We do warn users that a refresh will result in lost settings. Both on our website (Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings) and when you click the button in about:support. I'm not sure what else you want, as most end-users find those warnings satisfactory, and a more advanced users, as you say to be, should have had no problem reading the warning

Thanks for the reply.

Let's deconstruct that link that you think is mitigating the potential harm of a Refresh.

First we have a section headed "Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings". I don't read any text there that sounds like a warning. Do you? I didn't and don't care about Extensions, since I have none (just a couple of very common plugins - Flash and Java).

Next we have a section headed "Reset Firefox to its default state". This is merely a step by step cookbook-style recipe for how to do the deed. Nothing that could be construed as a warning, right? And we're through the first two sections of the page. Nothing.

Now we have "What does the reset feature do?" Not only does this not have anything that says "warn" or "caution" or "careful", this REASSURES ME THAT EVERYTHING WILL BE BACKED UP. After describing what the profile folder is (which, being an advance user as I say I am, I already knew about), it tells me extensions will be removed. Remember, I've none, and my plugins, which reside in ./lib64/mozilla/plugins/, won't be touched (I shouldn't be able to mess with them anyway since they're owned by root and I don't believe FF is runing SUID, although I'm not sure).

There are a couple of sentences buried in the text that should have clued me in. Most importantly, here's what I had to notice:

'Your old Firefox profile will be placed on your desktop in a folder named "Old Firefox Data". '

BTW, I could consider that behavior a bug. Right? Why didn't Mozilla do what I consider the obvious thing:

$ cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/ $ mv qpejji6v.default/ qpejji6v $ mkdir afmt36nq.default-1440485757436

... and do its thing in the new 'afmt36nq.default-1440485757436' directory? Why is it making assumptions about my directory structure? The only thing it has control over is '~/.mozilla'. One of the reasons I got rid of ~/Desktop in the first place is the broken assumptions that firefox makes about that directory and its utility for my use case.

So, there isn't anything that we can construe as a "warning". There's some information, buried at the bottom of the page. "What else do I want"? I want something in bold, red, letters, at the top of the page, in an obvious place, that cautions me to think hard before I hit the "Refresh" button.

Thanks.

One more thing.

If you're wondering why I'm going thru this exercise, it's simple.

I want there to be something up on this forum that might actually serve as the warning that I didn't get. I got some fine print. I want a warning. Here it is now, right in the post title.

Maybe I saved some other person 30 to 60 minutes.

Thanks.

I do see the need and advantages of the simple refresh. I also see it promoted aggressively and sometime causes problems, although its method has improved over time.

I also marked your last post as the thread solution. Unsolved threads do not show up in Google searches or most users views. I am also cross linking the unresolved "bug" post you mention you confirmed.

• Firefox on Linux sometimes freezes until mouse moves /questions/1079578

P.S. Feel free to at least temporarily unmark the solution if you think Tyler is more likely to reply to an unsolved thread.

John99 said

I do see the need and advantages of the simple refresh. I also see it promoted aggressively and sometime causes problems, although its method has improved over time...

Hi John; thanks for your reply.

I understand the need for a simple refresh, esp in the many common adware-type cases it applies to (which no doubt flood the forum).

All I'm asking is that there be some prominent red flags associated with its promotion, to help prevent someone like me from blundering into what ended up being a bigger problem.

On further reflection, I do feel that the backup process is a bug; it's not good behavior for FF to make those sort of assumptions about my $HOME directory. It should limit its operations to '~/.mozilla' in this case (obviously if the app is being installed, the install will have to run with higher privileges and put it in /usr/$wherever).

If you wanted to be really smart about it, you'd do that and then, for backwards compatability, drop a soft link in ~/Desktop if that directory exists.

At an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM, when I refresh and the BACKUP FAILS (for any reason), it should LOUDLY WARN ME (ie use way too many caps lol), and ask for a confirm before proceeding. Now that's a real solution that goes beyond my particular problem.

I'll post a bug report to that effect in a few days.

Thanks again.

If you wish to discuss SUMO policy i.e. this forum etc. Including matters relating to general user or Firefox problems it would be better using the contributors forum

• /forums/contributors
  • or /forums/support-forum-contributors

I am not certain of the workings of the Firefox Refresh. I usually have multiple (tens of) installs and profiles for Firefox but not at present. IIRC the Refresh only acts on the default profile, but I have not tried testing that recently or looking up the bugs on it.

I have no idea of what Refresh's intended behaviour is when it fails, but would have guessed it just effectively leaves the original profile intact as long as possible, and creates & confirms the backup & new profile before removing the original. Your case seems to indicate that does not happen.

You seem to have a valid point about Refresh making assumptions about existing structures, and apparently it seems losing information when it fails. I know Mozilla is going to say yours is an edge case, but Mozilla is normally very careful about not losing users data, so this is something that should be fixed. Rather late to say so now but it would be a good idea too make manual backups of profiles if you heavily customise them.

P.S. if you do try to look up existing or recent bugs on Refresh here's a couple to start with, note it was previously called Reset.

• Bug 498181 - Offer to reset a user's profile if it's gone unused for months
• (Tyler's) Bug 872172 - We should call Firefox Reset from the Slow startup prompt
• https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1127744#c10 <- mentions default profile