If you have accepted any sites bookmark me suggestions. That is where they open from. Would need to delete those and that should stop it. Or for some reason in Old Style Top Menu under View --> Sidebar something has been ticked. Check both please.

Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.

I think Firefox should takes its cue from the window that was active when you give the Exit command. So if you close the sidebar in that window before you exit, hopefully that would be recorded as the preferred state rather than what was happening in an inactive window.

(I should have tested this myself, but I'm not ready to close Firefox at the moment...)

Otherwise, what a PITA!

So, has this been solved?

I always close the Bookmarks sidebar that shows up when the browser opens. The sidebar is never open when I close Firefox.

I've never clicked on a "Bookmark me" suggestion.

This is a new behaviour.

Hi MargaretBartley, if Firefox has stored incorrect display settings, you can rename a settings file to restore default window and dialog status.

Are you still using Windows? This is similar for Mac if you've switched.

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, on the Profile folder row, click the "Open Folder" button. This should launch a new window listing various files and folders in Windows Explorer.

Leaving that window open, switch back to Firefox and Exit, either:

• "3-bar" menu button > "power" button
• (menu bar) File > Exit

Pause while Firefox finishes its cleanup, then rename xulstore.json to something like xulstore.old. If you see a file named localstore.rdf, rename that one to localstore.old.

Start Firefox back up again. Do windows display normally again?

If you need to restore the menu bar or bookmarks toolbar, use one of these methods to show the toolbar list and select the desired bars there:

• right-click (on Mac Ctrl+click) a blank spot on the tab bar (or the "+" button)
• (menu bar) View > Toolbars
  On Windows, tap the Alt key to activate the menu bar temporarily.
• in Customize mode > Show/Hide Toolbars (see: Customize Firefox controls, buttons and toolbars) -- use this to redisplay the title bar

To turn on the Bookmarks Toolbar, Menu Bar, or other bars, click it on the list.

To all those who are suggesting complicated schemes: If I close all sidebars before exiting ff, ff will later open without sidebars. This problem is not due to some misconfiguration.

The question involves causing ff to IGNORE what sidebars were open in random tabs when it is reopened.

Hi pb, as far as I know, there is no built-in setting to set Firefox to NOT open any sidebar if any sidebar was open when Firefox closed.

(It shouldn't be based on a random tab, if the sidebar is open in any tab in a window it should stay open regardless of which tab you switch to within that window.)

jscher2000 said

Hi pb, as far as I know, there is no built-in setting to set Firefox to NOT open any sidebar if any sidebar was open when Firefox closed. (It shouldn't be based on a random tab, if the sidebar is open in any tab in a window it should stay open regardless of which tab you switch to within that window.)

Thanks. I would not expect there to be a built-in setting, but there could be a config option regarding start-up behavior, unless that is what you mean by 'built-in.'

It appears that the behavior I am seeing is that if ANY window had a sidebar open when FF was closed, then when FF opens, it will put that sidebar into EVERY window that it opens. I say "appears" because I haven't checked that definitely happens. What does definitely happen is that it opens sidebars in at least some windows which did not have sidebars when FF was closed.

However, it's possible that this is a bug in an extension, and not a FF bug or misfeature. (For example, the extension might be setting a bit for its sidebar globally, when it should not.)

In any case, I would prefer the behavior that sidebars NOT be opened when FF is started, even if they were open when it closed, whether in the right window or not.

Thanks for trying to help.

pb said

However, it's possible that this is a bug in an extension, and not a FF bug or misfeature. (For example, the extension might be setting a bit for its sidebar globally, when it should not.)

Do you have a sidebar related extension installed  ?

'Will spare you the lecture, but : is there a special reason why you are using a very old Firefox version (43)  ?

Happy112 said

pb said

However, it's possible that this is a bug in an extension, and not a FF bug or misfeature. (For example, the extension might be setting a bit for its sidebar globally, when it should not.)

Do you have a sidebar related extension installed  ?

Yes.

'Will spare you the lecture, but : is there a special reason why you are using a very old Firefox version (43)  ?

Yes.

FYI, I observe the same behavior with FF 50.1. I forget if I saw it with 52.xx ESR.

Would you be so kind as to let us know which sidebar related extension
that is  ? (Might be helpful)

May we know the reason why you're using an old Firefox version  ? (We might be able to convince you to update to the latest, secure,
version ...... )

Happy112 said

Would you be so kind as to let us know which sidebar related extension
that is  ? (Might be helpful)

Scrapbook

May we know the reason why you're using an old Firefox version  ? (We might be able to convince you to update to the latest, secure,
version ...... )

No, I am not going to get into a discussion about this. Why not just assume that I have a good reason, as I've told you so. You don't think I have a good reason, do you?

I haven't tested all possible cases, but if I close the main window with the sidebar open then on the next start I see the sidebar in another window where I closed the sidebar before closing Firefox. If I close the sidebar in the main window then the sidebar in another window isn't affected, so I assume that the sidebar state stored in sessionstore.jsonlz4 for the main window could get applied to other windows.

I see the "sidebar":"viewBookmarksSidebar" property for each window separately in the current session state while Firefox is running.

Thanks, that's very interesting. That seems to be consistent with my experience.

By "main" window, do you mean the first window that was created? I usually have many windows open, so it's hard to know which one is the "main" one.

Also, to what version of FF does that apply?

Say hi to Jor-el and Superman for me.

pb said

No, I am not going to get into a discussion about this. Why not just assume that I have a good reason, as I've told you so. You don't think I have a good reason, do you?

I'm sure you have a very good reason - was only hoping that we might be able to give you a reason for wanting to update (having your best interests at heart). I'm a mere earthling, trying to help ......

Happy112 said

pb said

No, I am not going to get into a discussion about this. Why not just assume that I have a good reason, as I've told you so. You don't think I have a good reason, do you?

I'm sure you have a very good reason - was only hoping that we might be able to give you a reason for wanting to update (having your best interests at heart). I'm a mere earthling, trying to help ......

While I greatly appreciate the attempts to help me with my actual question, I do not appreciate the attempts to help me exit my unenlightened existence and see The One True Way, whether sent from earth or elsewhere.

This looked promising (to me) :

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/sidebarAction/close

Then I saw this bug report :

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429054

Thanks. Also very interesting. It seems that the sidebar API is not yet settled law. I wonder if it was settled before the major changes of quantum.

Actually, it's not clear to me why a sidebar should be associated with a whole window, and not tab-by-tab, other than cost issues. Whether you need the sidebar it seems to me depends on what you are doing in that tab, not the whole window.

But, that's rather far afield from my original goal, which was to prevent the unwanted behavior. The suggested sidebar methods in the bug reports maybe could provide a path to writing a short close-all-sidebars-before-exiting code snippet, but until the API is decided upon, I will have to wait, not to mention waiting until I update to current FF version. Also, it looks like the API is not likely to end up that useful for this purpose, anyway.

WebExtensions that use the sidebar API can only affect the sidebar opened by their own extension. It will never be possible to affect other sidebar content like the bookmarks or history. To toggle those there is the sidebar button available in the Customize palette or the close button in the sidebar header.

Thanks. That was the impression I got from the linked bug discussion. Actually, for me that would be sufficient. However, at this point, it doesn't make sense to pursue it any further because the currently offending extension will not exist in future FF versions, nor indeed not after I believe v52. Might be redeveloped, might not... long story, depends on the developer.