I don't understand what it is you want. Please rephrase.

I'm not sure where you're coming from in your thinking, so let's try it this way. Do you understand the concept of saving a tab off of the tab bar? If so, please explain how you see that.

I still what it is you want. Save the tab as a bookmark? Move the tab to its own window?

"I still what it is you want."

What?

"Save the tab as a bookmark? Move the tab to its own window?"

Immaterial to the issue.

How about this: Does anyone know of any way at all to take a tab off the tab bar and save it somewhere, anywhere in any manner.

Save it as a bookmark or a shortcut.

I can find no item on any menu that bookmarks a tab, nor one that creates a shortcut to a tab.

Shortcut Mouse to the address bar icon. Hold down the left mouse, and drag it to the desktop. From there you can put it where you want.

Making a bookmark.

On the page you want to bookmark, do a right-click in an empty area of the page. At the top of the menu, press the Star. Hot key; <Control> (Mac=<Command>) D.

Or, Press the bookmarks Star on the toolbar.

This will place a bookmark in the Unsorted Bookmarks Folder. To edit or move that bookmark, press the Star again.

A window will come up with the name of the page and its web address. You can edit these entries.

Next, select what bookmarks folder you want this bookmark in. If you do not see that folder, go to the far right of the Folder line, and press the down arrow. You can also create a new folder.

A page is not a tab.

Bump.

This is not solved.

A post was flagged as Solved Problem. Please remove that flag. If you don’t, others that can help may not read this post.

Go to that message, and use the Undo link to its right.

I can see why Fred was confused here. This is a tricky thing to do. I'd recommend looking at all the tab saving addons on https://addons.mozilla.org

A few nice ones that come close to what you want are: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/onetab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/send-tab-urls/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/tab-groups-panorama/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/save-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-set-saver/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/save-my-tabs/

But this one for sure will save a tab and its backward/forward history: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/tab-groups-panorama/

I am using Tab Groups now to help me organize. However, there is some question about it loading every time the browser crashes. Restoring the session shows all tabs listed, and not just the group that was open when it crashed. Yes, it still has only the group I was using when it comes back up, but the overhead still appears to be too large and the browser is still too slow.

Further, I cannot get any response about how long the history stays associated with a given tab.

Also, I can't find where to un-select "Solved" on this page.

KitchM said

Also, I can't find where to un-select "Solved" on this page.

FredMcD said

Go to that message, and use the Undo link to its right.

Your goal is to save the tab's full history: currently displayed URL and the "back" history? Maybe an add-on can do that.

I know of a way to extract the current and previous URLs for each of your open tabs from your current session history file and copy/paste those somewhere for safekeeping. It's not convenient enough to repeat often, but could be a useful method to know about from time to time. With that in mind:

One-time Setup:

(0) Install the "Session Extractor" bookmarklet (see the instructions in the top bar of the page for how to install it):

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/sumomarklets.html#SessExtr

To Extract the URLs:

(1) Create a copy of the session history file you want to mine for URLs. (Working with a copy avoids potentially locking the file and halting session history updates.) To do that:

Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
• (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table on the page, click the "Show Folder" button. This will launch a new Windows Explorer window listing the contents of your currently active profile folder.

Scroll down and double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Right-click the recovery.js file, choose Copy, then right-click a blank area of the list and choose Paste.

Note: By default, Windows hides the .js extension. This is all easier if you can see it. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/show-hide-file-name-extensions

Right-click > Rename the recovery - Copy.js file to recovery.json (or recovery.txt if you prefer).

(2) Open the recovery.json file in a Firefox tab. Either drag the renamed file and drop it on an existing page to load the txt file in its place, or right-click the file and choose Open With and use Firefox.

(3) In the tab displaying the session history file, click the bookmarklet button to run the script. This should generate a new page listing the URLs of each open tab from the file. You can select and copy this list and paste it somewhere for safekeeping.

Unfortunately, if you want to save the page as is, there's an extra step: press Ctrl+U to launch the "view source" page, and save that as a .htm or .html file. For some reason, saving the original page gives you the original session file instead of the HTML.

KitchM said

Further, I cannot get any response about how long the history stays associated with a given tab.

While a tab is open, Firefox keeps it in your latest session history file. There is a certain fragility to this: if the file is deleted or corrupted, there's no way to rebuild it.

By default, Firefox will keep the history of the latest 10 closed tabs per window, and the latest 3 closed windows. Thus, once a tab is closed, it may age out of session history fairly quickly.

By default, Firefox discards history past the 10th page "back" from session history -- during a live session, Firefox may retain as many as 50 back history entries.

These parameter values can be changed, but if you are finding session restores to be a drag on performance, you might prefer not to...

FredMcD said

KitchM said

Also, I can't find where to un-select "Solved" on this page.

FredMcD said

Go to that message, and use the Undo link to its right.

Which message?

jscher2000 said

While a tab is open, Firefox keeps it in your latest session history file. There is a certain fragility to this: if the file is deleted or corrupted, there's no way to rebuild it.

As with all things data on computers.

By default, Firefox will keep the history of the latest 10 closed tabs per window, and the latest 3 closed windows. Thus, once a tab is closed, it may age out of session history fairly quickly.

But not those in Tab Groups or those open in the current session? Further, those that are restored each time are still considered open, correct? That should make it indefinite, albeit somewhat of a performance hit.

By default, Firefox discards history past the 10th page "back" from session history -- during a live session, Firefox may retain as many as 50 back history entries. These parameter values can be changed, but if you are finding session restores to be a drag on performance, you might prefer not to...

I'm using Session Manager add-on, but I can't get info about that program's longevity settings, either.

Kitch, please don't worry about the "solved" message. Our moderators already found it and removed it on the 23rd. You are now free to use the "Marked it as solved" button in your email for any of the posts above or by clicking the "Solves the problem" button to the right of the post. :)