Xah Lee, ,
This page tells you how to restore your last session (all opened pages (tabs/windows)) in all major browsers.
In my daily work, i usually have 10 to 20 tabs open in each of Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, and sometimes Safari, Internet Explorer too. (yes, i use all of them at the same time.) It is critical for me that when a browser crashed, i must have all the my pages re-open. Because, the tabs i have open usually means to-read or otherwise to-do item opened many days ago.
Many browsers automatically open last session when crashed. However, they are not very reliable. Sometimes you closed all tabs by mistake, but on relaunch, they are not restored because there's no crash. Sometimes you have more than one Window, and only tabs in one of the Window is restored.
Recently, Safari (5.0.3) on Windows added a new feature. Now you can open all tabs in your last session. It's under the menu 〖History▸Reopen All Windows From Last Session〗. Finally. Safari is the last browser to have this feature.
Firefox, starting about version 3.x, will automatically open all tabs in your last session if it crashed. Go to your 〖tools▸options〗, in the “General” tab, under “When firefox startsup”, choose “Show my windows and tabs from last time”. (See: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Session_Restore)
However, sometimes if you exit Firefox (by clicking the ⌧ close box on the window), then when you launch Firefox, it may not restore your last session.
Here's add-on called “Session Manager” to solve this problem, at Source addons.mozilla.org
After you installed it, you can go to the menu 〖Tools▸session Manager〗 to open your last session anytime.
Google Chrome restores your previous pages on crash.
Make sure you turn it on. Click on the wench icon on top right to go to options, then in “Basics” tab, “On startup”, choose “Reopen the pages that were open last”.
To restore session on demand, install extension FreshStart at Source chrome.google.com. Once installed, click the icon on the upper right to use it.
In Internet Explorer 8 and 9, to reopen last session, just go to 〖Tools▸Reopen Last Browsing Session〗.
Opera is also very nice. It automatically reopens your last session always. Make sure you have it on.
Go to menu 〖Tools▸Preference〗, “General” tab, in “Startup” field, choose “Continue from last time”.