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How can I restart a page where I left off?

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Before, when I would reopen my browsing session, and I was halfway down one of the pages, it would start back at the spot where I left off. Now, though, it just opens up at the top of the page and I have to scroll down to find where I had ended before. Can I get it back to the way it was? How?

Before, when I would reopen my browsing session, and I was halfway down one of the pages, it would start back at the spot where I left off. Now, though, it just opens up at the top of the page and I have to scroll down to find where I had ended before. Can I get it back to the way it was? How?

All Replies (11)

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in your preferences under the general tab you can set it to : show home page, show blank page or show my windows and tabs from last time.

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I have it set to show my windows and tabs from last time, but it will still open up at the top of the page even if I was halfway down when I shut down.

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In case you are using "Clear history when Firefox closes":

  • do not clear the Cache (Firefox will disable the disk cache in this case, see about:cache)

Note that clearing "Site Preferences" clears all exceptions for cookies, images, pop-up windows, software installation, and passwords.

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I'm actually using Remember history, it's what I've been using since I started Firefox. I just don't understand why all of the sudden I can't restart the page where I left off...does that make sense?

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Advanced bookmarks Add-on 1.0.6. This addon will let you save bookmarks with position in web page, or with select text that allow you to open the page and automatically scroll to position, or select text.

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This helps somewhat, but I don't want to have to go into Bookmarks every time I want to open a page (especially when I open up multiple tabs at a time). Any other suggestions? I know I'm being picky, but it's just what I'm used to.

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This is a bug introduced in Firefox 25 when there were major changes to the session restore feature.

In my earlier testing, scroll position seemed to get frozen in the session history after the first restore. In other words, on the first restore of a tab, the position was correct, but if you changed the position, that changed position wasn't stored. Either the page scrolled to the earlier-saved position or if during the subsequent session you reloaded the page bypassing the cache (e.g., Ctrl+Shift+r) then the top of the page was stored as the scroll position.

The developers have put a fix for this into the working "Nightly" version of Firefox, the future Firefox 29. There's a possibility that fix will get moved up to Firefox 27 (scheduled to release in early February), but I don't know whether that is likely to happen, because sometimes these fixes are intertwined with other changes that can't be moved up.

A temporary workaround is to launch the page in a new tab (click in the address bar and press Alt+Enter). Then your final scroll position in that tab will be remembered properly for one restore cycle, maybe more. I know: not a very good workaround.

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Thanks, jscher2000. I guess for now I'll just have to wait and see (and keep my fingers crossed) until 29 (or hopefully 27) comes in- is it a fact that it will be fixed by 29 (and is there a date set for 29 to be released?)? Or is that just conjecture? I'll also try that workaround, too.

Would it be feasible to just go back to 24 until it is fixed? I was looking at the earlier versions website, but I couldn't figure out which files to download (I have Windows Vista, if that helps) I know 24 isn't as safe as 25, but it was safe enough when I had it before...and 25 is very inconvenient for me when 9 times out of 10 I'll close the page when it's scrolled 1/2 to 3/4 down.

Edeziri site na SaffieB

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Hi SaffieB, although the security vulnerabilities fixed in Firefox 25 and Firefox 26 are serious if you run into a site the is exploiting them, it's very hard to know if any of them actually are being exploited in the wild, and how widely. Therefore, it's very hard to give you a good risk assessment or deviate from the usual suggestion that the latest is the safest.

Of course, you need to balance against that your need to get work done and your sanity!

Regarding Firefox 29, the fix was submitted in mid-December, so someone testing the "Nightly" version of Firefox should be able to confirm that the fix is working. I probably won't do it myself, and since Nightly can be quite unstable with new changes rolled out daily, you probably don't want to do it either...

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I'll keep 25 for now, but just in case my sanity wears too thin, do you know what files I need to download for Firefox 24 in Vista?

What I meant to ask is: If Firefox 27 is set to be released in early February, do you know what time/month 29 might be coming out?

So we won't know if Firefox 29 fixed the problem until a few weeks after everything is updated then?

I appreciate you taking time out to help me with this. I'm not a very technologically advanced person (proficient, maybe), so every little bit helps.

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There's a delay for Firefox 27 due to the holidays, but normally a new version of Firefox is released every 6 weeks.

To get the immediately previous version of Firefox, you can try the link in this article: Install an older version of Firefox.