@Andrew: Switch? I haven’t switched. I use both Firefox and Opera on a regular basis.

@Nosh: I couldn’t help but laugh at the fact you replaced the close button with a minimize button. That is the funniest thing I heard all week.

@thorbeast: I would agree that it is useful, but it can actually be overly useful. I wish they offered multiple versions of the extension so that people looking to keep their Firefox slim and fit could install a more barebones version.

@James: I understand that they are trying to keep the bloat out of the browser, and I’m all for that. I don’t think that they should be bloating the browser with more features that decrease the effeciency of the browser. However, these two features could be implemented without adding anymore overhead since the features are already built-in. The two extensions that I mention which solve the problems don’t do anything other than set a couple values in the about:config.

@Mris: I would use that extension, but I prefer to use the built-in features of the browser. Using a separate session manager, in my opinion, is like reinventing the wheel.

@s427: I guess if you restart your browser often the popup box would get annoying in Opera. I do like your idea of having a shortcut to start a “blank Firefox” and that has me wondering whether that is possible? It sounds simple enough and might be something you can do.

@Pieter: I know one other person that always does that and I always thought it was funny. It’s essentially crashing Firefox on purpose, and I always thought that was ironic since the last thing you normally want to do is crash a program.

Maybe a good solution would be a simple extension which would add a toolbar button to close all tabs at once ?

[tbutton.mozdev.org] will let you do this.

I would prefer to see a prompt when starting the browser like in Opera

I don’t use Opera so I don’t really know, but I suspect that this feature can become quite annoying if you use your browser really often, as it means an extra click each time it starts. All in all, I think it’s easier to let Firefox restore my previous session, and then close all tabs by myself if I want to. No big deal : a bunch of Ctrl W and it’s done ! (I think there’s an option which specify that even if you close the last opened tab, Firefox doesn’t exit; or maybe this option is in TabMixPlus ?)

Maybe a good solution would be a simple extension which would add a toolbar button to close all tabs at once ? (This command can be added to the right-click menu on tabs, thanks to TabMixPlus –again.) Or maybe there exists a special command line, allowing to start Firefox only with a blank page ? This way you could have a special shortcut on your desktop : “Start blank Firefox”.

also there is a similair extension on the mozilla addon site called tab scope
[addons.mozilla.org]

Overall though I’m not put off by the fact that FF doesn’t have some (necessary) functionality already built in, just as long as those things are possible using extensions. It keeps the bare app light, like it should be. Firefox takes so long to start on my system that I’ve customized it and replaced the close app button with a minimize button.
Helps keep the blood pressure down.

I like the new spam protection; Was there a reason for the switch? Don’t forget to check out Aaron’s MySpace, they have two new songs since he graduated.