesn't happen then that's for sure)
2. Need to investigate that further, because it seems really weird
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Are you sure they are not just in reverse order ? Depending on certain Firefox setting each user has, tabs can be restored in reverse order or in the normal order (If for example you activated new tabs to be opened next to the current one or similar settings). This is not something I can control myself since each user can affect the order of the tabs. I just simply tell firefox to open all the links no matter how many they are. If there are 1000 tabs I tell Firefox to open all of them in the right order they were saved. I wish there was something wrong with the way the Addon was built but trust me there's really no issue. There can be multiple settings (from other addons or just Firefox settings) that can mess up what I tell the browser to do.
That's why I added the "Reverse restore order" feature in the Options. Please check that one to see if order will be preserved.
The addon knows to open even more than 10000 tabs, but depending on the number you want to open I'm not really sure if Firefox can really handle it (more exactly if the PC hardware can handle it the correct way). The thing is, if there's really a bug in the way Firefox opens 100 tabs when I tell him to do that I can't really do anything about that.
Anyway, I will investigate this again, but there's simply nothing wrong with the addon, I do what I must (I mean.. really... I go through every single tab and request Firefox to open it... it's not like I can't really do it properly), but if tabs are not opened then I probably have to check if there's any limitation regarding what the addon API can do, or if Firefox might miss some messages from the addon and I will try to find some workarounds.
Regarding your request to show the number of tabs next to each session. Yes, sorry about that, I will try to land it in the next update (the feature is planned but I kind forgot about it).
Regarding the rating, please have in consideration that there are extremely few people that really have hundred of tabs opened and restored so even you if are totally right the review might not be in line with most of the users. I really try to improve it constantly and even if I do something wrong I try to fix it right away. Having support from the community it's what drives me to continue to improve it :). Issues are fixable, but sadly bad ratings remain no matter what I do :(. No, I'm not asking to change your review, I just wanted to point out that it may not be a very accurate review for whoever intends to use the addon in the future.
Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation of the issue. I promise that I will go through each one and investigate it thoroughly to find the bug.
Regarding the other 2 issues:
1. The scrollbar is awfully small on purpose, let's just say by design (I thought that a non intrusive scroll bar is better because I expected most people to just use the mouse scroll )... of course, it doesn't have to be like that, it can be stupid small and I totally understand that. I will make sure to add an option to configure it to be just normal. Regarding the interference from the popup with the scrollbar... this one also on purpose because it looked a little out of place to move it near the scrollbar. Not really sure who to approach some things having in mind that there's no real solution to place everything on screen and not affect something else. I will think about it. The fact that the mouse can be glitchy sometimes... I'm afraid that can't be something from be but most probably from the addon popup window (if in the Tab View it doesn't happen then that's for sure)
2. Need to investigate that further, because it seems really weird
---------------------------------------------------------------
Are you sure they are not just in reverse order ? Depending on certain Firefox setting each user has, tabs can be restored in reverse order or in the normal order (If for example you activated new tabs to be opened next to the current one or similar settings). This is not something I can control myself since each user can affect the order of the tabs. I just simply tell firefox to open all the links no matter how many they are. If there are 1000 tabs I tell Firefox to open all of them in the right order they were saved. I wish there was something wrong with the way the Addon was built but trust me there's really no issue. There can be multiple settings (from other addons or just Firefox settings) that can mess up what I tell the browser to do.
That's why I added the "Reverse restore order" feature in the Options. Please check that one to see if order will be preserved.
The addon knows to open even more than 10000 tabs, but depending on the number you want to open I'm not really sure if Firefox can really handle it (more exactly if the PC hardware can handle it the correct way). The thing is, if there's really a bug in the way Firefox opens 100 tabs when I tell him to do that I can't really do anything about that.
Anyway, I will investigate this again, but there's simply nothing wrong with the addon, I do what I must (I mean.. really... I go through every single tab and request Firefox to open it... it's not like I can't really do it properly), but if tabs are not opened then I probably have to check if there's any limitation regarding what the addon API can do, or if Firefox might miss some messages from the addon and I will try to find some workarounds.
Regarding your request to show the number of tabs next to each session. Yes, sorry about that, I will try to land it in the next update (the feature is planned but I kind forgot about it).
Regarding the rating, please have in consideration that there are extremely few people that really have hundred of tabs opened and restored so even you if are totally right the review might not be in line with most of the users. I really try to improve it constantly and even if I do something wrong I try to fix it right away. Having support from the community it's what drives me to continue to improve it :). Issues are fixable, but sadly bad ratings remain no matter what I do :(. No, I'm not asking to change your review, I just wanted to point out that it may not be a very accurate review for whoever intends to use the addon in the future.