You can look at replies in this MozillaZine forum thread about inspecting a sessionstore file and extracting URLs.

• http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=622036&start=45
• http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=622036&start=60&p=12098147#p12098147

See also:

• https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/session_restore#The_structure_of_sessionstore.js

cor-el

Thanks for the info. Please bear with me, am not that technical.

1. in looking thru the post thread you provided, did not see about getting JUST the urls for the Restore Session tab, it was about other things.

2. in browsing the sessionrestore.js file and just doing search, I did not see any of the descriptive words seen in the Restore Session tab, but do see such descriptions for other urls listed in that file.

3. Is it that the urls of the Restore Session tab are in the sessionrestore.js file or could they be somewhere else ?

Thanks again.

Are you really using Firefox 30 on Windows2000? IOW, a dead operating system with a 5 year old version of Firefox.

The current version is Firefox 47, which is quite different from 30 as far as session restore.

Or are you opening Firefox in a Windows Compatibility mode?

sorry for incomplete info

am running on xp, sp2 (can't update to sp3)or other window os

and the about firefox says the version 30 I am running is the latest version.

thus my question above is about how to do this on version 30.

thanks again.

The current release (47.0.1) still supports Windows XP SP2

• https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/system-requirements/

Two things about the version 30 problem:

(1) Your Firefox might be reporting obsolete system/version information. Please check this article to see whether that has been set in your preferences and can be cleared: How to reset the default user agent on Firefox.

(2) Windows might be set to run Firefox in backwards compatibility mode. To have Firefox use the full capabilities of Windows XP, you can turn that off as follows:

• right-click the icon you use to start Firefox and choose Properties

• then click the Compatibility tab and clear out anything set on this tab

Any changes should take effect the next time you start Firefox.

About the session history file, yes, it often has a huge amount of data:

• There are entries for each window you have open, plus up to three closed windows.
• Each window has entries for each open tab, and up to ten closed tabs.
• Each tab lists the title and address of the current page, plus up to ten pages back in history for that tab (back button history), and possibly some forward button history.
• The file usually contains cookie data so when you restore a page, you can resume where you left off.

It is possible to craft a script that only finds the currently open pages in the currently open tabs, but I don't know whether you can get them from the about:sessionrestore page itself, or whether you need to process the sessionstore.js/recovery.js/recovery.bak/previous.js file directly. I think that's more likely since that's what the previous scripts do.

What format do you want to use to store the URLs?

As a kind of quick-and-dirty list, you could do this:

(1) Create a copy of the session history file you want to mine for URLs (e.g., recovery.js if it's your live session, previous.js if it's a previous, unrestored session). The fastest way to do this when Firefox is running probably is as follows:

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.

Scroll down and double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder.

Make sure Windows is showing .js and .txt extensions. If you need to turn that on, see http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wi.../show-hide-file-name-extensions or http://support.microsoft.com/kb/865219.

Right-click the file you want to back up, click Copy. Then right-click a blank area and choose Paste. Right-click the copy and Rename with a .txt extension.

(2) Open the backup txt 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 (on XP, you might need to hold down the Shift key to get Open With on the right-click context menu).

(3) In the tab displaying the session history file, open the Web Console to run a script. You can use either:

• Ctrl+Shift+k
• "3-bar" menu button > Developer > Web Console
• (menu bar) Tools > Web Developer > Web Console

Copy the following script and paste it on the line at the bottom of the console, then press Enter to run it:

var oWindows = JSON.parse(document.body.textContent).windows; for (var w=0; w<oWindows.length; w++){ var oTabs = oWindows[w].tabs; for (var t=0; t<oTabs.length; t++){ console.log(" Window "+(w+1)+" Tab "+(t+1)+": "+oTabs[t].entries[oTabs[t].index-1].url+" "); } }

The console should fill with lines listing the URLs of each open tab from the file. You can select and copy this list and paste it somewhere for safekeeping.

You can select a specific item in the list on the about:sessionrestore page and use Ctrl+Enter or middle-click or hold Ctrl and left-click this item with the mouse to open the selected item in a new tab. You can additionally press Shift to toggle opening in the background just you can do when you open a link with the mouse. This leaves the about:sessionrestore page in the first tab, so you can decide for yourself if you only want to inspect some selected tabs.

• chrome://browser/content/aboutSessionRestore.js

Thanks to all for taking the time to answer and the suggestions.

I will take some time just to parse thru these and educate myself on the steps.

I did not realize that firefox on my xp sp2 could be updated; I had just accepted what the help=> about told me.

Thanks again for all of your great suggestions and ideas.