Fun Firefox hack: restore your last session

In older versions of Firefox, when you closed the browser window, open tabs would be lost. You could use plugins like Session Saver to restore them the next time you started Firefox. In Firefox 2.*, this became a built-in option.

Tools -> Options -> Main -> When Firefox starts -> "Show my windows and tabs from last time."

What I found annoying about Session Saver, and what I find annoying about the 2.* option, is that I rarely want to continue where I left off. Usually I just want to close the browser windows and be done with it. So the plugin/option makes me happy maybe 5% of the time. 95% of the time I have to hold down Ctrl+W until all the tabs are closed, and only then can I exit.

Also some time around Firefox 2.*, on launch it would detect if the browser shut down cleanly last time, and if not, give you the option to restore open windows and tabs. (Do you see where I'm going with this? ;)

So for the 5% of the time that I want to save the tabs I have open, I kill Firefox.

In Windows,

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open the Task Manager
2. Locate firefox.exe and click on it. Easiest way is to click the "Mem Usage" column - Firefox will usually end up at the very bottom.
3. Right click, select "End process"
4. Click "Yes"

The next time you start Firefox, it'll offer to open your windows and tabs.

Of course, killing Firefox manually using the Task Manager is kind of a pain. So create a shortcut on your QuickLaunch bar. Set the location to "taskkill /im firefox.exe". Now when you want to close Firefox and restore the tabs later, just click that icon.
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